The Box Game

Do you feel lucky?

That’s really the only question that matters. It’s a big reason for why the game has gotten so popular. There are no feats of strength or stamina to attempt, no challenges of intellect to conquer, and no social hierarchies to climb. All you have to do is guess, and all that matters is your luck.

There isn’t really even an arena, just a series of rooms. You enter the first room, and are surprised at the emptiness. The room is painted entirely red, and there is another door directly across from you. There is no furniture, no windows, only a single light hanging in the center of the room, and a small table directly underneath. On the table are twelve small, brown, paper boxes. These boxes, they are why you chose to enter this room and test your luck. Eleven of the boxes contain a check for one hundred dollars. One hundred dollars. It’s not much, but in today’s economy, anything helps. But you can only choose one box. And one of the twelve is different. One of the twelve boxes contains not a check, but a red slip of paper.

The paper means something different every time someone plays. Maybe they get acid poured on their arm, or they’re forced to breathe some noxious gas that makes your brain think funny, or they get locked in a box filled with hungry mosquitos. It’s nothing fatal, not in this room at least, but enough to hurt bad enough that you’d need to see a doctor. People who play this game already can’t afford to see a doctor, and instead of getting one hundred dollars, they get blisters on their hands or a cough that won’t go away or bites all of their body. Some people who decide to play lose their nerve in this room. One hundred isn’t much, but it isn’t nothing either, and one in twelve isn’t that scary of a risk. Not you, though. You’re too desperate to play for a measly hundred dollars. You walk past the table and open the door.

The next room is exactly like the first, only it’s painted orange. The table in the middle of the room is still there, along with twelve more brown paper boxes. These boxes contain checks for a thousand dollars each. But the stakes have also been raised. Not one, but three boxes in this room have little slips of orange paper. And the dangers here have increased as well. People who get an orange slip can have their fingers or toes chopped off, bricks hurled at their faces, acid poured onto their arms. The rewards for good luck, and the penalties for bad luck, are growing. You pause just a moment, and steady your thoughts. It only gets worse from here. There would be no shaming in picking up one of the boxes here, and praying there’s a check inside. But no, a thousand dollars might be enough if you playing for the thrill. But this game, this cruel, awful monstrosity of sadistic pleasure, exists on a simple premise: that every man or woman can be pushed to the point where desperation is stronger than fear. One thousand dollars is still not enough. You walk past the table, open the walk, and the enter into the next room.

Your journey takes you through room after room, the colors of the rainbow painted on the wall telling you how far you have come: yellow, green, blue. Each room contains a similar set-up, twelve boxes on a table. Each room contains greater and greater prizes, and they are harder and harder to pass up. The money contained in these boxes could do amazing things for those you love. But the danger is growing as well. The punishments are no longer merely painful. If you lose, you will likely be maimed and broken for the rest of your life, if you survive at all. Instead of a savior to your family and friends, you will be a burden, another weight bearing down on their already overburdened shoulders. Worse still, you will all still need the money. Which means someone else will have to play. No, you think, no one else will endure this. The risk is yours to bear, and yours alone. You walk past the table in the indigo room and enter the final room.

The violet paint on the wall is so thick it almost looks black, almost as if the room itself is mourning for all those hopeless enough to enter. Almost no one ever makes it to this room, and none have ever left it alive. On the table are the final twelve boxes. Eleven of them hold purple slips, slips that guarantee a painful, torturous death. But you hope against hope, that perhaps you will find that final box, a box containing a check for ten million dollars. That’s enough to ensure no one you care about will ever have to worry again. You gently touch each of boxes, but there’s no way to guess between a check and a colored slip of paper. You take three deep breaths, and then, before your nerves can stop you, reach out a pick up the box at the far-left edge of the table. Within this box is your future. You have either walked through the gates of heaven, or fallen into the pits of hell. And the only way to tell is to open the box.

Do you feel lucky?