The sun baked the blacktop that mid-summer day. While most people were away to beachfront vacations and enjoying family getaways, a blurred image could be seen through the heat waves of the pavement.
It was a man. A strange man with scraggly, nit infested hair. His unkempt beard was encrusted with whatever food or drink he had sometime before.
He walked laboriously with a walking stick and a canvas satchel that clung to his shoulder. It bobbed as he limped his way along the two-lane, house-lined highway.
His clothes sagged from his thin, boney body. His thick glasses were yellowed with age. His shoes, long worn out from constant travel, served mostly as a thin leather barrier between his feet and the ground.
He approached a mail box. It read Hundley. He stood for a moment and examined the house. There was someone home, he could tell. He rummaged in his canvas satchel and removed a parcel.
The parcel was wrapped in brown, perfectly creased paper. The twine was tied in a perfect knot. He slid the parcel into the mailbox and unceremoniously continued his trek.
More than an hour later, a man emerged from the house. He checked his mail and found the parcel, along with some bills and a card that misspelled his name and said you may already be a winner.
He checked the parcel for an address. There was no destination or return address. He turned it over in his hands repeatedly. It felt weighty, but nothing rolled around or clanged together. Must be a book, he thought.
He tore into the brown paper and pushed the twine to the side. A glossy mahogany cigar box slid from the wrapping. Symbols and what looked to be hieroglyphs were etched into the wood and gold leaf insets glimmered in the afternoon sun.
Strange, he thought. He ran his fingers over the insets. They were cool and smooth to the touch. He wondered who the box belonged to and why they decided to place it in his mail box. Must be illegal Cuban cigars, he assumed. He opened the box.
He nearly threw the box in shock. The interior of the box seemed to be limitless. There was no bottom or sides that he could see - just vast darkness.
He held the box closer. The smell was strange. It was not a smell of wood, but rather, some type of gaseous smell. Helium or nitrogen, perhaps?
He held the box closer still. He saw distant glints of light. Stars? Impossible, he guffawed. But still he was bewitched by the wonder of the box. He continued to delve deeper into the dark recesses of what seemed to be an entire universe trapped into one tiny box.
Large explosive flashes blasted in the distance. They sounded like distant cannon fire. Shooting stars swept across his peripheral vision. Amazing, he thought. He was completely captivated.
Strange, slow moving creatures resembling squid floated and swam through the inky black sea. He heard their cries. They sounded very similar to whales.
Suddenly a much larger creature, of comparison he had never seen, snapped one out of the air and ate it whole. The other squid-like creatures scattered in all directions.
The larger creature seemed to scan its surroundings for more food. Then the man felt a chill. The creature made eye contact with him and roared like a foghorn.
The large, green orbs with orange centers seemed to hypnotize him. He tried to drop the box and run, he knew he should have, but he remained defenselessly captivated.
There was no warning. No way of avoiding the attack. A long proboscis-like protrusion caught him in the chest. It crushed through his sternum. Two longer, almost snake-like tentacles whipped around his neck and torso and wrapped around tightly. He was yanked off his feet and into the box.
Only his shoes and the box remained behind. The box rolled to a stop and the lid closed with a clap.
The disheveled vagrant man revisited the house immediately afterward. He grinned and fell to his knees by the box. He placed the box back into his canvas satchel, and thanked it repeatedly with a horse voice that shivered with excitement. He removed his old shoes and placed the man’s shoes on. Perfect fit, he gleamed. The gods gifted him the new shoes he asked for. He stroked the satchel and continued to thank it graciously as he carried on with his unrelenting journey.
—
©2009 Brian Barnett
Brian Barnett lives in Frankfort, Kentucky with his wife, Stephanie, and son, Michael. He enjoys writing during his free time.
Tags: Brian Barnett
May 9th, 2009 at 9:58 am
Nice tale Brian - almost a cross between HP Lovecraft and Stephen King in its premise. Will people never learn not to open strange runed boxes?
May 9th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
The old saying “beware of Greeks baring gifts” comes to mind while reading this. A nice piece of work, Brian.
May 9th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Marvelous stuff, Brian. Great voice and flow.
–dj
May 9th, 2009 at 9:49 pm
Thanks everybody. I certainly had Lovecraft in mind when I wrote this one. I appreciate all of your kind comments.
May 10th, 2009 at 6:33 am
Nice, building tension. I really wanted to know what was in that box. Good job.
May 10th, 2009 at 8:39 am
Nice story, Brian! I felt like I was looking into the box and seeing what you described in there.