Story 2 (in which there are C0DE3)
The five of us started sharing this house a couple of months ago, however it is still weird to come home and see your friends rolling on the carpet wrestling and knocking down half-full beer bottles, turning the ash trays over and shouting all kinds of obscenities.
If you hear gurgles and choked laughing, sounds of dragging and slaps it means that Ed and Colin are home and Ed is probably winning.
Phil is in the kitchen. There’s a book and a cup of tea in front of him and he appears to be out of this world. Seeing me he grins and rolls his eyes in the direction of the living room, where my brother is reliving the Spanish Inquisition.
When I open the fridge I’m greeted by the numerous shiny beer bottles that look like they’ve been carefully lined up to make the biggest impression. There’s a white container with yesterday’s take out and I think that it is the one in a lifetime opportunity to have a decent dinner.
“That’s Ed’s,” Phil doesn’t look up, however we both know what he is talking about. Colin, get the fuck away from my food is scribbled on the container and I sigh.
When I close the door with a loud slump my eyes settle on the several magnet letters that appear to be placed there chaotically. However, if I look closely and long enough, some words start to form in my head. I stare at them for a minute, feeling the tails of phrases wiggle out of my grasp.
“Don’t ask me, I don’t know what it means,” Phil wakes me up from my stupor and I notice that my lips were moving slightly.
Weird.
I scratch my head and make my way upstairs, the phrase floating in my mind.
The last word is definitely either bread or breed.
Bread. We don’t have any As, so that’s why he used the question marks (those cereal boxes never complete the alphabet). So, if in the likely fashion I would fill in As for all the question marks I get: SLIAD DLE S3 ALLO 3S BREAD
The third word is “Swallows” then. The W’s are turned to the side to look like they are the 3s. SLIAD DLE SWALLOWS BREAD
I take my clothes off and stumble into the shower, my head preoccupied with the SLIAD DLE. All through the shower I break my mind over it, but nothing comes up. Finally, sighing and dripping I shuffle out and take out a piece of paper, writing SLIAD DLE in capital letters.
ADDLE.
I remember something from literature lessons and vaguely recall that sometimes they used “Addle” for a snake. One of our cupboards has a little snake scratched onto it, left by the people who lived here before. The snake is cartoonish and probably a handiwork of a child, however certain people in our house always believed that it was a sign.
I’ve got:
SLI ADDLE SWALLOWS BREAD
Ignoring the SLI, I rush downstairs and open the marked cupboard, thrusting my hand inside and feeling around. In a couple of seconds I hit something rectangular and pull it out; my struggles are rewarded – I’m holding the one and only box of crackers, and with the second peek inside I spot a jar of jam.
When I’m full and collect the crumbs off the table with my fingertips, I think of something to answer to my secret protégé (well, of course I know who it is, but I don’t let the name intrude my thoughts yet) and though I’m giddy to continue this game, I can’t think of anything, but trivial TH? NKS.
We revolve around the different time orbits, I think, because he wakes up after I’m off to the university and when I come back at night, he is already off to work, and when he finally gets home I’m asleep. I only get to sense his presence by loud door slams (somebody should really fix it), or shuffle of feet by my door when he goes to sleep, or his shoes and jacket by the door. It is completely frustrating, because I miss the time when it was easy for us to hang out together for hours and there’s an empty air sac in my chest that needs to be filled.
He leaves me these messages often now, and unless somebody screws them up before I see them, we are able to communicate that way.
NE 33 P?P RE – means that I should check the newspaper because he circled one of the articles that might be interesting for me. (The “RE” is turned backward to indicate that they are not in the right order.)
TRISHA V1S1TS ME – means that he borrowed my shirt (TRISH – SHIRT).
F?NCY FL?GELL? – was probably my favorite one. He left that after I got my haircut and Colin stuck a Polaroid picture of it on the fridge. I don’t know why he used flagella and not simply “Hair”, but it took me an hour to find the dictionary in our house. The Polaroid shot disappeared.
Sometimes I come home and rush to the fridge, and if I find the letters scattered randomly here and there, I still take my time staring at them, making sure that there’s no secret code in it. Maybe he decided to include geometry and it’s not random, there’s a certain shape to them? Most of the times it’s not the case and I wait for the next message grinding my teeth.
It was written on a piece of notebook paper and stuck in between the pages of my book.
Solving it turned out to be easy. Or I guess the amount of enthusiasm I had helped me a bit. Nevertheless, by the time I was ready to go home, I knew the whole phrase: Upstairs inside giants (giant’s) lair.
There was a small room, or a big closet, in the end of the hallway of the second floor. When we were first moving into the house, Colin joked that it was a room for Ed, “sizewise and brainwise”, for which he received a magnificent knock-out (or so he told us).
When I got home it was already dusk and the house looked dark. Colin, Ed, and Phil were in the kitchen and they all greeted me, their voices forming and absurd symphony. I chuckled and ran upstairs, taking two at a time. Then, dropping my backpack near my room and quickly rearranging my hair, I made my way to the small room and opened it quietly, without knocking.
Thom looked fast asleep in the armchair, his legs drawn to his body; a guitar was resting next to him on the floor with a couple of sheets underneath it. I closed the door at leaned against it, looking at the arch of his neck and contemplating tracing it with my fingers. I shifted and the floorboards creaked under my feet, making him open his eyes and shake his head a bit, as if making the dream go away.
“Hey, Jonny,” he smiled, rubbing his face and sitting up; then, turning around, “Wow, you’re late.”
“I just came home,” I said, swallowing hard.
“Oh, I see…” he nodded and rested his elbows on his knees, “Did it take you a while to solve the riddle?”
“No.”
“That’s horrible,” he chuckled, wiping his eyes, “I spent a lot of time making it.”
I smiled and we’d fall into an awkward silence, but he was talking again.
“We haven’t seen each other a lot lately…and I thought…well…that it could be nice if we could do so sometime…maybe here,” he glanced at me briefly, “…Only later. I don’t really want to be discovered,” he grinned childishly and I couldn’t help laughing.
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