#1. It Starts with A House…
It starts with a house.
Scratch that. It starts with a front porch, one of those wrap around deals with no actual house to wrap around. Said porch resides somewhere a little unexpected/impossible/wtf.
The Edge of the Universe between some nebulae and The Great Empty.
Hooked? Or maybe at least still curious? Yeah, let's try this beginning again.
It starts with a front porch, a front porch on the Edge of the Universe whose door leads to…😬tbh that part is even more complicated to explain. I'm still getting a handle on it myself. We’ll save that for a future post.
Anyway, I guess I just launched right into the thick of things. I know this already sounds completely made up, but I promise its all true.
Ish. True-ish. Some of this shit is…I have no context for it, so writing it is hard. I'll try to make sure I don't skip the important bits.
But we're getting in too deep and I haven't even introduced myself. That’s me in the picture below. And, yes, I did take a min for a galactic porch selfie. Even with all the chaos. I mean its a freaking nebula!
I’m Jupiter Jacks. Yeah, yeah, alliteration. My mama was a poet who said she liked the way the words tasted together. Tasty name. Barista extraordinaire. Coffee cart proprietor. (Shoutout to Callisto’s!). I cannot claim to be a writer like she was, so…things will prob be a bit (A LOT) messy.
Thanks in advance for not being trolling assholes about that.🤞🏼
I have a small life, a quiet one, and that's how I like it. No drama, pls. I see the same faces1 everyday, make (also) tasty drinks, and do very glamorous things like ensuring the grey water gets pumped and ants haven't gotten into the mocha syrup again (a v bad day indeed that was😝)
Unfortunately my nice little life has gotten Wild (capital W!) over the past few weeks. So, I've decided to blog about it. Like old school blog about it. For posterity. Just in case. Because the likelihood of me dying (or something worse!) seems to have centupled since all this began.
Anyway, back to the beginning. Three weeks ago I learned about the existence of this house front porch. As you may already know, or have guessed, my coffee cart is notneighbors with a nebula on the Edge of the Known Universe. Though now that I think about it, that’s a killer marketing campaign. I mean I guess it doesn't really seem like a lucrative place to park it, but cool view and not much competition.
When I learned about the front porch just hanging out there in the general nowhere of Space, it freaked me out because (probably like you) I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW THAT WAS POSSIBLE.
There I was, sitting on my own very non-spacey front porch, having a lazy Sunday afternoon in November after closing up the cart for the day. I was all prepared to dive into a new book about mummies, my latest hyperfixation. That day, I did what I often do when I’m sitting out on the porch. I sipped my golden milk, counted the additional rusted car bodies my neighbor, Kathie, had added to her grave yard, and per usual minded my own business.
Note: Sorry, Kath, if you're reading this but the three you added to the fourteen you already have are moving the needle from interesting to dangerous. It kinda makes me fear for my life or at least my (less rusted) car each time I pass it as back down my driveway. Also, why rusted car bodies? (A question I should have asked a long time ago)
I digress (that happens a lot!).
So, there I was rocking away in my latest purchase, a rocking chair glider, keeping my nose out of...everything...when a black envelope shimmered into being on the railing before me.
Yeah, shimmered! I mean much like you (I'm sure) my weird tolerance is super high these days. I'm not really surprised by anything because of *stretches arm out in the general direction of the entire world* but this was weird AF.
Now, my front porch is in one of those no name, not really a town, unincorporated areas in southern Illinois aka you’ve never heard of it. It's so far past the line of demarcation, I-80, it's practically STL. Podunk Nowhere, IL, US, North America, PLANET EARTH.
We get snow. We get high heat warning days. We definitely get tornados accompanied by sure-to-flood-everything rain. What we do not get is envelopes that magically appear on your porch out of thin air.
Note: To be clear, this wasn't the work of magic. I know Audra would have my head if I wasn’t clear that "this method of object transfer is actually scientific quantum physics entanglement something something blah blah blah" I know that part was important but my brain was trying to take in everything else so I may have nodded off at that point in her lecture. So, now you know. Not magic, just sciencey stuff I don’t understand, but don't worry though 'cuz she does.
I stood up, looked around, walked down the steps and peered through the latticework under the house. Nope, no one there. Nothing except for the skunk, Gerald2, I've yet to be able to coax out. (She was having babies, perfuming my house🤢…a story for another time).
Walking back up the stairs, I reached over and poked a finger at the envelope tentatively. I felt some kind of odd bubble-like resistance as if the object was feeling unsure about me as well and might not open for me anyway.
Though I can’t claim to be very brave most days, I am known for taking an unfortunate amount of risks. (Maybe one day I'll tell you the story about my almost untimely demise on a date with the mobbed up high comedian who loved true crime😝)
I reached out and grabbed the envelope. It felt heavier in my hand than it should have been, more dense and maybe a bit…wobblier too? Is that a thing? Wobbly matter? As if maybe it was both there and not there at the same time and that sounds like magic again but I promise it isn't!
Silver words appeared and scrolled across the front of it. “Jupiter Jacks," then below that it read, “RE: Just Open the Damn Thing.”
So, I did.
A poorly cut newspaper clipping and piece of ragged edged college ruled paper fell out.
The first was a front page ripped from an Alabama paper which had an angry red sharpie circle around a short paragraph in the side column. The disappearance of an older woman, Lily Jo Greggs.
Disappearance. Wait, don’t stop reading! Okay, yeah, I know what you’re thinking. We've read this kind of story before🙄. There’s an entire subgenre of true crime podcasts about disappearances. Nothing special to see here.
Wrong, friend. The same snarky thought also wandered through my mind until I read a bit farther (further? you get it).
It wasn't just that Lily Jo Greggs was missing but rather her actual disappearance had been witnessed by a woman behind her in the bathroom line at The Round Fork Diner in Tuscaloosa.
Apparently, after a breakfast of extra done toast and a cup of (no doubt questionable) decaf coffee, Lily Jo had opened the door to the bathroom stepped inside, and almost gave the lady behind her a heart attack as she watched Lily vanish into complete darkness.
“I mean it was inky black darkness, never seen anything like it in my life!" Mary Lane (the woman) was quoted saying. This set her to screaming and the door slammed shut. When one of the waitresses came to check on Mary, they opened the door to find the fluorescent lights of the bathroom peeking back at them.
No darkness. No Lily Jo Greggs. Just a slightly sketch public bathroom.
Now you're probably thinking exactly what I thought. Impossible. Didn’t happen. This is on par with that "alien" that was shown to the Mexican congress earlier this year. Same. Same. And also, same.
Laying the article down on my lap, I grabbed my phone and googled. The first three results showed some version of that same article from different news outlets. Below it were others linked to a Reddit sub-group with some out there theories. I mean, I guess they weren't that out there considering how the envelope had shown up.
I slid my phone back in the inside pocket of my threadbare thrifted leather jacket (the best kind!) and unfolded the other piece from the envelope. A page from a notebook, it had two lines scribbled in what looked like a sparkly purple gel pen that seemed to move more fluidly the longer I stared at it.
“Open your front door. Step through.”
Okay, well, how bout…no. I’ve also read enough stories, seen enough movies, listened to enough true crime to know that notes from strangers with instructions to move from one place to another rarely end up with you alive or in one piece.
Plus, I could see through my screen door and there was nothing special beyond it besides the glorious old wood floors I'd refinished by hand. (v proud of that tbh)
My fingers tingled and began to itch. Ugh, I knew that feeling. Intuition. Not my first rodeo with this kind of intuition. That tingle, that itch, the heat that would follow was...a warning. The internal battle raged.
me: Walking through my own front door isn't dangerous. There’s no one even there.
also me: DANGER DANGER DANGER
me: Chill tf out . You worry too much
me again: DANGER DANG--
The purple letters wavered and beneath them another line appeared, scrolling across the page. “Walk through the goddamn door, Jupiter.”
The person on the other end of this magic3 note was fond of swears. Me too. Kindred spirits, I thought. What the hell…I might as well. Today was pretty boring and walking in/out of my front door probably wasn’t going to change anything. Plus the annoyance and impatience in the words seemed familiar even though this situation wasn't.
So, ignoring my wiser angels, I took a deep breath, opened my front door, and stepped through.
And this, dear reader, is how I came to be on a house-challenged wraparound porch at the Edge of the Known Universe between some nebulae and the Great Empty where all of this really started.
This a terrible place to stop I know, I know, cliffhangers suckkkkkk. Sorry about that. But Audra4 is texting me the annoyed emoji meaning I need to wrap this up.
Not to sound too Buzzfeed 2015 but you're probably going to want to stick around for the next part because you won't believe what happens!
(is this how footnotes work?) Hi, Harry, Alice, Oleantra , Geoffry, Sky, sorry I've been MIA. I know Jazzy is taking good care of your coffee orders in my absence.
Trust me. She's a Gerald.
yeah, Audra, we know, we know 🙄
I'll tell you all about her next time