Everyone had an idea about who had send it
and why but something compelled them no to check their facts, to respect what
the card with the box had written on it: “Please don’t open this until July 28th”.
The box didn’t have the name of the person who had sent it, it only had the
address of Kevin’s house and that was it. It didn’t even have Kevin’s name or
anything. It was wrapped in blue paper and had a blue bow on top. The most
mysterious thing of it all was that the present had being sent seven days earlier.
During that week, every person who came into
Kevin’s apartment had a theory about who had sent the gift and why. Some
thought it was a former girlfriend; others thought it was an absent-minded
relative. They also thought the gift was anything from shoelaces to a severed
head. His craziest friends said it smelled funny and that if you moved it, it
seemed to have a pulse. But, of course, they were joking. When they left, he
would shake the box and hear nothing or find himself smelling it like a dog at
the airport.
He respected the mystery of the small card
that came with the box because he realized that no one in this day and age was
that interesting with their presents. Everyone was very straightforward, or
didn’t even give presents. It was, in a way, a dying art. So the fact that
someone had decided to do something interesting with their gift to him was
interesting. Every day, when he got home, he got close to the box and just
stared at it, as if expecting it to open by itself.
He assumed it had been sent to him because of
his birthday but that could’ve been just a coincidence. What if the present was
really something else, something that had nothing to do with him turning thirty
years old? Every person that heard him suggest that looked at him as if he was
crazy. It was going a little bit too far with the mystery. Granted, the package
had arrived very early but that really didn’t mean anything.
Kevin was not used to presents either, in
general. To be honest, he was not used to celebrating his birthday. He found it
to be annoying and a little sad. It wasn’t something he looked forward too and,
in the past, he had actually forgotten to celebrate a couple of his birthdays.
He didn’t care at all about checking his calendar to see how old he had gotten.
He just wanted to live.
That present, that stupid blue box was
changing everything in his mind about birthdays and everything related. By the
fourth day after it had arrived, he had to grab it and just put it away in a
closet. He had decided not to play along with the game of who ever had sent the
box. That person wanted him to behave like a fool and he was getting there.
Well, not anymore
The box spent the fifth and sixth days up
there, in a corner of the closet. It was the place where he put all the
cleaning equipment that he needed in his house. The mop, the green liquid to
clean he dishes, the blue one for the floors and so on. The box looked good
among ll those crazy colors. But he authentically forgot about it, even the day
of his birthday. As his friends were rushing him to eat cake and dinner in
order to go and have drinks afterwards, no one really remembered the box and it
stayed there far longer that it was supposed to.
Actually, it wasn’t opened the following week
either. Kevin’s workload increased dramatically and he had to stay n the office
for several hours, one day even sleeping over there on the floor. The day he
came back to his apartment, he slept for two days straight and definitely
forgot about his present. It wasn’t something that felt important to him so it
slowly got transferred to the back of his head until he forgot completely about
it.
Life went on the apartment. Kevin attended
funerals and weddings, he met babies and husbands and wives and he even visited
places he had never thought he would ever visit. And during all that time, that
blue box with the ribbon was sitting there, on top of that closet. It’s funny
when we imagine all the inanimate objects that have always been with us or
close to us. The way that, somehow, they have been a really big part of our
lives and they’re not even alive.
Kevin found out about the box once again, the
moment he decided to move away from that old apartment. He had a girlfriend and
the two of them were going to try and live to together and see if maybe they
were as compatible as they seemed. If everything went fine, they would maybe
think about getting married. It was a very important time in his life and the
day he rediscovered the box, he realized the fact that he had changed in a good
way in the last couple of years.
When he saw the box, he decided he wouldn’t
take it with him to the new apartment so he had to open it and see what was
inside. Two years had passed since the box had arrived in his house and it
seemed a bit silly to be opening it then, after so long. He removed the move
the bow, as he thought he would never now who had sent it, unless there was
another note inside or something like that.
His girlfriend came running the moment she
heard a scream in his room. She had been helping him pack every glass and plate
in the kitchen and almost broke a couple when she heard him screaming. She had
never heard him to that sound, not in the time they knew each other. And it
worried her because it wasn’t a pleasant sound; it was made out of pure fear.
When she got to his room, she screamed too. The
box had fallen to the floor and its content was there, lying dead on the
ground. It was a spider, almost as big as the box. Kevin was livid, unable to
move from the bed. His girlfriend grabbed him by the hand and pulled him away
from there, to the kitchen. They decided to call an exterminator and not enter
his bedroom until that person had seen the whole thing.
The man that came was apparently very well
versed in those creatures. Kevin’s girlfriend had asked for someone with that
kind of knowledge and apparently they had such person. He told her, as Kevin
was still in shock in the living room, that those spiders were really difficult
to find. They normally inhabited deep in the jungle. The weird part was, to him
at least, that the creature was very poisonous and that it had died inside that
box because of the lack of air and the fact that it had poisoned itself.
He gave her a card that was inside the box and
left with its content and the actual box, per request of the woman. The only
thing that remained was that small card which she held on two fingers. It had
the phrase: “Hope you enjoy it” written on it and she thought it was the most
sickening thing she had ever read. She knew Kevin well and she knew he was
horrified of those animals. Apparently the person that had sent the box did know
about that too. And that person didn’t only want to scare him but also kill
him, at least according to the exterminator.
Kevin had to go to the hospital, as his shocked
state was lasting for too long. He had to stay there for observation for a
couple of days, enough time for his girlfriend to pack everything in his house
and move. He came to his new house, talking again although a bit nervous. She
didn’t want to talk about it but it was him who brought the subject up.
He said he thought he knew who was involved
with that horrible joke. And after he said that, he started crying and the
vomited, trembling. He ashamed and very scared. His girlfriend had no idea what
was going on.
