The Seven Boxed Set

by Sarah M. Cradit

  “What I see,” Colin said, hugging his polo shirt tighter around him, “is a bunch of trust fund elites whose parents will bail them out of whatever trouble they get in today.”

  “You’re not a lawyer yet, Colin. Maybe try having some fun before you’re stuck pushing papers and bailing these trust fund elites out of their trouble.” Charles blew his smoke toward the sky. He regarded the dying embers at the tip of his butt, pressed between his thumb and forefinger. Pulling one last drag, he flicked it off into the bushes.

  “Jesus, Charles, are you trying to start a fire?”

  “It’s copacetic, brother,” Charles answered, though his attention had shifted back to scanning the partygoers for the woman he would pleasure—or more likely, would pleasure him—before the sun disappeared.

  * * *

  The world around them began to dim shortly before eleven.

  Charles didn’t notice it at first. The women clinging from each of his arms giggled and demurred, blocking out the conversation around him. Four—or was it six? Or nine?—glasses of champagne later, he eventually grabbed the bottle and doused it over one of the girls paying court to him, then licked the expensive alcohol from her toned flesh to the cheers of nearby sycophants. Cheers turned to howls when he pushed her bikini bottom aside and finished there. He was so high he couldn’t discern between the flavor of her nectar and that of the champagne, but only one would force him to rinse his mouth later.

  What kind of woman would let you do that to her in front of an audience? Charles heard Colin’s voice in his head only. He vaguely recalled his friend had left in disgust at some indistinct point, possibly right after Charles had run out of cocaine and had to cozy up to this new group to obtain more.

  Someone yelled for more champagne. Charles pulled himself up off his knees and drew the same girl he’d just finished on into a deep kiss, all tongue, hoping to transfer some of her juices back to her and avoid terrible breath later. High fives flew over his head, which spun just enough for him to wonder if what he needed was more drugs, or fewer.

  Charles wiped his hand across his mouth. Around him, the party had evolved… or devolved, depending on the perspective. He spotted Dan Weatherly lying on a lawn chair being ridden by some blonde. Dan, the host, the only man here not old money, but his parties were so legend no one cared. Dan’s eyes were closed, and Charles couldn’t tell if he had passed out or was caught in the ecstasy. The other lawn chairs beheld similar spectacles, a veritable orgy in perfect synchronization. Just beyond them, a group of partiers waved their hands in front of them, playing with acid tracers only they could see. He turned his head again, and this time lost footing and fell into a guy holding the empty Dom Perignon bottle like a trophy. He righted Charles and dusted off something imaginary from his shorts. Near the guesthouse, under a break in the canopy of oaks, others played with cardboard boxes, positioning them toward the sun, which had not grown dark so much as… subdued, like someone had thrown a filter over it, or hit the dimmer switch.

  Nails scratched his cheek. One of his groupies pulled his face down to her breasts, but he wasn’t in the mood, and she didn’t do anything for him, except… she was offering him something else altogether. She’d poured a haphazard line across the perfect milky arc popping from her bikini top. Charles buried his face and sucked in through his nose so hard his head spun for a moment. She moaned like a woman in the throes of orgasm.

  “There’s more where that came from,” she cooed, and Charles decided then and there that it didn’t matter if he was into her, because she had something he wanted even more than sex.

  * * *

  Charles didn’t remember the precise moment he blacked out, but when he awoke, he was looking up at the sky. He blinked, once and then again, to bring it into focus, but the haze that stole the brightness from the sky wouldn’t dissipate. He pressed his eyes closed for longer this time, and when he opened them, he was convinced he was going blind.

  He whipped his head around to see if others were experiencing this, but bodies piled over the lawn, on chairs, around the pool, sleeping off their high. A few made sluggish attempts at some sexual act or another, thrusting momentarily before falling into a lapse, but none looked alert, looked up, looked toward the sky, where the world was ending.

  Pleasure rippled through him and he realized the girl from earlier, the cocaine queen, had her fingers pressed into his chest as she bounced on his cock with a frenetic enthusiasm that didn’t match the subdued world around them.

  “You like that, Daddy? You like that?” The question repeated, over and over, and she didn’t wait for an answer. The words came from her like a broken record that knew nothing but the jilted refrain.

  Charles floated in and out of consciousness to the sounds of the Stones blaring over the porch speakers. The world went from dim to dark, dark to dim. The cocaine queen either didn’t notice or didn’t mind his disconnect from her earnest work, for she continued with zeal.

  Her droning questions faded from his ears, though her lips continued to press the words into existence. Charles rolled his head to the side. Something was all wrong, all wrong. The sun… it was there, but it was… something was…

  Charles leaned over the side of the chair and threw up.

  The cocaine queen paused long enough to ask if he was okay, and a light nod was enough for her to continue her emphatic ministrations. Charles wondered briefly at her dedication, for his cock was half-limp and he hadn’t so much as given her a word of encouragement.

  “Gimme Shelter” rippled through the remains of the party, bouncing off the trees, the music, like everyone, everyone but Charles, blissfully unaware that the sun was slowly disappearing from the world, and that without the sun, there could be no life.

  “Shut it off, someone shut off the fucking music!” he cried, not sure why this, of all things, was so important.

  “I’ll make it better, Daddy, let me make it better,” the cocaine queen soothed, and Charles left the world again for a few moments.

  * * *

  When he awoke this time, the cocaine queen had her lips wrapped around his cock. He tried to sit forward, to say something, but the dizziness swept him back.

  “You have whiskey dick, Daddy, but I can fix it,” she explained, as if they were talking about making groceries.

  “I didn’t drink whiskey,” he mumbled, and a mouthful of old vomit sent a new wave of sickness over him. On his tongue rested the remnants of his earlier decisions, and none of it blended well together, which was no surprise, for none of his decisions ever did. He closed his eyes, but this didn’t help, not when the world outside was so dim and nothing would ever be the same again.

  Mercifully, someone had turned off the music at some point, but this revealed a new horror.

  Complete, utter, terrifying silence.

  The Garden District was a world alive at every clematis tendril, every magnolia bloom. From the rustling of exotic flora to the insistent, grating songs of the bees and cicadas, it was a world abuzz, always, at all times of the day.

  Except it wasn’t. He heard not a whisper of a shifting vine. Not even a distant buzz of the cicadas, or the chirp of a rogue katydid. From the corner of his eye, he noted Dan’s dog pacing an anxious, repeating semi-circle through the lawn.

  His mother said something once. Something inconsequential at the time, but now seemed to be the only words that mattered. That’s when the world will end, when the cicadas stop singing.

  The air screamed with the absence of sound. It ricocheted through his head, taunting him, demanding of him if this is how he saw his final moments on the Earth.

  Cocaine queen crawled back atop him. Her sweaty legs wrapped around him.

  Someone—maybe his mother, maybe the anchorman on Channel 7 News—had said not to stare at the sun during the eclipse, but nothing could have pulled his eyes away now. Even with the dimness turned down around him, the sun was still excruciatingly bright, and this juxtapose confused him even more than how he
was somehow the only one aware they were on the verge of the world ending.

  “It’s so… beautiful,” he whispered, and a new peace washed over him. He would see his father again, and there was nothing he had ever wished for more.

  Charles was so disconnected from the moment at hand that the shock of orgasm rocking through his body caused him to cry out, breaking a slash through the silence blanketing the dark and dying world.

  * * *

  Brightness returned to the sky.

  The cicadas hummed to life.

  The cocaine queen adjusted her bikini bottoms into place. Her ass jiggled as she snapped the stretchy fabric against her flesh.

  She leaned down and tucked his cock into his boxer shorts with a soft pat, almost motherly.

  He squinted up at her, her soft baby cheeks, the strange innocence he hadn’t noticed earlier. “How old are you, cocaine queen?”

  “Shelly,” she said with a frown he didn’t feel he’d earned from someone he’d only met an hour or so ago. “We had fun, didn’t we, Daddy?”

  “I’m not your daddy.”

  She dropped her arms on either side of him. She smelled of sweat and expensive champagne. His stomach turned. “Fourteen, Daddy. But I fuck like I’m twenty.”

  Charles rolled to the side and released the rest of the morning into the flagstones.

  * * *

  Charles lost a few more hours between Shelly’s departure and the moment he stumbled through the front door of Oak Haven.

  His brother, Augustus, headed him off before he’d even made it into the foyer. “Mama is on a warpath. Where the hell have you been?”

  Charles smacked his mouth, which was still a smorgasbord of all the day’s indiscretions. “I saw… I saw the most glorious thing.” He slapped his hands over his brother’s arms. “The world almost ended today, and then it didn’t. We’re still here, brother. God is good.”

  Augustus sighed. “We all saw it. The world wasn’t ending. Not over an eclipse anyway.” He pulled Charles to the side. “The Dean of Tulane called about you.”

  “Yeah? Anything good?”

  “You know it wasn’t.” Augustus looked around, tense. “It never is.”

  “What does it matter? What does any of it matter?”

  “It’s your future!”

  “Our future is anything we want it to be, Augustus. Why do you kill yourself studying? You’ll never have to work a day in your life. Neither will I.”

  Augustus narrowed his eyes. “That’s not me. Maybe you, but not me.”

  “Charles August Deschanel!” cried the powerful voice of Irish Colleen. Her heavy footsteps echoed across the cypress. “Where the devil have you been?”

  Augustus raised his eyebrows and faded into the hallway.

  “I was at Dan’s for the eclipse.” That wasn’t her question. It never really was. When she asked where he’d been, she was searching for something deeper, perhaps answers as to why he was such a massive disappointment in her eyes.

  Irish Colleen snaked her tiny hands up and rotated his face back and forth. She pulled it down then and inspected his eyes. “You’re high.” She moved on to frenetic sniffing. “And you smell like… cigarettes and booze.” Her mouth curled in disgust. “And worse.”

  “I’m home for dinner,” came his weak return. He braced himself for the slap and was not disappointed.

  “Do you know how much money we’ve donated to Tulane? Do you have any idea how much work it has been to keep you in school?”

  “They’ll get over it,” Charles said. He winced again, but this time she only stood before him, fuming. He preferred her violent reactions. They made him angrier, too, which diluted her disappointment.

  “I ask only one thing of you. One! I ask that you go to your college classes, and not do anything dumb enough to get yourself kicked out before you can graduate.”

  “Technically, that’s two things.”

  Irish Colleen shook her tiny fist. “Most mothers don’t have to ask their sons not to get kicked out of school, but here we are, Charles. Thank God your father isn’t here to see this. He would be so ashamed.”

  “Father would have known college is pointless for me. I’m the heir to the greatest dynasty in Louisiana. I’ll never have to work a day in my life,” Charles returned, though even as the words flowed, he felt the lie in them. August Deschanel wouldn’t have wanted his son to sit upon the family throne without earning it.

  Elizabeth came bounding into the hall and launched herself into Charles’ arms. Despite the poison still oozing out of his pores, her presence brightened his heart. It always did. There was something both pure, but also deeply sad, about Elizabeth, and when he played with her, she always beamed bright. Sometimes it felt like the only thing he was capable of succeeding at on his own, though he rarely let his shortcomings get in the way of enjoying life.

  As he grinned and greeted his baby sister, Irish Colleen snorted in disgust.

  “I missed you,” Elizabeth said as she dangled from his arms. At eleven, she was too big now to be held like she used to love. He swung her up over his back, fighting the wave of sickness that came over him at the quick movement.

  “I always miss you, Sweet Lizzy,” he said back and bounced her higher on his shoulders. What did the opinion of a stranger at Tulane matter when he was a hero in the eyes of someone so sweet, so pure?

  As his sister curled over his back, Charles locked eyes with his mother. The brief smile that returned to her face when Elizabeth came in had melted back into simmering rage.

  This isn’t over, her eyes said. She turned and went back into the kitchen, where the smell of roast cooking nearly sent his stomach over the edge.

  “You really messed up this time, Huck,” his sister Colleen said from behind him. Where had she even come from? She always had a way of appearing from the shadows to pass judgment. It was like she’d forgotten they should be on the same side.

  Charles ignored her and turned himself into an airplane, flying his baby sister around the house, fueled by her innocent squeals of joy.

  Three

  Daydream Believer

  Maureen Deschanel was losing her mind, and it was her mother’s fault.

  She was fairly certain the process began somewhere around kindergarten and swooped in with hurricane force when her father succumbed to cancer. His death was an avoidable one, and another notch on the list of reasons Maureen loathed her mother. That Irish Colleen had helped August Deschanel keep his illness a secret until his death meant she had all but signed his death warrant. In a family of healers, death from disease in middle-age was a foolish end and an avoidable one. And further proof, in Maureen’s mind, that her mother not only didn’t understand the family she married into, but also secretly—or not so secretly—loathed them.

  Irish Colleen had the means to save her husband and instead she watched him die a terrible death.

  She insisted to her seven children she was honoring her husband’s wishes. Only Maureen knew why her father opted out of magical intervention. Only Maureen knew because only Maureen could still see August Deschanel, and only Maureen could still talk to him. Only Maureen could still see and talk to August Deschanel because only Maureen was spiraling further and further away from her sanity.

  August having his reasons for wanting to die a natural death did not exonerate Irish Colleen from allowing it to happen, though.

  A knock sounded on her bedroom door.

  “I’m studying!” she shrieked, rustling open her algebra textbook. The hard, cold cover slapped against her bare thigh.

  “Dinner in ten!” called back Evangeline. Her heavy combat boots clopped along the cypress boards as she moved down the line of bedrooms with way too much enthusiasm. Maureen could almost picture her wild hair and obnoxious sense of purpose as she did her mother’s bidding.

  “I’d just as soon choke on my own vomit than eat that woman’s food,” Maureen muttered. She flipped through the pages with such force she ripped small
tears. Good. Let them send her mother the bill. She ripped several more before slicing her finger.

  “Hell’s bells!” She sucked on her finger and continued on more carefully.

  “You shouldn’t speak of your mother that way,” Maureen’s father said.

  Maureen leaped back in shock and slammed her head against the oak headboard. “Daddy, God bless America, what have we talked about? You can’t just appear out of nowhere like… like a ghost. You’ll give me a heart attack.”

  “I’m always here, Maureen, even when you can’t see me.”

  “And yet, I’m the only one who can see you,” she mused, thumbing angrily, but more carefully, through every chapter when she knew the one she wanted was near the back. She checked her wounded finger, saw it was still bleeding, and stuck it back in her mouth. “Because I’m a freak of nature. We all are.”

  “You’re wrong. You’re a Deschanel, and there’s no greater blessing.”

  “Is that why you chose to die?” Tears rolled down her face as the anger blossomed through her fingertips. This topic of conversation always went nowhere fast, because dead August had collected enlightenment and wisdom along the way. He refused to let her wallow, when it was entirely her right. She could never decide whether she was ultimately comforted by his presence or enraged by the limitations of it. His arrivals tore her emotions down the seams and sewed them back together in haphazard, mismatched fashion, leaving her without her bearings and even more broken every time.

  “You know why I chose to die.”

  “All I know is you chose to leave us.”

  “I chose to accept the fate God intended for me.”

  “I don’t believe in God. I watch the news.”

  “My Sweet Maureen. Everything is linear in your eyes. The world is not so black and white.”

  Maureen didn’t turn to face him. Seeing her dead father was her only tether to her sanity, and it was also the wind nudging her further off the edge.