A Story with no Characters

A Story with No Characters

      A house.  An ordinary house.  An ordinary white house.  Now, zoom out to see more of it.  See the surrounding forest—deep, dark, yet somewhat cheerful with its flowers and birds.  Zoom out more and notice the street.  It is cracked and full of potholes and neglected.  The white house is the only one on this end of the street.  The other houses seem to cower away, sensing something not completely honest in the façade of the house.  They dare not come closer.  The people who live in the houses at the other end of the street stay away as well.  But all you see is an ordinary white house on a neglected street standing between you and the forest.
      However, that is not all that is there.  Zoom back in on the ordinary white house.  Closer, closer.  A little closer.  Do you see it?  Do you see why the houses and people quiver in fear?  No?  Of course not.  Because it is not what is on the outside that counts.  The outside of this house looks very together and peaceful.  The paint is not chipped and the porch is not water stained.  It is modern—very open and airy looking.  There are many windows framed by blue shutters. 
      The shutters are never closed and there are no curtains inside to draw closed.  The owners have no need for these pretenses of privacy.  They make their lives very clear by the outside of the house and claim that they have nothing to hide.  Besides, no one ever goes near enough to look into the windows.  However, zoom in to a window and see what is really inside.
      Through the window on the porch next to the front door, you can see a living room.  It is elegantly furnished with ottomans and couches and love seats and tables and lamps and huge bookcases.  The room seems packed, as if a bigger room shoved itself into a smaller one.  Even with all of the furniture there is no place to sit.
      Zoom in even closer and venture into the room.  The window was open, so there is no need to feel like an intruder.  There is no peace to disturb here anyway.  The patterns on the furniture clash so loudly that you would probably not be heard if you shouted.  None of the patterns match and the colors are too close in shade to go together.  The largest couch has a paisley pattern, mauve and green.  The large coffee table is Victorian style and the ornate carvings cover the glass-protected top.  A table lamp—purple blown-glass with a feathered shade—sits on an over-sized ottoman in the middle of the walkway.
      Leave the patterns to decide which one will rule the living room and walk into the foyer.  On the right is the front door.  From the outside, it looked like regular clear glass.  You can see now that the glass panel is stained glass.  The design is straight from a Catholic Cathedral.  Saint Elizabeth of Portugal prays for the peace of the house. 
      Directly across from the living room is the library with more books and more furniture.  The patterns in this room are less chaotic than in the living room, yet they still war. The bookcases are painted in bright, primary colors that catch your eye and barely let them go.  You almost miss the maroon desk with its pink feathered reading lamp.  There is no need to intrude upon that war.  You aren’t welcome in that chaos.  Whoever wins in the library will fight the ruler of the living room for first floor dominance.
      To the left of the stairs is a hallway.  At the end of the hallway is the kitchen.  There could be peace there, most kitchens are warm and comforting.  A startling lack of color greets you as you walk through the archway.  No pictures hang on the wall.  No curtains to frame an outside view.  No outside view.  Instead of a window, there is a spice rack with empty bottles.  The lack of color is refreshing after the glaring patterns in the other rooms.  But it is also disturbing the number of different shades of gray that a decorator can come up with.  Your kitchen was so cheerful when you were a child.  It was the heart of your home and it made you feel safe when your mom cooked and the family ate together.  Here there is not even a table.
      Open a door.  Any door would be better than this.  However, there are no doors.  Just a doorway to the basement.  Maybe you better leave that one alone and try the upstairs.  As you pass the living room, you notice that they are close to having a winner.  The library is still trying to determine territory.  Too many patterns.
      The upstairs calls to you after the dreary kitchen.  The chandelier in the ceiling at the stair landing blinds those who wish for sight.  On the staircase landing is another stain glass window.  This figure is a little less recognizable.  The colors are much darker than the ones in the door.  At first glance it seems pretty, but when you examine it closer, there is too much darkness for you to feel comfortable.
The blinding light does not reach the upstairs very well.  Here the light is very dim and it makes the hallway look longer than it is. 
      The big difference between up here and downstairs is the doors.  Downstairs there were no doors.  Up here there are thick, heavy doors every five feet.  They line both sides and are all the same antique white color. 
      The first door on the left opens easily.  Inside, the room is almost empty.  There are some old newspapers advertising the fashion trends from 1809.  They are yellowed, framed, and piled haphazardly in the middle of the floor.  The walls match the newspapers and there are no windows. 
      The next room is similar.  However, the newspapers are hanging on the walls and they are clippings of stories about the rich and famous.  The wallpaper is cracked in places.  You stop this time to read some of the headlines.  Millionaire Robbed by Sister.  Chaos in Hollywood.  Trouble in Paradise.  Manson Family Values.  Peaceful Routine Interrupted.
      You are getting bored, so you can skip the next few rooms.  They only hold similar things.  Mementos from pasts that were full of searching.  Photographs of people that lived chaotic lives.  Journals of disquiet minds.  Attempts to find peace.
      The next door you open is harder to open than the others are.  But you are able to push it open and finally come face to face with a person.  Distorted, cracked, broken—it is only a smashed mirror.  The room is full of them.  Different sizes, shapes, and frames.  You cannot handle seeing so many different views of yourself, it is disturbing.  It is best to close the door quickly and retreat into the hall.
      The next room is full of toys.  Old-fashioned toys piled together with technologically advanced video games and cars.  Some of the toys are making noises as if a child had just been playing with them and dropped them and hid when he heard you.  The dolls sit in rockers or in cribs nearer the window.  This window is similar to the others on this floor.  Stained glass—swirling dark masses of color that run into each other and crash together. 
      You remember some of the toys from your childhood.  The cars or the dolls that gave you so much joy.  Joy comes quickly when the mind is peaceful.  Some of those toys are here, as well as some of the toys you tried out when you were older.  You are too full of regret to stay here long.
      The hallway is getting darker, so you rush to open the next door, hoping for some light.  It is glowing, but from computer screens and monitors and cell phones.  This is where the ‘modern conveniences’ have landed.  They were supposed to simplify life but only made it harder to have privacy.  The lives that spent their lives trying to build these things or to buy them have left them behind.  They are a testimony to their failures.
      This stuff is making you uncomfortable.  Don’t you want to see more?  There might be something in this house that will give you peace.  No?  Well, you can’t stop now anyway.  You are almost through.
      As an attempt to get out faster, you run down the hall, banging open all the doors that will open.  These are empty rooms with gray walls and no life inside.  They remind you of the kitchen.
      You finally come to the second to last door on the left.  This door is much harder to open.  Push with all your might and you can just peek in before the door slams shut. This room holds all the symbols of the peace that the owners have begged for their entire lives.  Native American, Christian, Buddhist, Islamic, secular, New Age, Post-Modern.  Here is where each failed symbol comes to rest when it has failed.  It has become so full that the door will not stay open.  So you try again and again.  You become desperate, needing to get inside just enough to grab something.  Nevertheless, everything is just out of your reach.
      You give up and look at the last door.  This one is so much heavier than the others are.  It looks like a solid block of stone.  In fact, it is stone.  You search for the door handle that is not there and you feel the cool rough texture of the stone.  There is no way in, and you do not even know what is behind it.  Still, you desperately want to open it.
      You are not ready for that door.  This house has many secrets that it keeps even from the owners.  Behind this door is the answer to the chaos and the end of the searching.  Therefore, it is a stone door with no handle.  The owners do not want to get in.  It is too easy; the answer they know is there is too simple.  So they go back to the other rooms and fill them up with different trends and artifacts.  Hoping that one will succeed and then it will be finished.
      Since you cannot get into this door, there is no use in staying any longer.  You pass up the hallway, thinking about each room and what it holds.  You recognize some of the things from your own search for peace, from your own life.  You ask the same questions and travel the same paths as the owners of the house.  In fact, this house could belong to you and your family.  There is nothing you have seen that has been alien.  It may have taken you a while, but you figured out all the symbols.  Saint Elizabeth of Portugal, the Peacemaker.  The patterns on the furniture, different ways of doing the same things.  The grown-up toys, means to occupy the mind and keep it from thinking too much.
      You walk down the stairs and outside and into the yard.  You look at the outside again.  An ordinary white house.  Modern, clean lines.  Everything perfectly balanced and smooth.  No cracks, no stains.  Very open and airy and bright.  Nevertheless, the inside does not match the outside. 
      Now you know why the houses cower at the other end.  Their insides match their outsides in every way, or at least they pretend that they do.  They do not want to be associated with a house that does not have everything together.  They gossip on their cell phones, drive their new SUVs, work crazy jobs, and gather things they think they need.  They continue their lives, in the dark, and leave the ordinary (perhaps more honest than you thought) white house to search for peace by itself.