THE MAN IN THE JAR

My pet you say? From the door where you stand, perhaps you thought, Old Mr. Svenson has an odd-looking fish or a reptile splashing in that jar. Then as you slowly walk towards the table, your pretty eyebrows inch up towards your forehead, your eyes grow large, and I must restrain myself from laughing uproariously. It happens every time. Reactions are so predictable, aren’t they? And isn’t it obvious that from a distance one sees what he or she wishes to see, but up close, as you step yourself nearer to the object of your vivid imagination, truth rears its head. You see life for what it is. And sometimes, like in this moment of your epiphany, you are not pleased with it.

“What is it, Mr. Svenson?”

I stand beside the tripled pickle jar in which a man floats in the briny depths. There it is! A man floating in the briny depths. I have allowed the thought to neon in my head for all the world to read and marvel at my genius.

“Mr. Svenson, what is that?”

Read the pure delight written like a magic marker across my face, child. Do I need to speak? Does the man’s captivity not say it all?

“A man,” I finally say and the man in the pickle jar opens wide his little mouth to scream but the salty taste causes him to grimace, to twist his blue lips into two grotesque eels of sorts.

“Do not be frightened, Colette. He cannot hurt you.”

“But why is he––”

“Why, why, why. When will my visitors stop asking so many whys? He is. And that is sufficient. Yes, he is a man. Yes, he is my prisoner and I shall keep him submerged in that seawater until he learns to repent.”

“Repent, Mr. Svenson? What has he done and how did you put him in that jar?”

“Do you believe in demons, child?”

Colette’s eyes grow larger now than they had when first she witnessed the man in the jar. Her full red lips seem to collapse open, flashing the sparkle of pure white teeth.

“Do you?”

“I suppose,” she says now. Suppose. Still not sure. Suppose. What are you supposing? That demons exist? Might exist? Can exist?

“Demons from Hell, Mr. Svenson?”

“From Hell!”

Colette steps back a step or two as if a line across the living room rug separates Hell from Earth and all one need do to remain safe is not to cross that line. But there is no line. Hell is everywhere!

“Have you ever seen one, child?”

The teenager shakes her head to match the shaking in her hands. She is afraid. Truth is finding its meandering way into her psyche and soon she will scream loud enough to start the man splashing again inside the jar.

Colette has never seen one, finds no reason to reply. Warily she takes backward steps truly believing when her heel taps against the door behind her it will magically spring open, she will be able to run into the hallway, run for her young life, hide somewhere far from the man and the demons whom she knows well can steal her last breath, leave her still beautiful but dead. Cold. Free.

“Where are you going, Colette?” I ask her, though I already know she’s grown tired of my company. The nasty little man in the jar has spooked her and she wants nothing to do with him. Or with me.

I touch her arm. She flinches like one electrified.

“Stay.”

“My mother––”

“Please, child. Stay,” and then I gently walk her to the chair that sits waiting for her beside the pickle jar.
“Look at him. Feast your pretty eyes on what a determined man can do and where a foolish man can spend the remainder of his miserable life.”

“Why did you…how did you put him––?”

Why again. Even how. Questions. Questions.

I took a seat in the chair beside Colette. I let my hand touch the softness of her bare knee. She did not push my hand away for fear perhaps I might decide to––

“That man made a deal with me a long time ago, child. And he did not keep his word. He took from me but he refused to give to me. We had a pact, he and I. I gave him all he wanted because he had confided to me that he wanted so much to be a big man. An important man among the peers he soon overwhelmed with his greatness and his riches and his heart’s desires. But when it came time to abide by our contract, he reneged. He dared to laugh at me! That big man needed to give me my due; instead, he laughed and challenged my power to take it all away.”

Colette began to cry. She raised the two cups of her hands and buried her face in them.

“Please, Mr. Svenson. Let me go home. I won’t say––”

“Anything? Keep the little man in the jar’s secret safe forever? Not divulge that old Mr. Svenson has a man in a pickle jar because a man broke his word and got himself in a fine pickle? Jar? Did I not have to jar the man back to the agreement we made? He got the world in his hands. All riches and women and song and all the fine wines. In return I asked only his miserable soul. What is that to a man who cursed his gods?

“I won’t tell anyone, Mr. Svenson.”

The man in the jar was splashing again. If I read his lips they would have said, Free me from this. Make me whole again, but I am of my word which I kept faithfully. Now it is too late for him. I will reach down in the salty brine and pull him into the living room air, drop him on the floor, stomp him till he stops his wriggling like a worm, and then watch his ebony soul waft up to my mouth where it will be swallowed in the fiery pits for all eternity.

“Please let me go,” Colette says again and again. Why not? I tell myself. Who would believe her? A teenager rambling on about a little man in a jar, about demons with the power to bring the high down to their rightful size and then when bargains are not kept, broken like a toy and the soul squeezed out of the carnage and taken swiftly to hell.

“Colette, child, go now. But remember: tell no one about the fellow in the jar. Or about who dear old Mr. Svenson truly is. Can you do that, child?”

Colette nods her head. I can see the blue waters in her eyes like a tempestuous sea. Colette nods her head like one reprieved. I will live! She tells herself. I will not be put in that jar.

When she is gone, I close the apartment door so I can be alone again with my little guest. Though he tries so diligently to get my attention, I am no longer on speaking terms. When I lift him from the jar, he will wonder what next in my roster of torture. Perhaps he will find some contentment when I grind his salty shell into the shag rug. Perhaps his dark soul will delight in what I have in store. It’s hard to tell. Some souls accept and others, just as when they carried bodies, do nothing but complain the live-long eternity.

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