A/N
Just a little something I wrote at 1:00 in the morning under the impression of sleep deprivation.
I am well aware that it was originally a novel, but as I've only seen the film, I wrote it as such.
With that being said, I do not own "Everything is Illuminated" or anything associated with it.
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He stood in the middle of the room, gazing down at a large, plastic storage container that held a lifetime's worth of collecting. He didn't know what prompted him to do it, or why the thought had even entered his mind. For a moment, he thought that maybe he was testing himself; seeing if he could remember without spending the better half of a day searing the images into his brain. He had always been afraid of forgetting. Or maybe it was time for him to stop remembering the little things, for whatever reason God may have had for it. He just didn't know.
Kneeling next to the container, he ran his fingers over the top most bags, the delicate objects wrapped tightly in bounds of newspaper. There was his grandmother's portrait underneath a sheet of comics, her soft smile shining up at him. Her dentures rested beside her, like she would have wanted. His grandfather's portrait was directly underneath hers, he knew. He could still see his stern face in the picture, even though he remembered him as a kind and caring man from his childhood days. He laid another piece of newspaper over the top layer of memories, and reached for a suitcase that was propped against the desk a few feet away. It had been one year exactly since he arrived home, and he had never opened it once.
Inside was a shriveled, black potato from the Ukrainian hotel, a pack of Marlboro cigarettes, a wrinkled photograph of Sammy Davis Jr. Jr., and an eyeglass class containing the fossil of a grasshopper. And in the bottom of the suitcase, under odd pieces of clothing and the journal of his time in Trachimbrod, was the box. He opened it and gazed at the ring, as perfect as it looked one year before. Moving it gently to the side, he placed the rest of his last collections inside and replaced the cover.
Into the larger container it went, being shut into the dark. He got to his feet and looked down for a moment, seeing if he had already forgotten. He hadn't. In fact, he remembered more vividly than ever.
Black pen in hand, he scrawled on the top of the lid.
"In Case."