...Tied up With String.

“I’m coming!” Jerry races over to the front door where there is an incessant tapping, followed by three doorbell buzzes. When he flings open the door to his apartment, the pizza person he was expecting isn’t there. A blue jay nearly collides with him before disappearing in a rush of wings. At his feet, Jerry notices a package. Definitely not a pizza.

One the porch sits a plain, brown box.

Day one.

The brown package sitting on his front porch is very nondescript, with no unusual markings. In fact, it is missing the markings of his address and a return label. It doesn’t even contain a stamp! It does, however, have a letter resting on top of the box. A blank envelope, also without a stamp and no writing on the outside. Inside is a piece of paper, folded once with a single word: “world.” The box itself is nearly a foot across, and it is shaped almost as a perfect cube. Almost. He picks it up and shakes it and can’t help but take a step outside and glance first right, then left. Surely someone left this here as a practical joke. No way to open it. He places the package and its note in his lap, closing the door and rolling back into the house. The rest of the day is very ordinary.

Day two.

“Jerry, don’t you get tired of living here? It’s very isolated, and you don’t see very many people. Plus…”

Cade doesn’t need to say it. Jerry ignores him, waving at his next door neighbor, who sits with her binoculars glued on the window. She waves back and disappears inside her house. She’s the most dedicated bird watcher he’s ever seen. Jerry looks up at his friend, having gotten used to looking up at everyone, even most children. “This is my new normal, Cade.” He shrugs his hands and flicks the switch on the handle of his wheelchair to guide the two of them to the kitchen. Everything rests lower than in a normal kitchen, exactly to Jerry’s specifications when he moved in. He had to create a world that he could maneuver, and it became a habit to stay around his house. He moves his cup closer as he picks up the tea kettle with already-boiling water. “Want some?” He motions to the stove and the entire collection of beverages.

“Which do you drink? Coffee or tea?”

“Both.”

“And what are you having this morning?”

“Hot chocolate.”

Cade laughs and hands Jerry a tea bag, which Cade puts in a cup before pouring in the hot water, giving time for it to steep. “Don’t you think you’ll ever become more involved? It’s been more than three years since your accident. You should come to a couple of the kid’s games. They would love to see their Uncle Jerry again.”

Jerry shrugs. “I get to see you all nearly every week! They can play in my huge yard. There’s no need for me to go out there. Plus, my car is a huge inconvenience to drive, especially for just visiting for an hour or two.” He had a hand-controlled van to drive, which was large enough for five people, something he had bought right after he moved into this house. He had been married at the time, but his son and ex-wife had moved away within a year.

“It’s too much,” was her excuse. Sure, it’s too much, but this is his life now. He sees his son every few weeks, who is just growing into a teen, always seeming extremely uncomfortable when visiting. He constantly holds a glove on his left hand, only pausing his baseball-catching long enough to chow down on at least two servings of dinner. Jerry has given up trying to toss the ball after his son hit him in the head twice with a fastball. It took three days to recover from the pounding headache.

The doorbell rings, this time with no accompanying knock. “I’ll get it!” Cade turns quickly. “Stay right there.” Would his friend ever stop treating him like an invalid? Jerry waits in the kitchen, but when Cade doesn’t return he wheels over to the front of the apartment, his friend grunting as he tries to pick up a package that is almost as tall as Jerry’s chair. Another mysterious package. It’s large and has a strange shape, a combination of a rectangle and some sort of diamond. It seems to have nine sides at first glance, with four small ones on top, like a square pyramid, and then longer sides on the bottom half. This one is wrapped in blank, brown paper, like the previous, but has a long rope wrapped all the way around it, in various lengths and designs. The rope is some sort of metal and Cade attempts to cut it off. “Next time,” Cade says over his shoulder as the buzz of Jerry’s wheelchair approaches, “You’re getting the door.” Jerry laughs and shakes his head, noting another envelope on the ground, just close enough for him to reach from where he’s parked. The note inside holds the word: “Understanding,” with the first half of the word underlined. The person sending these packages is certainly trying to make a point. Only Jerry has no clue what it is.

Day six.

The day’s package at first glance doesn’t appear to be on the front step, but after an inspection all around he catches it near the grass. This one is tiny, only a bit bigger than a ring box. Still no way to open, but it has a large smile drawn in purple marker on each of the sides. It is just a friendly dot, dot, swipe, but something about six smiles all taunting me sends shivers down Jerry’s spine. Cade whistles. He came over to bring fresh lemonade from his wife and most likely got his eyes on the new delivery that has become a daily expectation.

Jerry glances at the kitchen table, piled with the previous week’s gifts, none of them opened. The words so far have been written on notebook paper, cards, and even the outside of the boxes themselves. “Brown paper packages...”

“Tied up with string?” Cade nods at the weirdly-shaped package that has been mostly freed of its ropes.

Jerry gives him a death stare, and he seals his lips with a conspiratorial grin before bursting into song.

A blue jay sitting in the tree right next to the door turns one eye to look at the two, seeming to stare at them before fluttering away. The woman with binoculars follows its flight above the trees.

Day eight.

This brown box has a note attached. The bluejay still roosts nearby, not even flinching when Jerry yells and waves an arm. There is something strange about this neighborhood. He looks back down at the note, crumpled with the effort to scare away the bird. “People,” it reads, making no more sense than the previous notes put together. Put together. Maybe that’s what he’s missing. He hurries into the room and sorts the boxes in the general order that he thinks he remembers. It must not be quite right because the words strung together don’t make a lot of sense. But a couple phrases stand out: “Every moment,” “in the world.” There has to be something to this. Something he can’t quite see. Jerry picks up the phone. “Get over here,” he barks to his friend. He doesn’t say anything else before hanging up the phone, but knows he will be here in less than ten minutes.

“Hey did you hear about that infestation of ding-dong-ditchers? Seems they’re all over the neighborhood. Nobody can quite catch them…” Cade is out of breath when he hops out of his truck, curiously glancing first at the packages strewn on the lawn and Jerry rolling back and forth excitedly. “What is it?”

Jerry nods at Cade, glad that he hasn’t said what anyone else might: that his friend has finally made it to looney town. “There’s something here, and I can’t figure it out yet.”

“You’ve completely lost your marbles?” So maybe he does think so.

“No, I think I’ve found it!” Jerry points down at the pile. “The missing pieces were not what was in the boxes, but what was written on the boxes. These letters!”

He folds one of the pages in half and shoves the paper into Cade’s hand, who reads it out loud. “Under.”

“Right. I don’t think it’s the words themselves, but what is underneath them.”

“There’s nothing there.”

“Nothing you can see. How do you read invisible ink?”

It takes some rearranging and an entire bottle of lemon juice squeezed onto each card, but the men lay the papers in the sun, waiting like kids for a secret code to emerge. The second set of letters appear, creating a new phrase.

“Make the most of every moment. People mean more than all the understanding in the world,” it reads.

“Cryptic, but wise.”

“Who do you think sent it?” Jerry wonders aloud.

“Santa Clause?” The bluejay gives a squawk of laughter.

Jerry grins, and notices movement from the binocular lady’s blinds. “It’s not much, but this clue trail has me thinking that it’s about time I visit my niece and nephew. Maybe see a game or two. It’s time I get out of the house.”

“Now you’re talking!”

“Let me go see if our mysterious friend wants to join us.”

As Cade watches in amazement, Jerry wheels over to the house with the birdwatcher and knocks on the door “Look at that!” Cade says. “A bird can learn a new tune, after all.”

This third story in the Vocal Media’s Summer Fiction Series challenge is inspired by the book, The Phantom Tollbooth (N. Juster). It is a strange little mystery that I developed to emphasize the importance of friendship. Check out the rest of my blog for other SFS stories!