An Anti-Ode to Slush

Navika K. ‘30

Oh slush, oh slush –just a pile of stinky mush.

Nothing good for anything fun, you will fall on it if you try to run.

When the only thing outside is slush, it’s a terrible day.

It’s just terrible however you slice it, no matter which way.

Nothing in slush is good.

I’d rather stay inside and sit by the firewood. Just a pile of stinky mush, oh slush, oh slush.

Olivia H. ‘27

The lemonade-yellow house glares at me just the way Aunt Minnie used to. The red roof is Aunt Minnie’s hair, the same shade as mine. The candy-apple-red door is her stuck-out tongue, mocking me. I take a deep breath as I look at it. This is the last time I’ll go in. New owners move in next week, and the house is almost completely cleared of Aunt Minnie’s things. This is the last time I’ll have to step into this mothball-ridden depth of Tartarus. I walk up the cement steps, eying the spongy green mold growing in the cracks. Why any person would want this dump is beyond me. I unlock the front door and walk straight down the hall. No need to look around; I already know what I’ll see – an empty living room to the left, a bare kitchen to the right. Six months spent cleaning this place. All alone. All alone except for the ghosts of the past, and God knows I don’t want to see them again. But that all ends today, I remind myself as I climb the rickety stairs at the back of the house. I reach the top and enter the bedroom at the end of the hallway. Neatly labeled boxes line the wall under white squares of paint, saved from the monotonous nicotine gray of the rest of the room by pictures of the countryside, which I’ve already taken down and put into several large boxes labeled “Goodwill.” It took forever to stack them all. Aunt Minnie always had a thing for art. On the other side of the room is the closet. I walk over and open the door. An avalanche of dusty garments rolls to the floor. I sigh. Great. Just great.

I kneel down, pulling out my phone and my earphones from my backpack. I gently push back my hair and twist the buds in. I pick up my phone and open the NBC app. The news anchorwoman, Sally Cormic, provides me with my only company these many Sundays I’ve spent in this house, cleaning up a dead woman’s mess. I space out as I ruefully remember the day my family refused to help to do this last job. Like me, they have bad memories of Aunt Minnie, but I’d say that I have it worse. However, ever the dutiful one, I’ve come to complete this last favor. After all, someone had to. Sally is talking about some stolen artwork. Some Van Gogh portrait. Art isn’t really my thing. I tend to curate more historically-centered pieces for the Madison History Museum. This train of thought reminds me of a piece I’ve been trying to obtain. The stubborn MET doesn’t want to let go of it. I pick up a red scarf and see a light at the end of the tunnel, a bit of wooden floor. I notice an odd crack in the wood. I knock on the floorboard and an echo bounces back. A hidden compartment.

I pry open the loose floorboard and find an old, beaten shoebox. Something exciting? It could be money! It could be hordes of silver and gold coins… from the Roman era! Yes! Those would be great on display at the museum! I open the shoebox, my heart full of hope, and I see… a key. How disappointing. I pick it up. On one side I make out a small Yorkie dog. The Westy storage company sign. I flip it over. “#308.” This is a storage unit key. I groan. Another thing to clean out. The key is as bumpy as the diorama of the Himalayas at the museum and rusty as the leaky pipe out front, which is to say, old. Who knows what kind of junk has piled up in the unit over the years?

I walk across the parking lot at Westy. That is, the second one which I’ve visited today. I had assumed that the key would belong to a unit at the Westy in Jerryville, Wisconsin. It’s nearest to Aunt Minnie’s home.

But curiously, there was no storage unit #308 there. I am now in Madison, a full hour away. I live in Madison for my work, but why would Aunt Minnie rent a unit here instead of in her hometown? Reaching the door, I pull it open. A security guard is reclining in an office chair, his cap pulled over his eyes. A faint droning sound exudes rhythmically from beneath the hat.

“Heavens to Betsy!” he exclaims, startled. My footsteps must have woken him up. He quickly pulls his cap back onto his head. He sees me and smiles.

“Howdy, Ms. Lawrence,” he calls chipperly in his Texan drawl. I stop, unsure of what to say.

“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid you might have the wrong person,” I offer. “My name is Camilla. Camilla Mazzala.” The security guard rises. It’s a slow process. He plants his hands on the armrests and shakily pushes himself up. He stretches out his back and walks over. His name tag reads, “Frank.”

“My mistake, Ms. Mazzala,” he says. “It’s just you look very similar to a Ms. Lawrence who often passes through.”

“Really?” I ask, “Usually, I find that my red hair really sets me apart from other people.”

“Actually, darlin’, that’s what made me think you were Ms. Lawrence. Although, she usually has a red hat coverin’ her eyes and face. Anyhow, what brings you here, peach?”

“I’m here for unit 308,” I say.

“That’s just over yonder,” Frank explains as he points to the right.

“Alright, thank you.” I start walking the way he was pointing.

“Anytime, darlin’!” he calls as he gets back in his chair and covers his eyes with his hat again. I unlock unit 308. Maybe something interesting could be in here, I tell myself as I start to open the door. Maybe the boring box was just a guise. Afterall, why would she have hidden the key if it was just a bunch of boring junk? A bunch of boring junk. That’s what the room is filled with. A mess, like the rest of Aunt Minnie’s things. I walk further into the unit, disappointed. Nothing. The boxes are filled with the same random assortment of items as her house. Just a boring, average, uninteresting storage unit.

I lock the door to unit 308, defeated. Another thing that I need to clean up for Aunt Minnie. She never did anything for me, but here I am dedicating so much time to wrapping up her life. I sigh. The key gets jammed in the lock, and I pull at it until it flies out onto the ground. I bend down to pick it up, tightly gripping it so that it can’t slip out of my grasp again. I open my backpack and drop it in. My palm stings. I bring it up to my face to inspect the imprint which the key left. It almost looks like a number. I turn my hand to see the print at a different angle, and find I was right. However, it isn’t just one number, but two. It reads ‘308+307.’ I look up. 307 is adjacent to 308. This time, I don’t get my hopes up. By now, I know that there was nothing interesting or mysterious about Aunt Minnie. She was just a mean, middle-aged woman who drowned and is gone. Gone forever. I probably just didn’t see the “307” because of how misshapen and rusty the key is. This is probably just an overflow unit.