One day there was a knock at my apartment door. When I opened it, there was no one there. Just a long hallway fading into the darkness offered by the burned-out bulbs at either end. I was about to close the door when I noticed a box sitting on my welcome mat. It was a gift box, like the kind you see in movies. Striped purple-and-green paper, wrapped with great precision around a near-perfect cube. A bright red stripe of ribbon ran up the middle of each of the four sides and disappeared under a tight-fitting top that sported identical ribbons crossed under a massive, overwrought bow.
I checked the hallway again but there was no one there, nor sign or signal that anyone had ever been there at all. I crouched for a closer look, certain the package had been delivered to the wrong address. No one had given me a gift in years. Especially not one so well wrapped. It was a clear sign to me that this was meant for someone else. Someone loved and cherished by another. I checked for a tag and found one.
‘To you. A gift that can only be opened, only opened by you, and only opened once. Love, us.’
My cynicism slithered out and coiled around my shoulders. Clearly a prank. I squinted once more down into the darkness at either end of the corridor, searching for the telltales of any recording equipment. I went farther and walked down the hall into the shadows but found only the empty echoes of the concrete stairwells that lived there. Nothing. Once again at my apartment, I stared at the box. It glittered brightly in the sullen light provided by the struggling fixture above me.
I nudged it with my toe and it moved hesitantly, as if it contained something of substantial weight. I knelt and ran my fingers lightly over the glittering paper. It was foil and heavily embossed, with a texture that was both appealing and strange. The wrapping itself would have cost quite a bit. I tapped my fingers against it slightly. It was cool, but not cold. Hefty but not heavy. It made no rattle and produced no smell. I leaned even closer and pressed my ear to a spot near the bow. Silence. I could only hear the beating of my own heart. A slight vibration in the bow mirrored my pulse. This close, I saw that it wasn’t entirely red but threaded with patterns of gold, silver and black. The patterns were so small and fine that I couldn’t really follow their repeating geometries as they dwindled into themselves. The details faded back into a crimson satin sheen when I backed away.
Then I sat in the middle of the dark and dirty corridor, cross-legged and confused. Who sent this? Was it meant for me? I took a few minutes to text a few of my friends and family but no one had any insight as to what it was or where it had come from. I sat and thought.
I started, realizing I’d been sitting there for quite awhile. I stood and stretched the ache out of my back and neck. For a moment - only a moment, I considered picking it up and taking inside, but didn’t. It wasn’t mine, I was certain. Sure, someone had delivered it here but it was clearly a mistake. It happened occasionally. In an apartment building this dodgy, packages got mis-delivered (or stolen) all the time. I stepped around it, went back into the comfort of my unit and closed the door firmly behind me. Then I slept.
In the morning, after a shave and shower, I came out to the living room and saw the gift box on the floor, in the middle of my rug. Exactly in the middle. It was precisely aligned to the edges of the rug and perfectly centered in it. I noticed this just a moment before I panicked. Someone had been in my apartment! I immediately backed toward my bedroom, pulled out my phone and called the police. The emergency services operator seemed very concerned about an unknown package left in my apartment and I found out why some time later when a group of bomb disposal officers arrived. They asked me to leave the apartment and go down to the parking lot where another officer asked me a bunch of questions. I told her everything I knew, which wasn’t very much. Most of the other residents in my building were also downstairs, in various stages of dress and wakefulness, but all pretty uniformly irritated and throwing intermittent glares in my direction. I sat on a curb and waited for the ordeal to conclude.
After almost thirty minutes, the bomb disposal officers came downstairs and took their own opportunities to glare at me as they got back into their truck. The investigating officer explained to me that the box had been empty and questioned me once more about the previous night’s events while checking my responses against her notes. I realized they thought I had faked a bomb threat and found myself overexplaining and anxiously offering them access to check my apartment for any evidence that I’d bought any of the wrapping supplies. I didn’t even own a pair of scissors.
She seemed very irritated, but confirmed that the other officers had looked around and had found nothing. She did indicate that someone from the station would be following up in a few days, and that I could face charges if any evidence surfaced that I had faked the scenario. I tried to explain that I hadn’t even considered it was a bomb until they’d arrived and evacuated the building, but she didn’t seem very interested in what I had to say anymore. I asked about any signs of breaking and entering. As she walked away she glanced back and told me they hadn’t found any signs of forced entry at all and then ominously suggested that I not leave town. Her and her colleagues sped off in the crisp morning light, even their cars looked annoyed as they accelerated onto the service road.
I sat back down on the curb and suffered through the stares and mumbles of the other residents as they filed past me, back to their homes. I was reluctant to go back to my apartment, but I had work to do and I didn’t need the anger of my co-workers on top of the irritation from my neighbors and the local police.
Back in the dim hall I found myself staring at the doorknob, lost in thought. There were indeed no signs of forced entry. No scrapes or scratches, dents or dings. Just the same slowly-oxidizing bronze that the fixtures had always been - an unmolested patina of age. I opened the door.
The box was now resting on the edge of the kitchen table as if it had just been dropped there by some annoyed police officer, which it certainly had. It was closed again, but not completely. One side of the cover was snug against the box, but the other was slightly askew, as if the cop had just dropped the lid onto the box instead of pressing it down firmly. Subsequently, a razor’s edge of darkness peered at me across the intervening space. I swallowed dryly and began to sweat. In my mind, the gap yawned wide. I screwed my eyes shut. I knew it was empty, but for some reason, I didn’t want to know it myself. As I walked over to close it completely, some infinitesimal vibration caused by my stride must have nudged it just ever so slightly. It slipped completely shut as I approached it. When it did, the motion made the tag flop over and it opened slightly, revealing the note inside once again.
‘To you. A gift that can only be opened, only opened by you, and only opened once. Love, us.’
It felt like a threat.
Unsettled, I left it there and made myself some coffee. It was time to get to work.
***
Later that day I came out of my home office looking for something to eat and noticed the box had moved again to the center of the kitchen table. Yes, I was upset about it. Yes, my heart started pounding. But I didn’t feel quite as apprehensive as I had earlier. Maybe it was the knowledge that panicking and calling the police hadn’t provided any evidence of a clear threat. They’d even said it was empty. For some reason, I didn’t believe that though. I found myself in mid-step toward it, curiosity briefly overwhelming my caution.
No. I spun around, ignored the box and went about making lunch. Pork and pepper cheese quesadillas with some chipotle hot salsa. One of the great things about working from home was just how much more cooking I did, and how much better at it I’d gotten. I munched one of the cheesy wedges and eyeballed the box from over the island counter.
It felt a little like it was staring back.
I decided I wasn’t spending another moment that day thinking about it. Besides, I still had a lot more work to do. I grabbed my plate and stalked back into my office and closed the door firmly behind me.
***
Later that evening, I crept back into the living room like a thief in my own home. I had briefly convinced myself that the choice to work late had been due to various tight deadlines, but the tingling in my fingers betrayed the adrenaline they held. The box hadn’t moved. Its restless behavior had become familiar enough that I hadn’t expected there to be no change at all.
Though the night brought along its own implied fears and unknowns, I was determined not to sleep in the same home as that thing again. I wouldn’t remove it - leaving it in the corridor outside hadn’t hindered its intentions. Hah, listen to me, talking about it like it made its own choices. It was a box, not a cat. I drew a hand down my face, knowing the meek attempt at wiping the uncertainty and fear away for what it was. It didn’t work. Fine. I would open it, disassemble it, hold it over the gas range until the smoke alarm’s wail heralded my victory. What? I shook my head, trying to dislodge the baroque floridity that had soaked into my thoughts.
I approached it in the same manner a lucky introvert would approach his radiant prom date on the dance parquet. Terrified, but struck dumb by beauty. It truly was an exceptionally wrapped gift. It was somewhat of a surprise that the police hadn’t made any comment about it when they visited earlier. It was certainly noteworthy. Even though I suspected part of me was spellbound by its unreal nature, I felt in control.
I reached for it and laid my hand next to the bow once more. As my fingers fell upon the interminable boundary of the wrapping paper, where I could feel them mingle with the strange depth of the ribbon’s weave, an inaudible thump of incredible profundity rocked my world. No physical shake or shimmy of my home or the structure around it, but a shockwave felt on another band, from another place, traveling through another medium - one that left the air about me undisturbed, but presumably caused the stars to shiver in their gloom. The bow riffled minutely as if in the ancestral wake of that singular, momentous blast. I stumbled and clamped my other hand to the table to avoid collapse.
Outside, an angry driver honked his displeasure as some pedestrian who yelled back with screeched profanity, and was subsequently drowned-out by the squeal of accelerating tires. A drop of blood worked it’s way out of my nostril and spattered onto the table below. The droplet wobbled next to my hand as another arrived beside it. I grabbed the ornate topknot of ribbon and tore the lid off the box.
Empty. The dark, velvety interior held no secrets I could discern. I wiped my bloody nose on a sleeve and leaned in closer. There was too much nothing in a container that felt like so much something, it had to be more than empty. I trailed my fingertips along the interior and though not velvety as I had thought, it was still soft and yielding. I pressed my hand into the cushy material at the bottom and as I relaxed the pressure, I saw the resulting indent slowly fade. Curious. I pressed my hand more firmly into the bottom of the box and, as I did, lowed my head to the level of the table’s surface.
My hand was pushed well below the bottom of the box. Shocked, I pulled my hand back like I’d shoved it into an open fire. But it did not come.
I was stuck.
Horrified I stood up again and looked into the box just in time to see the strange, soft darkness envelop my hand at the wrist. I tugged, pulled so hard I heard my shoulder creak. I jumped up onto the table for more leverage, but the moment my feet left the ground, the box pulled me in harder with a single, terrifying tug. Off balance, I pitched forward onto the box itself. It was like landing on a block of concrete - one that was eating me. I screamed then, in panic and rage. What an absurd and horrible thing. It couldn’t be real! I thrashed and stained my kitchen with pinpricks of nostril blood and, in my hysteria, landed my head squarely in that aperture of darkness and everything went cold and quiet.
***
I lost time. Even the concepts of now, then and soon-to-be became disconnected and stale as I considered them. Conscious but insensate, I struggled to discern any input that would help. The first sense I felt return was smell, which was confusing, as I’d been born without it. Inhaling, my head was filled with what I could only imagine was the smell of an ancient, moldering library submerged in shit. Sight came next. Gummed up lids parted, letting in a ruddy, indistinct light. A dark puddle spread out expansively from my vantage point. I was lying in a pool of fetid, liquid filth. It was topped by an oil-slicked sheen that swirled in wide loops of rose, rust and gold.
The light came from above, a dim glow that pushed its way through the thick air. Though my body and bones seemed heavier than normal, I heaved them all up off the ground and stood. My head pounded, and my mouth was as dry and gummy as my sight. I briefly considered drinking from the liquid I stood in, but my rising gorge curtailed the thought. In addition to the swirls of oily filth, small chunks of something seemed to float just below the surface. No thanks.
More intense cones of light speared down from the cavernous darkness above to illuminate small areas throughout the space. Indistinct figures in starkly-lit silhouette stood within each volume of luminance, in various states of discomfort. One, some distance away and caught in one of the brighter beams, writhed slowly, as if in the throes of a slow-motion electrocution.
The closest figure, off to my right, heaved quiet sobs into his cupped hands. The barest whisper of his grief reached me. I called out, but nothing came of the effort except a dry croak.
“Hnngghk.”
His response was immediate - the sobbing stopped. Slowly, interminably, he rotated his head in my direction. Bright sclera, reflecting what little light there was, glittered out from under a twirl of greasy hair. My knees wobbled and I sank to the ground. It was me staring back. Wilted and weathered, a shadow of who I’d known myself to be, but me nevertheless. He stared for a few moments, then his mouth slowly widened in a silent scream of terror and rage. Soon, he was not so silent. It grew from a hiss, like gas from a stovetop, but broadened into a discordant, desiccated screech of dismay. Dumbstruck, I watched helplessly as other such sounds, from other versions of me, slowly took up the choral dirge. Soon, everyone - every me - was staring at me and screaming.
Then, silence.
As one, they turned back to their individual miseries.
“What is this?” I managed, though it hurt like no sore throat I’d ever had before.
From the silence came a choking sound. It took me a moment to recognize it as a laugh. I looked from light to light until finally spying with an occupant who was staring back, and laughing. Cracked, broken teeth stood like luminous gravestones in the carnival-clown crescent of his mouth.
“What is this place?” I asked.
“Heh heh ho ho heh. Forever,” he cackled back.
I pushed myself to my feet and went to him - I needed answers. The pain I felt as I left the circle of light banished all rational thought. I threw myself back toward my lukewarm puddle of poorly-lit filth, and the relief that washed through me was nearly orgasmic.
“Heh heh heh ho heh. Careful careful,” the laughing shade offered as consolation, “You can only be, in the light. And there is very little here.”
After a few moments, I pressed my hand into the puddle - shallow enough not to hide my fingers - and pushed it slowly toward the perimeter of my dimly lit prison. As my fingertips edged past the boundary of light, they began to burn as if under a blowtorch. I watched my fingernails grow a half an inch during the brief moment I managed to endure the pain.
“Heh heh ho ho.”
I looked around again at my doppelgangers - their postures and builds finally making sense. They had also tried to escape. Some, apparently, many times. Finally, my sight landed on one pool of light that was empty. It was some distance away, through the forest of bent and broken versions of me, but just visible.
“Ho ho heh, he knew a way. Catch a fly with honey, find a way out. Are you the honey suckler? Heh heh. Yes. You are.” The Laugher tittered at the thought.
Nearby, the Screamer let out a shadow of a yell. His hands clutching slowly at the nothing just in front of him.
“Heh heh, ho ho. Smart one left. Dumb one took his place. Right, Dumb one?”
He was staring at me.
“Dumb one?” I asked, “What do you mean?”
“You were pilot, now passenger, dumb one. Who makes that trade?” he asked back - his laughter finally at rest, though the unnatural smile remained.
“Where am I?” I pleaded.
“Here,” he gestured around, a little less frail and rickety than his neighboring counterparts, “in the Interim, where obsolescence comes to dwindle and die in the dark.”
As if to punctuate this oddly intelligible proclamation, someone - some me - wailed long and loud in the distance.
“Another one bites the dust hee hee ho ho heee,” his cackle trailed off in a sputtering wheeze.
“I’m not obsolete.”
His wheeze stopped and he glanced up at me as if I’d grown a third eye, then buckled over gurgling guffaws into the wet filth at his feet. After some time, he calmed.
“If you say so heh heh.”
“God DAMN it!” I yelled and batted my fist into the puddle next to me. It sloshed a bit and fizzled away at the edge of the light. The small waves I produced revealed small piles of loose teeth that had previously been obscured. I recoiled, but could not find the motivation to stand.
“How do I get out of this place?” I whispered.
A moment passed and I looked up. The Laugher had affected some level of empathy with his grin, now turned ever so slightly downward in pity.
“This is out, dummy.”
***
I don’t know how much time passed. The dim light, oppressive heat, inability to move and the ever-present rasp of dismay around me had stretched my perception of time into a mobius strip of one unending moment. The first time I felt the presence of something new, it was a balm. A cold breeze on a stuffy day. One of the lights had gone out. In the forest of unchanging spotlights that spread around me, fading only in the distant darkness, the absence of one was like a foghorn. Even the murmur of anguish around me seemed subdued. I looked over to the chatty me, who hadn’t bothered speaking to me since our first conversation back… well, whenever. He was staring at the missing light as well. No quip or jibe now. Just a quivering lip and a face full of tears.
“What happened?”
“Hee heh,” He responded listlessly and slowly pushed his hand past the perimeter of his shell.
I watched in horror as the hand began to age rapidly. Nails grew long, and began to curl, crack and darken. The flesh between the knuckles bulged out briefly, then began to tighten and grow taut around the bone. Moments later it grew yellowed and hard, then dark and soft. I found myself unable to speak. The hand shifted a moment, then dropped off and disappeared between the shadows. I looked at the other me, at his face. It was placid - almost serene. He turned to me, all signs of humor gone.
“We are the us that didn’t work out. Expired iterations. Discarded and forgotten. Sometimes, us of here rise again, but never for very long. The new you didn’t work, did it? It felt just as useless as the old you. Try and try again. We never learn. We discard the incomplete and move on - a trail of half-broken egg shells. I don’t want to be obsolete anymore. I… don’t want to be. Hee hee.”
And with that, he stepped from the light into the darkness. A calm serenity on his face that lasted just until he disappeared into the shadows. For the briefest instant, a widening of the eyes, a parting of the lips. Nostrils flaring outward. Then, oblivion. The puddle he’d left echoed his last step for a moment - a ripple raced out from the final footfall, right to the edge of the boundary. Then the light above winked out.
As I struggled to understand this abrupt departure, another new experience assaulted me. A low rumble above rapidly evolved into a deep, damp creaking noise. The wavering figures of myself began a high-pitched keening noise. A strange concordance grew among the voices, none of which held any particular talent alone, but together approached something distantly haunting. The sound was interrupted by a massive squelching noise that could only be described as… intestinal. In the empty cone of light some distance away a slickly-wet body slipped from a sphincter-like aperture just visible in the shadows of the ceiling. The body splashed softly to the ground and lay still. The keening ceased and the familiar hum of suffering picked up once more.
I looked at my hands and the age carved into them, and wondered how long I’d been in this place.
***
Some time later, I found myself sitting in my beam of light. It was the only thing I did. I sat, and I thought. I had come to appreciate having that. With all else lost, I at least still had my thoughts. Over time, I had managed to lose myself almost completely in them. I didn’t wail, or cry. I didn’t suffer to feel, and despite my physical misery, couldn’t imagine stepping into the dark oblivion around me. I remember feeling like I had little in common with the doppelgangers. I had explored a million ideas and a million more over the aching span of time I’d sat, unmoving. Glancing down to my hands, I could see the term barely applied anymore. My fingers seemed more like gnarled roots, tufted with dark hairs. My bones curled and bent. Every move an agony.
Around me, the familiar array of sunlit spears spread to the distant darkness. Though they fell dark and bloomed anew every few days, the general disposition of them hadn’t noticeably changed in … forever. The same background cacophony of woe pervaded. But then, something seemed different. There was new light - close by, it seemed. Things were brighter than usual. Looking around was not the casual feat it had once been and so I braced my hands against the wet ground - it no longer disgusted me - and pivoted my whole body around to look. My neck couldn’t handle the task alone anymore.
There it was, a brilliant spear of light illuminating a patch of ground not more than a few inches from my own. So close. I had never been so close to another wretch before. Would the newcomer beg for answers like I had, or lapse into monotonous distress immediately? I dreaded either answer. My infinite bubble of solitude, impermeable and secure, had become a refuge. No discomfort intruded beyond what I would allow, and such a discipline had served me well for an unaccountable stretch of time. A mental plan for complete dissociation began to form. If I could shut down all the input around me, I wouldn’t have to worry about this unknowable development. I closed my eyes and bent my mind to the task.
Above me, something deep in the bones of the universe grumbled wetly and the sealed aperture above the new puddle of light began to twitch and flex. My concentration fled. He was on his way through whatever strange threshold barred this world from the last. I supposed I could delay my trance and see what happened. I’d never been that close before. Soon, the sphincter relaxed and a lubricated limb pushed its way out, followed soon after by another, until before very long the whole wet humanoid ensemble slipped from the ceiling and onto the floor. Another me, steaming and fresh in that strange, unknowable purgatory. I glanced upward at the hole, it would remain open for another few moments before closing and folding inward into obscurity. Just as well I thought, who knew to what horrors it led. Though… It was very close. In my youth I might have been able to leap upwards and grab a fleshy handhold, and draw myself into the dim crevice to see where it led. Perhaps I might have even found my way through before suffocating - if suffocating was even possible here. t was only a few inches away…
I began to unfold myself. I creaked open like some rusty praying mantis. My joints and throat squealed in painful unison. Flakes of dry filth fell of, followed by larger chunks as I began to move more quickly. My heart raced and thumped in my chest as I came to one knee and pushed myself up for the first time in ages. I stood once again, teetering and uncertain. I felt so old. I didn’t know if I could survive a crossing through the shadows, even over so short a distance, but I felt the time had come to try. Though I was still not yet ready for oblivion, this felt like the first acceptable risk in forever for a chance at something else. Maybe something better. I took a deep breath, held it, then exhaled. I knew only a few moments more and the sphincter would squeeze itself shut on the best opportunity I would ever have to leave this place. I leapt.
Buy my body failed to respond, the many years of inactivity had taken their toll. I stumbled over the boundary, slipping into the darkness instead of racing past it. It poured into me. I was invaded by an intense, icy agony. It froze me at a cellular level. A cold so deep it burned like a bright white fire - I could even see it - an unbearable spark of pure brilliance just beyond that eternal plunge to oblivion. The beacon was more than just pain, though it was something too intense for me to grasp. It called to me across that chasm of terrible nothingness. I teetered at the edge of it, gazing downward, and felt myself succumb to some fundamental force deeper, and older, than the rest. I started to let it drag me beyond. Then I was through, back into the ruddy brilliance, shivering and seizing in a pile of graceless limbs next to my unconscious twin. I looked down at my hands again and saw they had grown ashy and twitchy with shock and age. They looked so old I hardly believed I could still move them.
I looked at the other me. He lay curled at my knees - still quiet and untroubled by his new reality. I looked up at the gap in the fleshy ceiling and saw that it was already closing. I was too late. I had moved too slowly, or had spent too much time in that interim place. I summoned what little strength I had left and pulled myself back to my feet. The aperture was now closed and the protruding lump that had birthed it began to fold back in on itself. Anger flared up in me. I couldn’t get that close and miss the opportunity. I crouched low, spared a glance at the man at my feet who’d just begun to stir, and poured every last bit of energy I had into a jump. I stretched my bowed limbs to their limits. The gnarled fingers of one hand punched through the closed gap and fastened onto something rubbery and wet within. The ceiling around it writhed and flexed. I jammed my other hand in and grabbed something else. The fleshy mass above me began to undulate, and some deep, distant rumble echoed through the space.
I began to lose steam and flailed my legs weakly.
“What the fuck?” I heard a croaking voice beneath me ask.
I looked down and shouted, “Push! Push me up!”
“What?”
“Push me up! Hurry! Push!” I implored.
Improbably, I felt wet, slippery shoulders under my feet and my weight was lifted. I took a moment to regain my breath.
“What’s happening?” I heard him ask. I ignored the question. There was nothing I could tell him in the time I had left.
I tensed my whole body and began to pull myself upward into the crevice. Hand over hand I pulled my head, torso and legs upward into the stifling internals of the strange boundary. I felt it flex and squeeze around me. Clearly I was an unwanted foreign object fighting against some natural reflex. Something did not want me to proceed. I pushed onward anyway. The only thing that awaited me back down below was an awkward conversation and more a capella misery.
“Hey! Wait! Where am I?” I heard him plead. I pulled my feet into the darkness and felt the hole close up behind me.
I rested for a moment. It was dark, wet and stifling, but I found I could still breathe - or perhaps I didn’t need to breathe at all. I tired to pull myself upward, but found that the flexing tissue around me had grown too stiff. I couldn’t move! I began to panic as I felt the walls press even closer around me. Then my surroundings began to flex and fold. I felt my body bend and groan and crack and pop. I felt my shoulder leave its socket and my neck bent so sharply that my vision filled with spinning lights. Just as I could bear it no longer, it began to ease. Soon, it had stopped. I was still vertical, and my shoulder hurt fiercely, but I no longer felt as if I was being crushed in a mass of flexing muscles. I felt around.
At first I didn’t understand what I was touching. I had grown so used the warm, wet humidity, and the filth covering every surface, it took me a moment to drag a memory up from what felt like the distance past. It was a soft, spongy material. Dry and firm, but with a comfortable give after sufficient pressure was applied. It wrapped around my head and torso, legs and feet like a tight, right-angled chimney, with me as the sweep. A rim of bright light ran around all four walls just a few inches above my head. A seam. I squirmed and raised my hands to my face and pushed them upward. They touched the dark, warm ceiling of this new prison. I pressed upward again.
Brilliant, golden light poured in, blinding and painful but it also brought a warmth and a life that I had long forgotten. Tears worked their way loose from my long-parched eyes and down my cheeks. They also felt different. I pressed my fingers to my face and drew them downward. Smooth, with a bit of stubbled beard. Just how I’d used to keep it all those years ago. I was young again.
The glare abated and I was able to see my surroundings. It was a kitchen - my kitchen - in the early light of dawn. I was peeking over the rim of a beautifully-wrapped gift box, from the inside. Everything looked much as it had from my old apartment. Different food on the counters, a different blanket lay over the couch. From my vantage point I could see past my office and down the hall to the door of my bedroom which, atypically, lay open a few inches. I usually had it pulled tightly shut when I slept. Perhaps that’s how that me preferred it, whoever he was. I was ecstatic. Alive! Young! I could feel it too, the powerful energy that I had never really employed. I could feel other things I had lost long ago, like hope, and that giddy joy at the boundless opportunities that could be harnessed in every moment here. All of it being wasted by the man curled up in the dark bedroom just thirty feet down the hall. I grabbed the rim of the box and pulled myself upward.
After crawling out of the box and off of the kitchen table, I looked back. The gift was at the edge of the table, up against a folded-over placemat. It looked exactly how the police had left it. Though it was early morning now, not late afternoon - another small difference. Was this a different time or… a different place? Or something else. I stalked forward down the hallway. I wasn’t certain what my plan was, but I had to see if anyone was there.
There was.
I - a version of me - lay in quiet repose, mouth slightly open with a thin stream of drool staining the pillow below. He looked innocent enough, but I knew his crimes. In my universe or any other I knew he was guilty of not making more of himself and his time in this place - this place full of sunlight. Full of life. I froze. My hands hovered just above his neck. I could see his pulse pressing against the soft, stubbled skin of his throat. He had a goatee. Strange, I’d hated those. I pulled back from the act and stood there, staring for some interminable amount of time. I couldn’t kill him, but I couldn’t let him ruin this life, like I’d ruined mine. Maybe I could give him the second chance I’d gotten.
I skulked back to the kitchen, and with a very hard-earned patience, began to position the gift box on the kitchen table… just so.