The Place Part 8

The box found a new home on a shelf in our living room. My wife put it between the angel she bought in Las Vegas and the door handle she took from a hotel we stayed in on our way to the Grand Canyon.

”Aren’t you going to open it?” I asked her.

”I am not sure what’s inside should be out in our world. I mean, it’s probably dangerous.”

I nodded, although I was really curious. I wanted it to be a really old coin from a civilization that existed thousands of years ago in the other world, one that nobody even remembered, and the owner of the box put the coin in there led by some strange instinct of irreverence.

I wanted it to be a drug from over there which we could take and expand our minds. See the world like those pale people do.

I wanted it to be a sewing kit, so that we know there is something familiar in that world. I wanted it to be a USB stick. A piece of a treasure map. A tiny cross. A rusted nail. A little dancing lady with big boobs.

When my wife was visiting her mother one time, I woke up in the middle of the night and sneaked into the living room. I probably didn’t need to sneak, but one can never be too sure. And I opened the box.

I could not see anything inside. The thing was invisible.

But then, something clicked and clanged outside the living room wall and a mechanism started clacking. Holy shit, I thought, I hope this stops before my wife comes back, or she’ll find out I opened the box.

She returned the next day.

Posted by: Paweł Kowaluk