#otherworldy
My family waited 20 years to open a 100 year old time capsule
u/IamHowardMoxley
A father gives. I gave my family a house in 1999, and we wasted no time in digging up our new backyard garden with help from our seven year old son. He was the one that found the lump of red clay with a message stamped deeply into the surface: ATTENTION! TIME SENSITIVE! INTERNED THE FIFTH OF JULY NINETEEN HUNDRED AND NINETEEN OF THE YEAR OF OUR LORD. NOT TO BE OPENED UNTIL A MINIMUM 100 YEARS PASSAGE!
My wife and I thought it was fun to imagine what our life would be like in 20 years; in its own way, the capsule really did help me focus on the future as my family grew.
We kept the capsule was safely boxed up in the attic. My wife, son and eventually our daughter liked talking about the time capsule every July 5th, and where we think we would be and what we would be doing at the 20 year mark. It was a object of warmth. It reminded me of what I gave as a father when those 20 years passed as quickly as these words.
In a family ceremony 20 years in the making, we cracked open the clay shell in the living room with cell phone cameras rolling about a month ago. We saw that the clay protected a near-mint condition plain copper box. I pulled it from its cast of clay and held the box to my chest for a bit as my family gleefully chanted for me to open it. I readied myself for some newspaper clippings, photos, maybe a few stamps. But upon opening, my son recoiled and let out the creepiest little diabolical laugh I have ever heard, a laugh I never heard from him before. He laughed for seconds straight before falling to a gasping and coughing fit. At the same time, my daughter said in a very concerned voice “guys…I can see me, us- outside my body…” My wife immediately jumped up from her seat and asked if I smelled leaking gas, or something else noxious. I had not idea what came over my family, as I saw, felt and smelt nothing different.
I looked inside the tin box to find a yellowed piece of notecard below a layer of what looked like crumbling rock salt. The inside had a faint artificial, noxious chemical fume. I shook the crystals away to retrieve the card and read the fountain-pen written note:
“Dear Person or Persona: If air touched us prior to one hundred years passage, study us, and weep- for we are and shall ever be outside your limits of comprehension, as these gems stay sealed from your kind’s perception forever. However, if the instructions stamped upon this hull were heeded and a minimum of 100 years have passed- you, or those surrounding you, may have noticed a change, or a shift of perception, along with the presence of destabilized Crystalline within the capsule, remnants of inert state. These are signs that we have germinated and now found two new suitable hosts. When we find them, we will assume these forms and identities as we see fit. We seek no quarrel with you. Respect us mutually in that regard.”
My 27 year old son’s coughing fit started up again as he looked in the hallway mirror and ran a finger through his shoulder-length hair. My son mumbled something about not liking long hair and stated “I’m going to go cut off all my hair” in slower, deeper accented tone we never heard before before going to the bathroom. My 15 year old daughter, an award-winning gymnast, acted like a newborn giraffe on four ice skates when she tried to stand, laughing like she was high or drunk, and saying things like “These legs! These arms! I ride like a 3 horse team!” as she walked off on legs that became more fluid and confident with each step.
When my wife asked me what the note in the tin said, my daughter ripped it from my hand, wadded it and ate it entirely, smiling the entire time.
“Respect us mutually” she said in a strange, sing-song tone.
My children stayed in their rooms all night and disappeared without taking a single thing with them the next morning.
Two weeks later, my wife and I were diagnosed with separate kinds of cancers that were just now metastasizing. I guess that’s why they didn’t pick us.
My wife is already mentally gone from this world, and I’m soon to follow. Sometimes I sit in the dirt, in the spot where my son found that cursed thing years ago, thinking. I was so obsessed with where I would be in 20 years that I didn’t appreciate the days that passed between as I should have. A father is supposed to give. What did I give my children?
There is not much time left for me, and I don’t want to waste it wondering where my “children” are or what those things were inside the box anymore. No, not anymore.
A father gives, and all I have left to give to you is my story.
