Pandora's Truth

A new and modern interpretation of Padora's Box

Is it the truth amongst humankind that the history always repeats itself? **Anonymous**

 

 

       There sit’s a aging antique shop in a forgotten corner of New York The shop is ensconced on the ground floor of an ill kempt brownstone, surrounded by crumbling tenements and the forlorn homeless. The entire area seems to be in a downward spiral of decay and neglect. Yet the shop stays open, dimly lit yet welcoming to any who wish to come in from the cold.

      The inside of the shop very much resembles the neighborhood that surrounds it. Trinkets and baubles of inestimable age thrown haphazardly across rickety tables. Moldering books are crammed into the crooked bookshelves that line some of the walls. Near the back of the store are pieces of old furniture, their surfaces turned black and tarry with age long ago. Deep in the recesses of the shops back corner lies an antique box. It is an almost unremarkable thing, a container made of blackened oak. There were tarnished bronze hinges and lock fastened onto it. It was to this box that the man was drawn.

      The man, a professor of ancient cultures by trade, had read a great deal about this box. He had tracked it down in fact. Many years ago the professor had come across a lost fragment of Hesiod’s Theogony, the tale of Pandora’s creation. In the copies of Theogony that scholars have studied for centuries Pandora was the first woman. She had been created by Zeus to counterbalance the gift of fire brought down to man by Prometheus. Pandora had also, however, been entrusted a jar and been warned never to open it. Consumed with curiosity Pandora knelt before the jar and pried up the lid, in doing so all the evils of the world were released upon mankind. She quickly closed the lid, trapping hope inside.

      Scholars have never agreed about this myth of course. If hope was trapped inside the jar with evil, is it a blessing that it was kept in the jar? Some believe that the jar didn’t contain the evils of the world at all, but that instead it held the virtues of man to help fight those evils. The professor himself was unable to determine for himself which was true. At least not until he found the lost fragment. The fragment told the story a bit differently. It is said that Pandora was entrusted with not only the jar, but a box as well. As in the original text, she was warned to never open them and was not told of their contents. In the fragment she opened the jar and once seeing what she had wrought upon the world tried to burn the box. She feared that an even greater evil lay within and the only way to save mankind was to destroy it and whatever it held inside. So she cast it into a bonfire and sat staring into the flames until they died away. The box however did not burn, it singed. The oak had charred to black, but the wood was as strong as ever and the bronze lock and clasps were as strong and cool to the touch.

      After Pandora’s failed attempt at destroying the box she spirited it away in hopes that it would never be found. If nobody opened the box then it couldn’t hurt anybody. So it was hidden in a cave near her home where it remained until the Romans came. It was found during the construction of a bathhouse and taken to the senator who had ordered the construction. He found it a curiosity, thinking it to be the ossuary of some kind, he refrained from opening it. Ruin soon came to the senator’s house. His family and servants became ill, his livestock died. Thinking the box to be cursed he gave it to a rival as a peace offering. The same tragedies fell upon the next man, and the next. Throughout it’s history the box had been pawned off from one ill fated person to the next. Until finally the professor had tracked it down to this shop in a rundown neighborhood.

      The professor believed that Pandora had been given two separate containers for a reason. The gods surely wouldn’t give her two containers of evil, one had to be the box of virtues that had been argued about for so many years. She had simply opened the wrong one. The fact that tragedy had followed the box meant little to him. Obviously the forces that had been released from the jar realized that those in the box could harm them, and therefore wanted to destroy the box before it was opened. Now it was there in front of him. The charred oak, the bronze workings, all as the fragment had told.

       That night the professor made his way into Central Park, intending to have a wide area should the release be explosive. Anticipating great things yet to be wrought, the professor laid the box upon a wooden bench. He would be a hero, a savior. War and greed would be wiped from the face of the Earth. With the opening of the box would come a new Golden Age. Removing a hammer and chisel from his tweed coat, his hands shaking with anticipation, the professor gingerly placed the chisels point into the lock. Raising the hammer high over his shoulder he drove it down onto the chisels head with a resounding crack. After another two blows the bronze lock lay in the grass beneath the bench.

       Dropping his tools the professor reached out with shaking hands and gently pried back the clasp. It wouldn’t be long now. Soon the virtues of the world would be spilled out and he would be a savior. As his fingers touched the blackened wood a jolt of triumph ran through his body and the professor threw open the lid of the dark box. The box began to rise off of the bench, belching out a great cloud of grey smoke. Thunder issued from the heavens as storm clouds roiled overhead. The professor fell back into the grass, staring with wide eyes at the scene before him. The cloud of smoke has grown, covering the box, the bench, and the ground beneath with it’s bubbling mass.

      Slowly, out of the smoke, rode four horses, their riders clothed in colored robes. They rode out of the smoke and circled the professor, gazing down on him with ancient eyes. The man was suddenly keenly aware of who these riders were. The pale horse before him gave it away. Suddenly the riders began to ride off into the distance, one by one. The pale horse was the last to turn and as it rode away there came an unearthly voice upon the wind. “You were warned.”

Reviews

[Celtic Cat]

Very cool. Of course, curiosity killed the cat, thank god we have nine lives! : ) Silly humans.... tend to forget they only have one. Or do they? Perhaps that professor was Pandora reincarnated. OK, I'm back, sorry, went a little off the deep end there! lol
I like that man unleashed his own demise, very "now". : )
Another creative and imaginative write!! Rock on!

[SM Davis]

This was exquisite! Your mechanics are impeccable and the story was enthralling. Not a common response from me as far as short stories go. Well done!!!

[[untitled]]

As Gracian says, hope is the great falsifier. Like fear, it requires great temperance. One could argue that many of the evils released by the opening of Pandora's Box can be considered good too: with destruction comes new creation. Perhaps that's why hope was included with them. Who knows?

Shawn

[Tania Leigh]

Wow, I haven't thought about Pandora's box for years.....this is a great write, and you obviously did your research. Best of luck to you in the contest.....this is very impressive.

[James Watts]

Very nice little piece. The imagery is well done and there was a nice flow. Good work.