Inside the Box

Short fiction about a mysterious package

Unpublished

“What’s in the box?”

Louie held an oversized package in one arm while he propped the front door open with his free hand. He flicked for the lock, but just missed it as the door slammed shut.

“No idea, it just showed up on the front steps,” Louie said, making his way down the hall into their little kitchen and tossing the box onto the counter so Steph could peek at it while she finished up the dishes. He kicked his shoes off and threw them in the living room, the stench from his morning run emanating outwards in what seemed like visible waves.

“Did you see who left it there?”

“Nope, just got a text saying it was here.”

“What’s the return address say?” Steph asked.

Louie’s eyes darted across the cardboard. “I can’t seem to find one.”

Steph crossed her arms and started shuffling around the kitchen. The space didn’t allow for much walking around though — when they were picking out houses, they neglected to take the time to think about how much room they would want in the kitchen.

“Well, do you think you should even open it?” Steph said, walking from the oven to the counter in two small steps.

“Uhhh why wouldn’t I?”

“If you don’t know who it’s from, why would you open it?”

“I don’t know, it could be a present from someone.” Louie knew that answer wasn’t good enough. “Or maybe I ordered something and just forgot about it.”

“I still don’t like this. You know, I read stories all the time online about people being sent anthrax because of some petty vendetta.” Steph stopped pacing and pointed at the box. “I think you need to dispose of that with the proper authorities.”

“Hon, I can’t see why anyone would send me anthrax, especially in something this big.” The sun started poking through the back window into the kitchen, blinding them both as it moved towards the horizon.

“Didn’t you get into a fight with some gamer kid playing Xbox the other night? He had to have doxxed you. Give it to me and I’ll go dispose of it. Everything’s gonna be ok, baby.”

Louie ignored her and started ruffling through the drawers looking for his box cutter. Underneath the counter where he placed the box were three similarly looking drawers, and since the move, Steph had continued to rearrange them every other week.

“Did you hear me? I’ll take care of it and make sure you don’t get hurt,” she said. Her voice was rising, getting closer to a squeal at this point.

“I heard you, Steph. I just don’t think that some fifteen year-old would send me anthrax for beating him at some stupid video game.” Louie finally found the box cutter in the third and final drawer. He’d prayed the night before for a calm day of relaxation before the work week began again. He knew he wasn’t gonna get it.

“If you start to open that, I’ll scream,” Steph said.

“Please don’t. I just wanna know what’s inside. What if it’s a gift I bought you and you’re about to ruin it?”

“What would you be buying me a gift for?”

“Well, ah, maybe I thought you deserved something special?”

Louie blinked a little too quickly at that last part.

“Really?” Steph crossed her arms again and gave him her patented death stare. “Wanna bet?”

“Come on, hon, just let me open this in peace.”

“Absolutely not, it’s not safe to open unmarked mail.” Steph had just figured out what Reddit was and had been spending a lot of free time reading the “NoStupidQuestions” subreddit.

“Who says? You get weird packages all the time and I never question it.” Louie popped open the box cutter and got ready to slice through the packing tape.

“I don’t interact with unsavory characters on the internet so I don’t have to worry about this sort of crap.” The death stare narrowed into a squint. “And what you might consider ‘weird packages’ are collectible figurines that will pay for our retirement down the line, so be my guest if you don’t want to enjoy those benefits. I wouldn’t mind taking a bigger share for myself, I could use the money to further my investments and increase capital gains.”

The sun sank below the treeline in their backyard, but a lack of lights turned on in the house kept the couple blind. Louie hesitated with the box cutter.

“What is that even supposed to mean? Wait. Are you talking about your Beanie Babies? I really don’t care abo—”

Steph’s jaw smacked the ground. When she finally picked it back up, she clenched it tight and prepared to attack.

“You. Don’t. Care? How could you say that to me? I’ve spent years cultivating this collection, not just for me, but for us. Not for potential children, not for our parents’ nursing homes, not for a future business. For us. And you say don’t care? I want you to think long and hard about what you just said to me.” Her foot began to tap violently against the floor. “Choose your next words very carefully.”

If Louie and Steph had been a bit quieter, they would have noticed a transformer blow a fuse outside, plunging the neighborhood into darkness.

“Steph, I don’t want to make this into a fight right now, but what does any of this have to do with this package I have sitting in front of me?”

Wrong answer.

“Everything! Did you not hear what I just said? Does none of that matter to you?”

“It does, hon, and I’m sorry. Really. But I can’t help but wonder what the hell this has to do with the unlabeled box in front of me and the potential threat of anthrax you keep talking about.”

Steph shifted her stance and took a second. The creeping darkness still hadn’t gotten to her.

“Louie, if you don’t care about all I’ve done for our future, why don’t I just sell my collection now and move out? Huh? Is that what you want? Cause I’ll do it and I won’t regret that decision, oh you believe me, I have no issue moving out and starting over, I don’t need this from you at all.”

It was Louie’s turn to take a second, and he narrowed his eyes at her and prepared to raise his voice one last time.

“Whatever, you know what? None of that matters right this minute, does it? I just want to open my mail up and it doesn’t matter what you think about it. Scream all you want, but this isn’t addressed to you, so I’m just opening it now, whether you like it or not.”

Louie began to swing his arm to finally slice through the tape, but stopped when he felt something cold brush up against the backside of his head.

“Drop the box cutter,” a voice whispered from behind his left ear.

“Steph? Is that you?”

“Uhhh, no? I didn’t say anything. Why did you stop cutting, are you finally listening to reason?”

“No, I thought I he—”

“Oh you definitely heard something,” the voice whispered again. “Now, put the box cutter down.” The sweet smell that Louie thought he had left in his running shoes started to come back to him as he started to realize what was happening.

“Steph, really, this isn’t cool. I get that you don’t want me to open this box, but you don’t have to try and scare me to get me to do it.”

The cold object pushed further into Louie’s head. He could feel the body heat radiating off of whoever was behind him, and he could hear a squeaking noise as they shifted their stance, as though rubber was rubbing against rubber.

“Let go of the fucking box cutter or I will pull the trigger.” The voice was no longer a whisper.

“Louie, who was that? That didn’t sound like you at all.”

“It wasn’t me. There’s someone else in here with us.”

Another object made its way up against the side of Steph’s head, accompanied by its own unique voice. An odd combination of motor oil and lavender wafted from their clothes.

“Get down on yer knees and face the ground,” the other voice growled.

Steph turned her head and looked out the kitchen window, at last catching a glimpse of the encroaching dusk. No light broke through the treeline into the house.

“How did you get in here? And what do you want?” Steph asked as she and Louie complied with the voices’ demands.

“We don’t want any trouble, just give us your expensive shit and we’ll get out of here.”

“I wouldn’t mind a lil trouble,” the second voice mumbled.

“Yeah, well, we’re not here for it right now. Take out your wallets and put them behind you.” The robbers simultaneously pushed their guns further into the heads of their victims.

“Ok, is that all you want?” Louie took his wallet out and gave it to his assailant. Steph sat for a moment, rapping the kitchen tiles with her knuckles.

“Hey, didja hear my friend? Gimme yer fuckin wallet,” the second voice demanded.

“Yes, yes, of course,” Steph said, reaching into her pocket and passing along her billfold.

“You know,” she continued, “if you’re looking for our ‘expensive shit,’ that box right there holds a priceless tchotchke my great-aunt just sent over. It’s worth more than anything else in this crummy old house.”

If the intruders could see Steph’s face, they’d see her stifling back a smirk as she told this fib.

If they could see Louie’s face, they’d see sweat pouring down the front of his face in a way that looked as though he was crying.

“If you’re fucking with us, I swear I’ll put a bullet in his brain,” the first voice said.

“No, no, I swear it’s the truth, pick up the box and we’ll look inside together.”

“That’s not going to cut it. In case you lovebirds didn’t notice, the power cut out. There’s no way anyone is gonna be able to see anything.”

“Fine, then I guess you’ll just have to take my word for it. Louie, dear, pass them the box.”

Louie sat frozen with fear as he tried to go along with whatever Steph was doing. His knees wobbled as he tried to find the words to talk back to her.

“A-are you sure, hon? I know this m-means a lot to you and I wou—”

“Ohmigod we don’t care, just give us the fuckin’ box.”

With the muzzle pushed as far as it could be into his head, Louie reached up slowly and grabbed the package, his arm shaking furiously as he passed it to the person behind him as carefully as possible.

“Here, o-ok? This and our w-wallets is all we have.”

“Whatever. Stay here until we leave or else you’re both fucked.”

The pressure on Steph and Louie’s heads slowly dissipated, and after a few minutes, they heard the door click shut and felt comfortable enough to stand up.

“Where did you come up with that idea?” Louie asked as he felt his way around the kitchen, searching for Steph.

“Well, I told you I didn’t trust what was in there. It was just another way of getting you to stay out of it.” Steph’s smirk had broken into a full smile at this point, and she made contact with Louie, forcing him into a tight hug… regardless of the sheen of sweat that coated his skin.

“I hope whoever they were enjoys what was in the box, I still wish we could’ve found out.”

“Who knows, maybe we still will?”

A few weeks later, Steph came home from work to the morning paper lying on the front steps. Her eyes flicked across the front page as she made her way to the kitchen counter, but she threw her satchel onto the floor before she could get there.

“Louie! Get down here!” Her mind was racing at a thousand thoughts a second trying to figure out what she had just read.

Louie rushed downstairs as fast as he could, his gaming headphones still wrapped around his neck, almost as if he’d yanked the cord out of the computer as he raced to the kitchen.

“What’s going on honey, is everything alright?”

“I think so, just take a look at this headline.” She passed the paper over to Louie and pointed at the largest text at the top of the page.

“‘Dogman Arrested for Drug Smuggl—’”

“No, not that one, dummy. The one underneath it!”

Louie looked down to the second headline, written in a much smaller space than the lead story. His eyes widened as he realized what he was reading.

“‘After two bodies were discovered underneath O’Shea Bridge, medical examiners performed separate autopsies on them and found trace amounts of what appeared to be anthrax in each of their systems. When questioned where the anthrax could have come from or who the two bodies were, the Coroner’s office gave a blanket “no comment” and moved on.’”

Steph squinted at Louie with a wide smile on her face, crossing her arms as she moved to look at him. Louie ran his hands through his temples and tugged at his hair while grimacing at the paper.

“What did I tell you, babe? Do you remember what I said to you?”

Louie turned over to Steph and pushed his fingers into his eyes.

“Ugh, alright, alright, you told me so, is that what you wanted to hear?”

“Meh, I guess so. It would’ve been nice if you had listened to me in the moment though. You wouldn’t have had any second thoughts about handing off the package to those goons.”

Louie already started to motion towards the stairs, eager to escape this conversation and head back to his gaming.

“Look, if you’re going to go back to playing your games, just remember this: if you get in a fight with some thirteen year-old on Xbox, make sure they’re not gonna send us anthrax again? If that’s not too much to ask?”

Steph kept the smug look on her face as Louie looked back and her and sighed. He threw his headphones back on and ran upstairs, ready to finish the current fight he was in with ‘Jacob’ from JFK Middle School.