Strange Gifts From Other People’s Closets

a story by Chaos McKenzie

With a little effort, perseverance, determination, the proper ensemble would eventually reveal itself. Keeping metal blockers up and charged, as the throngs of people moved to varying rhythms without orchestrated arrangement. The sights as they lay out for the eye to ponder, all the variety of early summer wonders, were too much to absorb and remain fixated with the task at hand. The little man had a staunch body of protruding proportions, buggy eyes, and long bulbous nose. Creased and weatherworn hands fondled the quality of denim on an old Levi’s Big E jacket, the hemming frayed with flattering tattered accessory style. He sniffed lightly at the cuff on each sleeve, recognizing the faint odor of sweat and tobacco from the long dead cowboy out of Marlboro County. He who wore the jacket everyday on the job, under working conditions that made the civil rights fanatics of today, teary eyed with memories. The jacket showed no wear or tear, a prized belonging, the sheriffs' badge of the loyal old worker, thrice passed by for promotion, though every new foreman was wise enough to follow his veteran lead.

Behind the chubby little dwarf, who hung the big E on his belt loop for later consideration, a slender waif of a woman let her eyes blur over a rack of soft synthetic shirts. Patterns and colors becoming one blended sunset, over a horizon of paisley leaves, soft slender fingers tickling them at the edges and sending ripples over the display. Her crown of gold curled locks, glowed gold in the sun, large and piercing deer eyes blocked with the shade of polished amber lenses. She grasped one shirt at random, a wildly designed bowlers shirt, who’s long and pointed collar sat squarely around the thick neck of an Italian immigrant as he passed his time being intimidating behind the shoulder of his wizened grandfather who kept those in the know of standards once kept thru the neighborhood in better times, long faded. She held the shirt to the sun, letting its light halo the shape of the garment, outlining its potentials, showing hidden seams where the metamorphosis could be carried out with not a sign of tampering. Her other arm shot out instinctively finding missing pieces, a purple polyester throw away that a cheerful girl turned bitter maid had clung to for decades, unable to decide what memories it stirred anymore, never clear enough on all the details to have shaped an opinion. A gray and brown button down with dull seventies gold fringes, her eyes saw them as they were reborn, something new. The collar of a failed academic, who gave it all away to discover life unburdened. The snaps of a disco queen’s favorite old standby, always too many sizes too big, always on hand to cover a momentary nakedness as the spinning lights faded to another unfamiliar ceiling. The gingerly elf giggled to herself, all the things to be born from five shirts not fit for anything beyond the dollar rack.

A smiling, and content boy runs his finger over the row of shirts, thinking twice before taking a moment to survey them. He smiles at the elf, her pearly grin so pure and white;  it sends shivers down his spine, completely out of synch to understand the magic which powered it. He plucked through small t-shirts from the homes of young girls in the early wilds of the eighties, branded with strawberry shortcake and those care bears whose names had gone forgotten. Holding a baby blue faded he-man over his chest, hands stretching at different places to see if his muscles could squeeze into the shell and give it shape. Feeling his chest sink into the slight stretch from when a suddenly bloomed wallflower tried to conceal her new gains in the innocence of herself, only a few years past.

“She smoked in bed at night, with a can of air freshener to mask the scent from her mother,” said the little dwarf, looking the t-shirt over, nostrils smiling, before turning to other T’s of deeper stories. “She was a mess of nerves, all the days long.”

The boy caught his reflection in the window of the store, feeling somewhere in the back of his mind, a spirit redeemed as tee lay over him with flattery. The tall elf spun through him and the image, her glee bubbling, as she swung her finds over both arms and winked with a sparkle from the darkness of her lenses. Saying nothing, the boy trailed after her, over the pebbled path that twisted for a few short strides to the nest of an old bird, who collected the scraps of all those souls left long ago. The smells of their hearts left festering in the closet, only musty and ripe, and then to blow again on the racks for those who come in searching, with grit determination, some effort, and perseverance.