Ring Ring
The doorbell surprised me. I did not expect any visitors today. I put the pencil aside and stood up. Before I could reach the door, the bell rang again. Someone must the really impatient, I thought. I opened the door and a delivery driver shoved a package into my hands. Said:
“Good Day” and left. Before I could answer.
I was confused. I had not ordered anything. The package was simple and had my name on it, but no address for the sender. I closed the door and went back to the living room. I put the package onto the couch desk and went to the kitchen to get a knife. Once I returned and swiftly opened the package. Three objects fell onto the desk: A lightbulb, a fork and a deer’s antler
“What the fuck” I thought. Who the hell sends me their garbage. I inspected the three objects before deciding to throw them away. I got the garbage can from the kitchen, grabbed the fork and was about to throw it into the garbage can. But something stopped me. The thought of throwing away something that was perfectly fine, just did not sit well with me. I could use this fork. I just needed to clean it. Having a spare light bulb was also not wrong. And the antlers? Well, they are very decorative. So I did not throw them away. At the time my reasoning seemed perfectly fine. When reflecting on it now, I think something else drove me to these thoughts. Well, so the objects stayed in my apartment. I put the fork in the dishwasher, the light bulb in the cabinet for my tools and the antler was displayed on my couch desk.
A few days later, I would use the fork for the first time. I just grabbed it from the drawer after cooking my meal and began eating. I had made some pasta with spinach. I had made this meal before. It was delicious. Really exceptional. My mouth watered. Wait. This was a little to much. But it was truly how I felt. I thought that maybe I had changed something about the seasoning. But I did not think so. Well I really enjoyed my meal. I forgot about it. The same thing happened again about a week later. This time with some fried eggs I had made. There were a few instances and only after the sixth of seventh time I finally made the connection. The meals tasted much better, when I used the fork I got in the package. From that day on I used the fork everyday. I even tested it. I ate the same meal with the special fork and some random fork. And the taste actually changed. Or at least my perception of the taste. This went on for some days.
One day I made some mussels. I usually did not eat any shells, but I thought that with my magical fork everything could be delicious and I wanted to experiment. I pierced the meat in the shell with the fork and lifted it to my face to figure out how I could separate the flesh from the shell. What happened next only took moments. A thought shoot through my head “Every blessing must come with a curse.” My right hand moved on its own. The fork raced towards my left hand, which was resting on the table. The shell hit the back of my hand hard. I screamed in pain. Threw fork and shell away from me, clutched my left hand to my chest and whimpered. After a minute or so I looked at my hand. There was a dark bruise where the shell hit my hand. At the same time I felt quite lucky. With every, literally absolutely every other food or circumstance the fork would surely have pierced my hand. I put the fork back into the package and swore never to use it again. What the fuck was this?
Well a few weeks later I got to use the next object. I had a small hut in my garden, where I liked to sit in the summer. It was starting to warm up and I decided to put a happy chain of lights up. Sadly one of the bulbs was bust. So I looked into my tool cabinet. There was the light bulb I had received in the same package as the fork. I was skeptical. But it was the only one that would fit. Therefore I decided to try it. I was pretty sure that I would not try to pierce my hand with it. Carefully I screwed it into the socket. And… everything seemed to work. It did not short my entire house and spontaneously explode. I was happy with my small garden retreat. I decided to relax there for the evening and draw some of the spring flowers in my garden. The drawing session went really well and I felt immensely inspired. And the next time I was in the garden to draw the same thing happened. So I was on edge again. This surely was caused by the light bulb. So I was always extra careful, when switching it on and always remembered to switch it off, when I left. The inspired working was really nice, until it wasn’t.
It was a warm evening shortly after sunset, when I went to my garden retreat again. I set everything up and carefully observed the lightbulb, until I knew that everything was normal. I sat down and began to draw. I felt the warmth of the sun on my back. A minute later I set up in wonderment. Didn’t the sun set 10 minutes ago? Then a familiar thought shot through my head again. “Every blessing must come with a curse.” I spun around. It was not the sun that had warmed me. The chain of lights, the wooden pole it was wrapped around and part of my hut were ablaze. I was in shock. My eyes dried up and I felt the strong heat on my face. I dropped everything and ran into the house getting the fire extinguisher and calling the fire department. But there was nothing I could do. My garden retreat was lost. I used the fire extinguisher to repel some of the flames that tried to jump to the tree next to it. After some minutes the fire department arrived, and began to douse my hut in water. I was completely exhausted, when the flames finally died down. And went to bed.
The next day I stood in front of a field of ash and gleaming wood posts. Everything was burned and destroyed. Well, not everything. The mysterious light bulb seemed unharmed. I threw it across the garden. But then two thoughts came to me. First, I had again been extraordinarily lucky. At any other time or with any other light socket in my house, much more would have been lost. And secondly, there was one final object. Maybe the luck with the curses was the blessing of the antler. It would not stick around for me to find out. I took the lightbulb, the fork and the antler and put everything back into the box and threw it straight into the trash. No more blessings and curses for me.
The next night I heard some noises at my garbage can. In the morning it looked like some racoons had raided it. But the only missing thing was the box.