*** This one's been gathering dust in my folder o' plot bunnies forever, so I thought I'd dust it off and see if it works – clearly I own nothing of the Marvel universe, but the multitude of OCs are all mine! Hope you guys enjoy! ***
At first she thought a plane had crashed, or that maybe a sky-jumper had dropped something. Melanie watched the sky anxiously for a few minutes longer, holding the strange object in her hands as she did. She was greeted with clear blue and scorching heat. No more falling shoe-things; that much seemed certain.
Her gaze dropped from the sky and she scanned her backyard again. Nothing looked out of place, except, of course, for the dent in the middle of the green plastic patio table that the shoe-thing had left when it landed. Melanie pursed her lips and squinted back up at the sky for a moment longer. Do I report this? Like, call 911 or something? She thought skeptically. Her imagination leapt ahead, leading her down the inevitable path of having to tell a bored sounding operator in Santa Fe that she was mildly alarmed because a strange shoe had dropped from an empty sky onto her patio table.
"Not gonna happen," she muttered to herself, walking back towards her trailer. Her yard was not much more than the now-dented green plastic table, its two matching chairs, a flower pot with a bunch of windmills stuck in it and lots of rocks. And gravel. And more rocks. No grass. She couldn't even imagine getting pretty green grass to grow permanently out here, the way it did up in town on the wealthier streets. She couldn't imagine wanting to waste the water, or the money. Or the effort, really - she assumed growing grass in this climate was a time-consuming affair, and if there was anything she enjoyed avoiding, it was time-consuming affairs.
She pulled her screen door open and listened to the hinges give out their familiar scree of protest. Mom would insist I fix that, she thought ruefully. Other thoughts came on the heels of that mental image, and Melanie purposefully shoved them away, putting the shoe down onto the slightly sturdier dinette table inside her trailer. She pulled open the fridge, grabbed a beer, popped the cap, and then tossed herself down at the dinette. The bottle-neck of the beer was cold and slick and she relished the feeling in her hand's grip as she took a swig.
The shoe-thing caught her attention again, and she stared at it, wondering if this was some kind of elaborate plot for a practical joke, possibly by Eli, or Tala and Lulee across the way. Nah, they're too lazy, besides, where would they even get a shoe like this? She convinced herself easily enough, but the shoe still sat before her, obvious evidence that someone had definitely left it for her.
If she had to describe the shoe, she'd say the closest thing that resembled it was a wedge sandal, with gossamer fabric that flowed out the sides, obviously there to wind about one's leg to hold the shoe in place. Elaborate gold-laced designs traversed gracefully all along the 'wedge' itself, and huge (probably fake) diamond-like jewels sat in the exact center of the strap that went across the toe area. The fabric there was the same unearthly soft material as the long flowing straps off the sides.
You can hardly call it a wedge, she thought critically, examining the layer after layer of nearly-holographic looking material that comprised the majority of the shoe. Cautiously, Melanie poked one finger into the side of the 'wedge' and jerked her hand back in surprise when the entire shoe appeared to flicker in a wave of gold and rose pattern. The waves settled after a moment and Melanie turned her hand over to look at her finger, suddenly concerned that the strange material may have done something to her skin.
She wanted to think it was some kind of crazy high-fashion shoe, but she really couldn't buy into that theory, she'd never seen fabrics or materials like this anywhere. The sparkling wave produced by her prodding finger was not coming from a power source of any kind, it almost looked like grains of sand, alive with color and movement, were part of the materials that built the shoe. Melanie shook her head and drained the last of her beer, before getting up and stepping across the tiny center tiled area of her trailer, to the sink. She immediately washed her hands, aware that she had no idea what the golden dancing sand the shoe seemed to be made of was, and also, it was a shoe. Shoes go on feet. Feet are gross.
She proceeded to finish up washing her breakfast dishes, which she had been in the middle of doing earlier when the resounding and alarming 'thump' of the shoe landing on her table outdoors had interrupted her. Had there been a slight fizzle to the air just before? She was pretty sure she got goosebumps, and a weird, hair-lifting feeling on the back of her neck, right before the thump of the shoe.
"Idiot," she taunted herself under her breath, wondering if she was buying in to the crazy that seemed to affect a lot of her neighbors. Aliens, voices, spiritual beings and the like were always doing or saying something to someone around these parts, if you listened to her neighbors. Melanie herself had never felt anything except slightly embarrassed living in this area, certainly nothing extra-ordinary. Does a shoe qualify as sci-fi? She wondered, turning around and leaning her hip against the counter top, regarding the shoe-thing once again with skepticism.
After a long moment, she grabbed the shoe and tossed it into the cupboard where she kept her own shoes, wanting it out of sight so that it could become out of mind, at least until she got her day in order. She didn't get a lot of full days off, since her shifts at Marge's were usually kind of long, so when she did, she had lots of shit to do. Grabbing up her little wicker laundry basket, Melanie stepped back out into the baking sun and walked to the other end of the trailer, to the little lean-to she had there, where the washing machine lived. A hanging shelf from the roof of the lean-to held her laundry soap and liquid fabric softener, and she made quick-work of throwing her load of clothes in.
She was just picking the basket up off the ground, to take back inside, when an itching shiver ran down her spine and she spun around just in time to see a shower of little metallic objects rain down from the sky, directly onto her plastic yard-table. Her eyes bounced back and forth from the surface of the table, where some of the metal bits were now buried into the plastic and back up to the little rift in the sky above the table. It looked like the sky had split it pants, about 15 feet off the ground; the dazzling, clear, and normal blue of the regular sky completely surrounded the strange, abruptly dark, split.
She was terrified to move, images of the metal bits burying themselves into her skull playing past her mind's eye, so she cringed against the washer, hearing and feeling it rumble on through the wash cycle against her backside. After 30 seconds, the split in the sky suddenly flattened to a thin line and then disappeared. Melanie gaped at the spot it had been in, feeling her eyes sting a little from lack of blinking. There was no evidence at all that it had ever existed, except for the litter of metal bits all over her back yard.
Slowly, warily, Melanie crept toward the table and bent to the ground, picking up one of the metal bits from the dry, dusty earth. She turned it over in her hands and realized that it was currency of some kind. Almost a coin, except with more heft to it, thicker, not a perfect circle. There was a number on it, 25, and she found that oddly reassuring. Seeing the number broke the temporary spell the split and the almost-coin had on her, and she moved quickly, picking up all the bits off the ground, dumping them into an empty coffee can she had sitting just under the door-steps to the trailer. She'd intended to use the coffee can as an ash-tray for when Lulee stumbled over after work, but figured this was more important.
The almost-coins pinged and clinked against one another as she dropped them in the can, and after she'd dug the ones imbedded in the table out with a butter knife, she was almost a little irritated. The green plastic table was looking a little pock-marked and rough now; Melanie had been so pleased to find it at a garage sale a couple of years before, and had always thought that it, and its chairs, brought the much needed green her yard needed to truly be considered an alright yard. Now the poor table looked like someone had burnt it with cigarettes or gouged it with knives - signs of trashy-living that she would rather avoid.
Melanie snapped the coffee can's plastic lid back on top of it and stomped inside, stooping to tuck it into her shoe-cupboard with the shoe-thing. The weird sky-collection was growing and she wasn't pleased. However, she was still reluctant to report what had happened; living so close to Roswell had its drawbacks, the authorities didn't believe anything anyone said anymore, no matter how much proof you had... unless you were talking about regular, earthly things. Melanie leaned her hands on her small kitchen counter and tilted her head to look up at the sky through the kitchen window. The split was not earthly, she knew that in her gut.
She flinched when she heard her neighbor's old cuckoo clock began to hoot and holler next door, marking the time as 1 in the afternoon. Her day was wasting, and she was staring up at the sky too much. Taking a deep breath, Melanie turned her energy towards her tiny bathroom and set to cleaning it, top to bottom, knowing that there wasn't a damn thing she could do about the split anyway.
By 5 in the afternoon, Melanie was feeling better about life. Her clothes were hung on the drying line that stretched from the lean-to down to the back fence of her little yard, her bathroom and kitchen were scrubbed clean, the floors and surfaces were dusted, tidied, and wiped clean throughout the trailer, and she had just stripped her bed to wash her sheets and pillowcases.
Stuffing the armload of fabric into the machine, she reflected on the split, and wondered if she was making a big deal over nothing. She wasn't the brightest student in the science arena, and she had to wonder if perhaps somewhere in the world, there were scientists working on building whatever the split was. Maybe you're witnessing a huge breakthrough, she thought, maybe this is history happening, and here you're pissed about the table.
Melanie trailed her fingers affectionately along the top of the table as she walked by it on her way indoors. It was a good table. Cheap, effective, sturdy - it held up to meals, parties, tools, Eli's giant feet when he used to kick back after work and even her own butt, whenever she sat on the table top. Best 5 bucks I ever spent.
Back inside, she set the oven to preheat, and then pulled a generic TV dinner out of her tiny freezer. She'd picked it up the night before, with a second one: two-for-one special at Marge's. Pulling the tray from the box, she stabbed at the plastic with a fork and put the tray on a little baking sheet, before shoving the whole thing in the oven. Once the timer was set, Melanie popped another beer and tossed herself down on the couch side of the dinette, flicking the TV on as she did.
When the creeping, crawling, hair-lifting feeling came back a few minutes later, she went rigid. "No," her denial was spoken quietly, and then more loudly, "NO." Spilling her beer, Melanie clambered to her feet, slamming the bottle onto the dinette table and striding for the trailer-door. She was too late, not that she could've done much any way. The table almost exploded with the impact of the box that came through the split this time. The table legs snapped and flew out from beneath the table top, which itself cracked into several pieces, shattering from the middle outwards.
The box that came through was as large as a bedside table, it appeared to be made of a solid, sturdy wood, and even it sustained some damage from the fall. Melanie stood open-mouthed and panting in the trailer doorway, staring at the ruin of her table and the mess in her backyard.
She heard her neighbour yelling at her from inside his trailer, drunkenly complaining about the noise, but she ignored it as she slowly stepped down from the trailer steps. Her gaze locked on the split in the sky, slightly less visible now since the sky itself was slowly moving towards dusk. She couldn't be certain, but she thought that she saw something in the split, a flicker of light and movement, and then the split flattened to a line and disappeared again.
She knelt at the edge of the ruined table, knowing that the gifts from the split were getting larger, and therefore more dangerous, but found herself helplessly fixated on her destroyed possession and the large box on top of it. What if the next thing is large enough to hit the trailer? She worried, reaching out and slowly gathering up table chunks, making a little pile in front of herself. Eventually, she climbed to her feet, grabbed a broom and used it to gather up all the bits of table, her vigorous sweeping bringing up puffs of dusty dirt with it. A few minutes later, and all the table bits were crammed into her large trash can, which she dragged back to the end of her tiny driveway.
The box was next, but she wasn't sure what to do with it, it was too big to bring inside the trailer; it would take all the available floor space. Instead, she grabbed her trusty butter knife again and began to dig at the box, around the damaged spots. Crouched next to the box, feeling an ache beginning to travel up her thighs from staying in the one position for so long, she let out a sigh of relief when the side of the box she'd been prying at finally cracked open.
The inside of the box was full of letters, dried flowers, and other random trinkets. The smell of perfume that came from the box, now that it was open, was rich and heady. "What the fuck?" She asked the empty air, lifting up a long lock of buttery blonde hair tied in a frilly, lace-edged pink ribbon, "Ew." She dropped the hair and grabbed a letter, feeling disappointed when she opened it and realized it must have been written in a far different language than her own – it was just a muck of gibberish; even the letters weren't a familiar alphabet.
Melanie let herself tip back slightly, so that she could sit on the dusty ground next to the box, and began to open the letters, one after another, the same strange language in each one, but, she noticed after the fifth or sixth letter, that they weren't all written in the same hand. She began grouping the letters according to the handwriting in them, and once she had sorted all the piles, she realized there were 14 different kinds of hand-writing that she could see.
She couldn't understand the language, but she knew what these letters were, nonetheless: love letters. Judging by the curling, swooping, elegant script, not to mention the hearts and flowers some of the writers had drawn into the margins of their letters, these were all written by women. Surrounded by the tidy piles of letters she had sorted, she was better able to see what else lay within the box. There were other tied off locks of hair besides the blonde one; red, mahogany, rich yellow, icy pale blondes, and black hair like her own, dark as the night.
It struck her as horribly old-fashioned, and really a little bit gross. She couldn't recall a time when she was ever so madly in love with someone that she wanted to give them some of her hair. Stalker much? Melanie imagined the look on Eli's face if she'd given him a hank of her hair, tied with some creepy ribbon. He would have laughed and then asked if something was wrong with me. She smirked a little and then reached for some of the dried flowers, their texture feeling strange in her fingers, dusty and crinkling.
I've never seen flowers like this before, she thought to herself, in mild confusion. True, she didn't exactly live in a climate that encouraged an extensive flower garden, but these seemed like something straight out of a sci-fi flick. They were flowery enough for her to recognize that they were indeed flowers, it was just that, like the shoe-thing, they appeared to be so much more than a regular flower should be – busier, more colourful, more petals and parts.
Well, I can't leave this shit out here, she thought to herself, climbing to her feet and pushing the dried flowers to the ground, I need to hide this stuff. She imagined Tala, or, god forbid, Lulee, coming over for a chat and seeing this cracked open box, covered in weird gold loops and swirls, filled with the obvious trophies of some man's (or woman's) many conquered hearts. Oh my god she'd never leave. Melanie pictured Lulee's eager, hungry expression and the ensuing onslaught of questions when the woman assumed this was all either by, or for, Melanie herself.
No, I need to hide it. She got on her hands and knees next to the trailer and reached underneath to the pile of flattened cardboard boxes wrapped in a tarp, which she kept there from when she'd moved in. It only took her a moment to fold a box together and she proceeded to load it up quickly, thankful for the falling darkness of night, to hide her actions from her neighbors on either side. The last items she put in the box were several small lockets, and she paused a moment in her flurry of evidence-hiding, to click open each locket and look at the images within.
She'd guessed right, every little painted miniature portrait within was of a different woman. Sighing, Melanie dumped the handful of lockets into the box and got to her feet, brushing the dusty dirt off her backside as she again peered up at the sky, which was now dark. "Please stop sending your trash," she murmured to the stars.