Why is this here?

It was a cold crisp winter morning, the icy breeze turning my nose red when I opened my front door. I had just received a notification that UPS Remote had delivered a package via drone. The only thing is, I don’t remember ordering anything. But sure enough, right there on my doorstep is a small brown box, about the size of a shoebox. Cautiously I pick up the box and bring it inside. In hindsight picking up a mysterious package that I don’t remember ordering is probably not the best idea, but hey what’s the worst that could happen?

I bring the box into my living room and begin to inspect it, like a child trying to figure out what is inside their wrapped presents. I look the box all over and see no labels or stickers of any kind. That’s odd, UPS Remote shouldn’t have delivered the package at all with no label. How am I even supposed to know if it is mine? I give the box a slight shake and it feels very light, I can’t hear anything rattling inside. So maybe that’s a good thing.

I decide that I won’t find out anything from just looking and shaking a box, so I grab a box cutter and begin to open the package. I cut off the masking tape and slowly lift open the tabs and inside the box is a single brown leaf and a note. Why on earth would someone send a random leaf in a box? I look at the note and on it appears to be a riddle.

“I drift with the wind,

I fill empty spaces,

I don’t exist in an empty box,

I can be made with almost anything.

What am I?”

What could this mean? Why would someone put a random leaf in a box with some confusing riddle and leave it on my doorstep? Come to think of it, is this package even meant to be mine? There is no address, no label, no stamps. How did this even get delivered in the first place? I am starting to become very frustrated; it is too early on a Saturday morning to be thinking this hard about things. I put the leaf and the paper back in the box and leave it on my coffee table. I get up to walk into the kitchen when my landline starts to ring. Who would be calling me on a Saturday, from the landline no less? I almost forgot I had one of those. I walk over to the phone and pick it up. I start saying my customary ‘I’m a polite person greeting’ when I am cut off by a single sound. A crunching and crunching and some more crunching. It doesn’t sound like someone eating something but more like something else. I glance over to the box on my coffee table, where a small innocent looking leaf sits. With nothing else coming from the other end of the line I hang up the phone and walk back over to the box.

Ok, leaf you have my attention now. I pick up the small brown leaf. It reminds me of the autumn leaves on the trees back home, before I moved to the city where you only find trees with these leaves in national parks. I hold the leaf in the palm of my hand before curling my fingers over and pressing down. Crunch. Yep, it makes the same sounds as the leaves back home too, the ones that my best friend and I used to walk all over on the way to school. So many years ago.

That reminds me as I pick up the paper in the box, my friend was also a fan of riddles too. She used to always be thinking of fun little word games and puzzles to do. I think with a fond smile on my face. But that was years ago, before the accident.

My friend had been too focused on the crunching leaves to notice when the car swerved or to notice when the brown leaves became tinged red. She was so young, and she was stripped of everything. Brain dead is the term the doctors used, comatose was also thrown around. But all that mattered to me was that my friend wouldn’t talk to me anymore, she wouldn’t come up with any new word puzzles and she wouldn’t crunch the leaves with me anymore.

That’s when I made the decision that I was going to leave my small town. I was going to move to the city once I finished high school and I was going to do something with my life. But look where that has got me, alone in my apartment, working some no name job staring at a note with some random riddle and a leaf that makes me think of my friend.

Wait a minute, the note has a riddle, and the box had a leaf, and it reminds me so much of what my friend used to do. So, what am I getting messages from beyond the grave now? That’s just ridiculous, I think to myself. But still, I can’t help pulling the note out of the box again. Alright, I’ll humor you, what are you trying to say?

I spend some time pondering the words, I grab a spare piece of paper as I always did with my friend’s riddles. Ok, so I am thinking of something that can be made by anything, travels with the wind, fills empty spaces but can’t exist in an empty box, and probably has something to do with a leaf. It takes me a few tries but eventually I have it.

Noise.

Noise can be made with almost anything, including the crunching of a leaf. Noise travels with the wind because you can hear noise from far away, noise fills an empty space because noise makes things no longer empty, but you can not have noise in an empty box because something needs to be in there to make noise.

Ok so I have my first answer, if this is anything like my friend’s riddles then there is some meaning behind this message. Never mind the fact that this is probably just some random message and not even meant for me, definitely couldn’t have been sent by my friend. I sit and think for a while longer. One of the things my friend used to do was have me write out a word backward, then if more than two vowels exist remove the first and last vowels. Ok, so when doing that with my answer, Noise becomes Esion, then removing the first and last vowel gives us Sin.

Right so now I have Sin, where do I go with this? I look over the note again trying to see if there are any other clues, I can discern from it. Now that I look more closely, the question mark at the end of 'what am I', it looks almost like a 7 with a small dot at the bottom. So, I have the number 7 and the word Sin.

The Seven Deadly sins.

Of course, one of my friend’s favorite myths to go over was the seven deadly sins. She always used to say that it was because her favorite number was 7. I think it was because she spent too much time watching Fullmetal Alchemist. But if we explore this further, the seven deadly sins, listed as Pride, Greed, Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Wrath, and Sloth. My friend’s favorite number was seven, so Sloth. In word games she always had a rule, ignore the ‘H’ because her name started with ‘H’. Sloth without the ’H’ is Slot, which when you shuffle the letters around becomes Lost.

Lost, ha, I am Lost. That’s my answer. I spent hours on this note just for it to tell me something I already know. Well assuming this note is even for me and that is even what the note actually means. I am probably just reading way too much into it. But still, the phone call and everything being so eerily similar to things my friend used to do. I don’t know. Something just feels off.

So, let’s think about this some more. I am Lost. Well, what do people do when they are lost? Home, they want to go home. Man, I can not believe I am doing this. I am about to follow some random mystery boxes riddle and go back to my hometown where I haven’t been in 3 years. Fine, I’ll humor you box. Let’s go home.

I took the next train going north and after a long trip, I made it to my hometown. Here I am following some random riddle that was probably just some prank back home. But it is nice being here again. Nice and sad. I remember the places I used to travel with my best friend and the things we used to do. As I walk the same paths we used to walk leading up to our old houses. Mum and Dad never moved and neither did my friend’s parents.

So, after a frankly exhausting day. I made my way to my parent’s house and knocked on the door. My parents are just as shocked to see me as I am shocked to be here. Honestly, if you had told me that my day would have started with a mysterious box delivery by UPS Remote drone and ended with me back in my hometown for the first time in 3 years, I would have thought you’d lost your marbles.

I sit down with my parents, and they expressed surprise and gratitude that I made it back in time. In time? In time for what? I stared at them blankly. In time for the anniversary. Oh, I had completely forgotten. Today marks 5 years since the passing of my best friend, the day she was taken off life support. No, it must be a coincidence. But I have to ask, so is that why you sent the package? They look at me with blank eyes. What package? They didn’t send the package. How is that possible, it was set up exactly like my friend used to, and, in the end, it led me home on the day of her death. How could it not be from them or her parents? But no, neither my parents nor my friend’s parents have sent a package in over 2 months.

I think I am even more confused than what I was this morning. So, without any further thought. I rush out the front door and head for the cemetery. When I get there, it is quiet, and it is cold. There is no noise traveling on the wind and no leaves to crunch. I stand before my friend's grave, it has a flower wreath placed in front of it. Most likely left by her parents or mine. This is silly I think turning to leave. But then, all of a sudden, I hear the soft whisper of a familiar voice making a familiar noise. Crunch.

I turn back around to face the noise. But there is nobody there. Wait, I go to look closer at my friend’s grave and there is another box sitting in front of the flower wreath. That definitely wasn’t there before. It looks just like the box from this morning. I reach down and pick up this new box, it’s open, I lift the tabs and find another leaf. Green this time and another note. But there isn’t a riddle this time and I don’t need to spend hours deciphering it

“Thanks for coming.

Miss you, H”

How is this possible? Did I really receive a message from beyond the grave? How did this message get here? Did my friend really want to play one last word game or was it someone else? I sink to my knees; I have no more energy.

“I miss you too.”