Squelch. Pop. Tap.
The noises from the cardboard box that sits in my living room continues. It’s unnerving, gross, with an almost artificial quality. It has just the right rhythm for me to ignore, but once I’m truly settled in for sleep- something I can’t quite get out of my head.
Squelch. Pop. Tap.
The rhythm is off. It jolts me back awake, and in my sleep deprived mind I wonder if whatever is tucked inside the box will finally reveal itself and devour me. I wonder why it came to me.
Squelch. Pop. Tap. I can’t get rid of the folded, weak cardboard. It always comes back. Every single time.
This has been my life for the past two months. And it has been complete, and utter hell.
I won’t blame myself for this. Perhaps it’s the universe telling me my ways are the ways of evil. I’m not entirely a good person.I’m a fence. I’m a middleman for crime- I buy up goods I know aren’t procured legally and sell them at a higher price. I make a pretty hefty profit from it all- I’ve fenced all sorts of things- high brow art, elitist watches- even encountered a few cursed artifacts in my time.
There was a clock that would always freeze, break, and assemble itself by morning. The shrunken head of a serial killer that supposedly, would rise by night to kill (thank the Whale for protective enchantments).
But the box was something else.It had been a cool spring morning when I first heard about the box. “Yo!” my friend- perhaps business associate Canopy texted. “We’ve got something people will be quite interested in.”“Okay,” I texted back. “What is it?”
He sent a photo of the large cardboard box. “Can’t tell you what’s in it. My buyer wants to use a middle man- I’ll sell it to you for let’s say, three hundred, he’ll buy it from you for a thousand.”
“Really?” I wondered if he was lying. Canopy was shady- I was never exactly sure who he was working for. But his deals, especially ones for cursed material paid well.
But this one seemed too good to be true- and for a second, I wondered if this was a setup, and he was working for the Company- the slightly less moral equivalent to police in the black market for cursed materials.
“Yeah!” he texted. The forced exclamation mark seemed creepy. “I’ll have one of my people drop it off.” With that, his icon disappeared into a gray bubble.
I was going to be rich. Slightly richer than usual- a seven hundred dollar profit for a box with material I wasn’t sure what was inside.
I pondered sometimes, on the type of people who wanted to buy cursed artifacts. But then again, most of my clients were rich, and the rich had bad taste. The other half of clients were more middle men looking to buy it into stock.
The box arrived three days later, in the dead of night.The noises woke me up, really. They permeated my sleeping mind, and I found myself awake- but yet when I woke the noises were gone. There was a doorbell then, and I scrambled for the door.
“Hello?” I called. I picked him the box, eerily light. Nobody was to be seen, and so I returned inside and set the box on the floor.It began the following night.
As I laid in bed, almost asleep I heard it. Squelch. Pop. Tap.
I feared someone or something had invaded my house, and I woke. I checked my phone to see if any alarms had been tripped- and yet, none. I gingerly walked out my roo.
Squelch. Pop. Tap. It was coming from my living room.
I found my emergency knife and raised it in front of me. Slowly, I made the journey that seemed oh too far away, carefully entering the room.
Squelch. Pop. Tap. It was coming from deep inside the box. I kneeled down to open it, but stopped as I read thick marker scrawl: “DO NOT OPEN” So I didn’t.
I respected my clients, and it wasn’t exactly hurting me in any way. So I found myself chewing on a melatonin gummy and falling asleep anyway. This routine continued for the better part of a month.
The following month I was getting worried about the box. Canopy had completely vanished, and had not responded to my many texts of, “Who’s the buyer?” and “when are they coming to pick it up?”.
I was really concerned now. I didn’t like having odd objects in my house, and was frantically looking to sell it to other people.
The night I found a buyer- Quentin Lorreno, I believe, the noises got… worse.
I had taken my melatonin and was abut to sleep when I heard it. SQUELCH. POP. TAP. It was louder than it had ever been, and I shot awake, disconcerted. SQUELCH POP TAP. It repeated, quicker.
And then it accelerated, growing louder by the second. SQUELCH-POP-TAP SQUELCH-POP-TAP-
I put ear muffs on. The noises permeated them, somehow.
I practically growled, made my way over and was about to shove it away when the noises stopped. They didn’t continue until an hour later, when I was fast asleep, waking me up.
They were quieter then, but loud enough to keep me up for the better part of the night.My buyer came for it the next day. “So, what’s inside?” the man asked, a woman beside him.
“I dunno,” I answered. “I paid three hundred for it, but I was told it would sell for a thousand.”The man nodded to the woman, who reached out and touched it. Her eyes went blank for a second, and then she nodded. “It’s weird alright. Something mildly powerful. Dangerous enough.”
They whispered, and then the man spoke. “We’ll take it for five hundred.”I didn’t like the offer, but I really didn’t like the box. “It’ll do.”
The box came back the following week.I was asleep when it woke me again. SQUELCH. POP. TAP. I shot awake, grabbed my knife and stumbled around my house, terrified. I searched around for the loud noise, and finally found it- under my bed.“What the hell?!” I snapped, shocked.I immediately stuffed it into the living room, in the center of a quick salt circle. I then proceeded to text the clients I’d sold it to.
They claimed I hadn’t ever sold them anything. They didn’t know anything about a box. SQUELCH. POP. TAP.I couldn’t sleep that night. But when day broke the sounds stopped, and I finally rested.But I couldn’t keep living like that. I couldn’t be taking days off from work- my normal place of work as a court clerk. This was how I started as a fence, seeking out the criminals on trial and getting connections.
Eventually I came to a rather risky decision: I would open the box.This came on a sunday morning.
In my defense I was extremely tired and not thinking well, and the noises had permeated into the early hours of the morning.“I hate you,” I hissed, finding the nearest knife I could and tearing at it. I cut through the permanent marker and opened it- revealing-
There was nothing inside the box. And when I mean nothing- I mean nothing.
No cursed sigils. No enchanted words. Nothing to prove there had been anything in the box to begin with. “Maybe I’m just crazy,” I murmured, fear pooling in my center.
I tossed the box out into the garbage bin. I followed the garbage truck and watched it be filed away into a landfill. Big mistake.
SQUELCH. POP. TAP. and then something new. PLOP.I practically screamed as I woke from a state of half-sleep. The noise was coming from my living room once again. I peered through my bedroom door- the box was back, sealed and shut, atop my little coffee table.But something had changed. SQUELCH-POP-TAP-PLOP.
And then it began to shake, just a little. And the folds began to move, something from underneath poking outwards. And then the opening folded up and I saw ash-dirtied fingers poked out.And then a face in the darkness, only lit by moonlight.
It was blackened by ash. Dirty, cutup and squirming in the night. Two eyes stared directly at me, yellow and glowing in the night.
The demon’s mouth started to shake. SQUELCH. POP. TAP.I closed the door and hoped it wouldn’t come for me.
I heard movement. The box tumbling over, cracking as something stepped out. SQUELCH. POP. TAP. It was coming closer and closer, crackling footsteps and then-The sound was outside my bedroom now. SQUELCHPOPTAPPLOP.
It knocked. It turned the handle and I locked the door.
It scratched and scratched. And SQUELCHPOPTAP.
This continued until the early dawn. When I finally found the courage to open the door I found a set of prints on the wood- now cracked and dirtied. Ash grey dust printed by four toed talons.
The box was still open, and nothing lay inside. And then I saw dirtied near-human fingers in front of me, peeking out from the sofa.
I screamed as the thing raised its head, an unnatural smile. SQUELCH POP TAP. I backed away, terror gripping me as it charged forward, arms out, lips in a twisted smile and-It disappeared into the box. I looked again- there was nothing.
Nothing I have tried has worked. I followed it back to the garbage pile. I set it on fire. I even called a local priest to bless my home. Nothing has worked. Every solution- the thing returns, smiling, noisy, and more confident.
It’s started to come into my room at night.I’ll wake up to the sound and see those dirtied fingers at the edge of my bed. And then it’ll prop itself up and smile.
Yesterday it got more confident. See, it would merely smile, and watch. But no, now it’s moved on- it’s brought the box into the room.
Yesterday it climbed onto the bed and on my chest. I scratched me, once, making those sick noises with its cursed mouth. SQUELCH POP TAP. It struck me across the face- I tried to fight but it was strong.
I need to get rid of this thing. I never should have opened it. Canopy hasn’t responded- nobody believes me- anyone I sell it to don’t remember buying it.
SQUELCH POP TAP.
Oh god. It’s started again. I think this may very well be the death of me. Don’t try to find me. Don’t take the box. Never open it.
Goodbye.