The Lost Bottle

The Lost Bottle 1 I live on the beach. Always have, always will. My house sits two hundred feet back from the water during high tide. From the day I was born, I couldn't stay away from the ocean. My Mom used to say to me, "Daniel Lionel Sutton, if you don't come in soon, we will have to peel off your SKIN!" I would sit on that sand, playing until I was bright burgundy. It didn't matter how sunburned I got, just so long as I was in or around the ocean. Eventually, my skin got used to the constant rays the sun had soaked down on me. My parents sadly passed away when I was just nineteen years old. They were killed unexpectedly in a boating accident. My Dad was cruising my Mom around on the brand new boat when a speedboat came out of nowhere and just tore our boat to shreds. I was sitting safely on the shore, having already had over twenty rides on the new boat in the short time we had it. I saw the whole horrible thing happen. It scarred me seeing that. I didn't hate the ocean because of it. I didn't hate the guy who did it, even though he lived so many years more than my parents (He enjoyed the confinement of a jail cell for eighteen years before dying of natural causes). I learned in Bible school that you just can't be bitter about things, you should forgive and love everyone. So, I moved on in my life. I began building sailboats at a shop a few miles from my beach home. I loved the job, it was perfect for me. It was great to finish a boat and then get to watch as it's new owner came to haul it away. The buyer would always ogle at the very sight of the new boat. I spread my love of ocean life as far as I could. One day near the end of the summer in which I recorded these events, I took my very own handmade boat out on the water. She was called "The Gift". I thought of the boat as a gift that was handcrafted just for me. If my parents had lived, they were the kind of people who would have given me such a well thought-out present. My parents knew that my love of the ocean wasn't just a childhood phase, but a lifelong love. While bobbing along a shore line several miles from my house, I happened upon a rocky coastline I had never seen or noticed until that day. I tied my boat firmly to a downed tree and stepped out onto the seashell cluttered sand. Whatever sand wasn't covered by seashells was equally covered by enormous slabs of very sharp, worn rocks and granite stones. It was awfully hard to walk, really. I twisted my ankle several times as I searched along the ground for something I could take home to add to my massive aquatic collection. Lo and behold, I did find something... although I certainly couldn't take it home with

me. At about the time I fell flat on my face, I discovered a hole amongst the jagged rocks. My shoe was caught in it, in fact. I kicked the shoe off and crouched over the hole. I brushed away several small rocks and some seaweed until the hole had tripled from it's previous size! I worked at it for nearly ten minutes until I found myself SITTING in a cavernous hole. The hole had obviously been hidden there forever, because it was connected to a tunnel that could have went on for miles and miles. I couldn't see anything when I backslid down into that tunnel. What a shame. I pulled myself back out, not wanting to get lost in there. I was very curious about what I could find in the hole, so I decided to head back tomorrow - with a flashlight. I found some bright orange tape back on my boat and used it to mark off the hole, so I would be able to easily locate it the next day. Heading home, I had no idea that the cave I had just visited would be the one that would turn my life upside down.

2 The next day I awoke to a gloomy, dark sky. I didn't think that it would have much of an effect on my expedition, however. I gathered up a flashlight, a trowel, and a duffel bag. Hopefully, I thought, I'll bring back something to show the guys at the boat shop Monday. After all, the cave didn't look like it had been touched by anyone for years. I untied my boat from the dock I had also built on the North side of my house. I dropped my supplies on the boat seat and headed in the general direction of where I found the cavern. It took a good while to find the orange marker I had left. It had blown away from the hole overnight. I tied my boat down again to the same dead tree as the day before. I grabbed my flashlight and shovel and searched the ground for the hole. Once I found it, I began digging it out a little more, making it more accessible. I clicked on my cheap flashlight and slid down into the cave for a second time. The flashlight made the depth of the cave even more pronounced. The walls left a narrow space for me to traverse. Water trickled down the smooth rock, etching its very continuous direction carefully into the walls. I edged along forward in the tunnel into an area where the walls spread out more. Absolutely no natural light reached this area, I found, as my flashlight flickered in my hand. The large room had, however, been underwater at some point. Painted wood planks from a shipwreck or some other event at sea lay about with thousands of broken and battered seashells. I stopped moving forward as I shone my flashlight down on something that glared back equally as bright. I moved closer to the object that was partially buried in the wet sand. I bent down over the thing, only an inch of it was visible. I grabbed the object and felt the recognizable cool feeling of glass. I pulled on it with one hand and it popped loose of its indent in the sand. It was an old glass soda bottle. I hadn't seen one of these in a long time.

Unfortunately, I didn't see the crab that had been latched on to the bottom of it. The thing latched on to my hand with such force, I was sure I had never screamed as loud in my entire life.

3

To my surprise, when I stopped screaming, the cave was flooded with the chatter of dozens of wings. I disturbed bats... great. I wondered how they had gotten into the cave. After flinging the stupid crab halfway across the room, I managed to get a better look at the bottle. It looked fairly ordinary. It had no label, but the glass had yellowed significantly over time. The glass was so cloudy, I couldn't see inside the bottle. The bottle had a yellow cork in its spout, instead of a bottle cap. I tugged the tight-fitting cork loose and turned the bottle upside down expecting water or soda to pour out. I shook it a couple of times and a roll of parchment obediently fell to the sand. "Wow!" 'How lucky am I', I thought, finding a message in a bottle? I picked up the paper and unrolled it with care. Surprisingly it didn't feel that old, it held up well in my hands. A poorly written script filled up the entire page and I began to read the scribbled text to myself. ~ 'Hello there, my name is Magnificent Marlo, and you are probably ~ ~ wondering where this bottle came from. Well, I'll have to say ~ ~ right now that I am sorry that you happened to stumble upon it. ~ ~ I strategically planted the bottle in this very cave (I assume ~ ~ it is still a cave now) in 1991, as I strongly felt my life was ~ ~ in danger. ~ ~ 'In my "prime", I was a wonderfully acclaimed magician, known ~ ~ all over the lands for using only the realest of magic in my ~ ~ spectacular acts. I no longer have the stamina or willpower to ~ ~ to continue awing audiences. So, as a last feat, I wanted to ~ ~ apply a curse to someone, seeing as how my life had turned into ~ ~ such an utterly forsaken one. When you so very curiously picked ~ ~ up this bottle, you took on my delightful curse.' ~

4 ~ 'From this day forward, your luck is going to take a turn for the ~ ~ worse. Don't try to free yourself of my impenetrable curse, as ~ ~ it will only make things harder on you. ~

~ 'In closing, have a wonderful life, and enjoy my last... and best ~ ~ magical feat of all! ~ ~ 'Signed, The Magnificent Marlo.' ~

I flipped the paper over, looking for the punch line (Aside from his lame magician name.), but there wasn't one. Frankly, I saw this whole incident to be someone's dumb idea of a prank. I rolled the paper back up harshly and dropped it into the empty bottle. The cave turned out to just be a run of the mill dump. I turned toward what must have been the caves exit, and as soon as I took a step, my flashlight decided to go out. I began to shake the thing furiously, but it wouldn't come back on. "Piece a crap." I threw the flashlight down and struggled to find my way to the holes' exit. It was PITCH BLACK. I reached out for a wall... something to grab, and I got nothing! I continued forward, or backward - it was so dark I couldn't even tell which way I was headed. Not only that, but seconds later I got smacked right in the face by one of the angered bats. It screeched in my ears painfully as it removed its vicious claws from my face and flew off. "What else could happed today, HUH?" I screamed out to no one in particular. Eventually I found the area where the walls started to narrow again and I breathed a sigh of well-deserved relief. I slipped out of the hole, bottle in hand, and sat on the rocky ground. I stared down at the bottle and thought about what a crummy day it had been. By chance, I picked my head up and my heart fell the opposite way, low into my stomach. Where my boat was safely planted only twenty minutes ago, was only empty ocean for millions of miles in each and every direction.

5 About two and a half hours later, I sat in my office chair staring down at the parchment in my hands that I just HAD to go and find. As I stared at the glass bottle and the message that came with it, I nursed three new injuries for the day. My cheeks had been cut ferociously by a bat, my hand was pinched to the point of cutting skin and to top it off, I was stung by a jellyfish as I walked home barefoot. 'So, O.K.', I started to think, 'Maybe I am cursed. Normally I'm a pretty lucky guy'. As I finished that sentence, I couldn't help but giggle like a mental patient as I watched my television cord suddenly spark and go into flames right in its outlet. ***

Later that same day, I found myself planted in a seat at the library. After pouring two full pots of tap water on my burning WALL, I decided that maybe I should track down this "Magnificent Marlo" guy. I started searching on the Internet for magicians, curses, and witchcraft. After finding nothing relevant, I realized that maybe Magnificent Marlo was famous enough to have his own web page. Well... I was sort of right. I found ONE paragraph on the entire world wide web that described the man. The paragraph was on a website about a condemned comedy club that was often visited by beginner magicians and comedians. Apparently, there were only one or two that came to the place, probably matched by the audience number. The biography, if you could call it that, read: "Magnificent Marlo was never a huge act - even after constant visits to the LAFF HOUSE over a number of years. Audiences did not connect with his often boring act, but the owner of the LAFF HOUSE, Chuck Wilson, was apparently a fan of Marlo. After being berated and heckled by fans constantly, Magnificent Marlo became angry on one night's venue in particular. Marlo got himself removed from the club permanently. After setting fire to several people's SHOES somehow, he was escorted by security. Magnificent Marlo's legacy was not at all spectacular, but after that one evening of lunacy, Marlo went into seclusion from the Magic world, and never performed in a true magic show again." "What a joke this guy is." I muttered at the computer monitor. But I still couldn't help but wonder, if he was a sham, how did he CURSE me? I stood up and stretched for a moment before returning to my seat to continue my search for information. I pretended not to even notice that someone's recently chewed bubble gum now connected my bottom to the plastic chair.

6 I left the library half and hour later with a possible address I had found on an "address look up" web site. His real name turned out to be Marlo Juniper. Still, A pretty dumb name. It was dark already, but I was definitely going on a little road trip the next day. I was gonna get this guy. Conveniently, he lived only about twenty miles away from the site of his planted bottle, and my house. I woke up the next morning and realized my pillow had somehow sprung a leak overnight. Subsequently, my bed, bedroom, and everything contained in it was covered in a layer of down feathers. I trudged through the mess and went to the bathroom to clean up for my trip. Making sure I had the bottle in tow, I set off in my black SUV. After stopping halfway to fix TWO flat tires on my truck, I finally reached a dirt trail marked "Blue Oyster Drive", Where Marlo probably lived. I dodged some dead trees that were splayed across the road along the way. It was obvious to me that no person had traveled on the road by car in many years. Eventually, I spotted a white object in the near distance. As I closed in I saw that the white dot

was NOT a house. A trailer home was propped up on cement blocks quite beautifully on the knee-high grass. I came to a halt sending dirt into the air, after the left side of my truck suddenly jolted up. I sincerely hoped that what I just felt was NOT another flat tire. I had been lucky enough to have a bottle of tire flat fix in my bed, but it was nearly empty. I opened one eye slowly as I got out of my truck. I had hit something, but it didn't flatten another tire... I looked down at a large rock... it appeared to be a stone marker. It was square-shaped and tucked into an unkempt patch of grass. I bent down on one knee and saw that is had been engraved. I wiped dirt from the granite and squinted down at the carved writing. Inscribed on the monument was: 'HERE LIES "THE MAGNIFICENT" MARLO JUNIPER. A Man Of Valor, Intelligence, And Pure Magical Prowess.' '1953-1999' R.I.P.

7 "No. No, ... you've got to be KIDDING ME!" I began to panic. I kicked the marker so hard with my boot that it literally flew across the top of the grass. I quickly turned and made my way toward the trailers' front door. Before I had even gone a few feet, I heard a booming voice. "You there! Stop where you are!" I did what the voice instructed, not knowing why, really. The man that had spoken suddenly emerged from behind the trailer home. The man walked very slowly, he HAD to. He was edging toward becoming obese from the looks of him. As he approached, I noticed that his facial hair had almost completely engulfed his face. His extra large clothing clung wetly to his flab as though he had just ran a marathon. "What are you doing on my property? Who are you?" I quickly stuttered my answered, "I'm looking f-for someone - a guy named Marlo... It has to do with this bottle here..." I held the bottle up at eye-level to the fat man. His eyes seemed to grow in size at the very sight of the bottle - and his expression faded from anger, and into one of AMUSEMENT! "Did you... Erm... find that somewhere?" He motioned toward the bottle and smiled slightly more. "Yeah, obviously. I found it in a cave. Listen, I've got beef with Marlo - and for some reason, I don't think... I don't WANT to think, that he is really as dead as that grave marker says he is." The fat man shook his head and leaned his enormous weight to his other side. "Well son, you're very intuitive, I must say. Your suspicions are one hundred percent correct - in face, "The Magnificent" Marlo Juniper stands... right before you now." Anger shot right through my entire body as I heard this. "You wouldn't happen to be cursed by that there bottle, would you?" "YOU know DAMN well I am! I'll kill you!" Marlo quickly held his hands up in front of me shielding his ugly body. "Wait! That will do you NO good. Let me explain the curse to you - you seem like a reasonable man..." Marlo

backed away a few feet and continued rambling on. "The only way to break free from the curse you unleashed at the opening of that bottle - is to pass the curse to someone else. The curse is embedded in the GLASS of that bottle . "Standing here now - I don't see a man who would have a cold enough heart to want to inflict so much pain on a human being. No matter if you hated him or not." The ugly man snickered and continued, "So, looks as though you are stuck with a horrible future! Good day and good life to you sir." Without even a hint to remorse in his voice, Marlo giggled to himself as he began to hobble back toward his trailer. My blood boiled all over as I decided right at that moment to do it. I raised the bottle high above my head and walked up behind Juniper. I brought the thick glass of the bottle down over the back of his skull, sending shards of the glass everywhere and Marlo to the ground underneath him. The bottle simply knocked Marlo out - but at least it was enough to lift the curse off of my shoulders for a change. It was enough to make ME smile again

8 I raised my head from the crumpled pile of fat to see the trailer again. That was when I noticed for the first time a storage shed sitting to the right of the home. I was curious what a despicable man like this would have housed in a storage shed. "Food, maybe?" I joked to myself. I reached the freshly painted white shed and turned it's steel handle. The heavy door swung back wide and invited me inside. But, I didn't even need to step through the opening. For, inside that shed was the last thing I EVER wanted to see. Upon wide wood shelves sat thousands of corked, unopened, glass bottles, and what looked like boxes chock full of even more... empty... bottles....

THE END OF: "THE LOST BOTTLE" * READ ALL OT THE NEWEST FEAR E-BOOKS AT THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE : http://www.fearbooks.com* Written and Illustrated By: Matthew Watts