The Box

If you're reading this, then I can only assume you know about The Box. Perhaps you’ve heard the whispers about it, from those who’ll never admit to being subjected to it. Maybe you’re curious that you’re missing out.

Well listen, I've never met a person who was glad to have found The Box.

What's inside will never leave my mind, and even when I close my eyes the visions of what lies beneath the brown paper wrapping still dances across my eyelids.

If you're reading this, there's one thing you need to know. I was the first to be chosen by The Box.

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My alarm went off at 8am, like it always does, but on that morning I stayed in bed an extra ten minutes. I let the warmth of my bed keep me nestled in the covers, remembering my dreams and having to fight the urge to get up and pee.

At 8:15 I finally caved and headed to the bathroom. I took extra time in making my breakfast look perfect, smearing my butter to the edges of my toast and cutting up fruit into tiny heart shapes. I added a little too much sweetener to my coffee, but I didn't care. I was treating myself, and who could blame me?

Work started at 9am, and I was already bored of it within the hour. I had handed in my notice two weeks earlier, and I was dying to done with the whole place. Nothing made work more unbearable than Janice loudly chewing gum and calling her boyfriend every ten minutes in the desk next to mine. I hid in the bathroom half an hour before 5pm, allowing myself an extra break. Nobody noticed, and I enjoyed the time to scroll through my phone.

When I got home, a small box sat at my doorstep. I had been so excited, as after all I had been treating myself to some new clothes recently. A couple of online purchases never hurt anybody, right?

I set it down on my coffee table, unsure which brand the unfamiliar brown wrapping paper was from and forgot about it until after dinner. I felt exhausted from work, so I got into comfy clothes and binge-watched Netflix until my Uber Eats arrived. Life was so much easier when people were doing your job for you, and the clean-up was way faster too.

It took seconds for me to switch my brain from dinner mode, to opening my parcel mode. It as my favourite part of the day, it always was. But this time it was different.

My name wasn’t on the box, nor was my address. There was no return address, no postage stamp. No indication it had come from a brand at all, let alone whether it was mine or not. But, it had turned up at my doorstep hadn’t it? Mustn’t it be for me?

Yes. It was.

Opening that brown paper box was like opening Pandora’s box, but a million times worse. The second I opened the lid something changed within me.

The visions came first. Famine, poverty, sickness, all the things I had never truly experienced. And the other side of the coin. Overconsumption, laziness, greed. All the things I had been my entire life. It showed the world, how the future of these two lives would one day ruin society.

I tried to close the box itself, but when the whispers came I knew it was too late. The Box spoke to me, it’s pained untethered voice consuming my mind. It had claimed me as one of its own, to teach me a lesson.

I suppose The Box has a goal. A way to preserve the Earth without humans like me on it. It doesn’t care for global warming, or war or land. It only cares for those who are too greedy and self-obsessed to see they’re the ones causing the damage. It’s here to hurt me, to torture me and never let me rest for the sins it claimed I have committed.

There’s not much time now. I can’t tell you where I am, I can’t tell you what I’ve been through. I’ve already told you too much. But don’t be like me, don’t let The Box find you.

Put down that pair of shoes, you already have five more exactly like it. Make your own food, homemade tastes better anyway. Be kind, be big-hearted, be careful.

If The Box ever ends up on your doorstep, don’t open it.

This is my third SFS Challenge entry! If you want to read my 2nd entry for the Death BY Chocolate Challenge here it is:

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