An Empty Box of Heaven

Doomsday doesn’t usually show up wrapped in brown paper, Astrid thought. Does it? She wasn’t sure how doomsday got around these days, but she figured it would want something a bit more flashy than a box in brown wrapping paper, tied up with twine. Honestly, who wraps packages like that anymore? She was certain the post office and other carriers would consider that undeliverable. Get all caught up in their machines, right? Nevertheless, there was a package on her tiny front porch, centered precisely between the wrought iron railings, her front door, and the first step.

“Where did you come from?” she whispered. There was nothing about the package that was ominous. Certainly not in a box full of rabid scorpions sort of way, or a ‘this is the index finger of your wife so pay up’ sort of way. Not even in a two sticks of dynamite with an old-fashioned alarm clock sort of way. No, it’s very innocence was the disturbing aspect, like smiles in nightmares.

Astrid exhaled loudly, her breath puffing into a brilliant cloud that faded away into the morning sunlight. Her feet were growing cold, the chill of the concrete reaching through the rubber doormat and her thick slippers to numb her soles. She bounced on the balls of her feet and tucked her hands up under her armpits and concluded she would let Jill decide what to do with the damned box. She backed back into the house, and called out, “Hey, babe? I think you got a package.”

She did not feel one molecule of guilt over this. Jill was the enforcer. Jill got it done. This was Jill’s territory. Jill would be furious with her if she weren’t allowed to handle a situation like this. Astrid’s girlfriend shuffled out of the bathroom and towards the front door, brushing her teeth and glaring at Astrid through sleepy eyes.

“It looks heavy…” Astrid offered feebly.

Jill stopped at the threshold, bent in half as she studied the package momentarily, then straightened abruptly and said, “Nope,” around the toothbrush in her mouth, shut the front door and marched back toward the bathroom.

“What do you mean, ‘nope’?” Astrid asked, wounded. “I’m not expecting anything.”

Jill spat in the sink. “Neither am I,” she said. “Anyway, it looks like a package you would get.” She continued to brush her teeth with deliberate care.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Astrid asked.

Jill swished water around in her mouth, spat, and then dabbed at her lips. She sighed and turned to Astrid. “Honey, all of my packages have a gazillionaire’s smirk on the side of the box. You’re always beathing the ‘buy local’ drum. Does that not scream ‘local’ to you? And who wraps parcels in string anymore?”

Astrid nodded meekly. The string theory was sound, it seemed.

“Just leave it for the mailperson to grab,” Jill suggested, batting her dark eyes. “Or anyone else, frankly. I’m surprised it’s lasted very long out there – this neighborhood is infested with porch pirates.” She squeezed past Astrid to the bedroom, and began dressing for work. Astrid bobbed her head in agreement.

Astrid stared at the front door, hoping to see a shadowy figure through the frosted windows, indicating a package thief. But she knew no sensible person would want anything to do with it.

Jill rushed out of the bedroom, kissed Astrid’s cheek and muttered something about having to get coffee, headed to the kitchen and out the back door.

“Coward,” Astrid mumbled.

* * *

She had tried to distract herself with a hot shower, breakfast, the internet, and awful morning talk shows. Nothing kept her mind off the package sitting quietly on the other side of her front door.

When it was long past due for the day’s mail delivery to be announced by the opening and dropping of the mailbox’s rusty flap, she decided she would check and see if…well, if the world was still out there. It was, along with the package. She noticed mail stuffed into her neighbor’s boxes on either side of her, yet her own was suspiciously empty. That really isn’t fair, she thought, and scowled. She saw one of Mrs. Bryant’s wizened eyes peeking between the drapes hanging in the elderly woman’s bay window. It had a decidedly judgmental and accusatory glint in it today – more so than normal, anyway. The old bat could barely tolerate a mixed-race couple living next door, but leaving a package on your front stoop for too long was the last straw, apparently. Astrid tucked a stray lock of her pale blonde hair behind an ear and blew Mrs. Bryant a kiss. That normally made the eye vanish behind the curtains, but it remained steady and fixed. A wrinkled finger poked from between the drapes, and pecked at the window in the direction of the package.

“Yeah, yeah,” Astrid muttered, and glared at the box. I should pick it up and drop it over on her porch, she thought. She knew the box wouldn’t allow that. It could only be picked up by her, and brought in her house. She didn’t think to question why she knew this.

Astrid sighed, bent over and grasped the package on either side and lifted. It was surprisingly light, and she gasped at the revelation. She straightened, resisting the temptation to shake the box. That might just make it mad...

She slowly backed into her house and hooked her heal on the back of the door, kicking it shut. That produced a muted whoomp, and she felt as if the house had become sealed and pressurized. She was locked in, and there would be no forcing the door open to escape – she may as well be flying at 30,000 feet right now. She was certain the outside world just heaved a sigh of relief, and could now go on about its business.

She sat the package on the kitchen counter, pulled up a stool and sat down to study the wrapped parcel. She didn’t have a feeling of dread – the notion of a coming doomsday that had bothered her earlier was still with there, but it felt more like a personal trauma, not a world-shattering cataclysm. It was a feeling of inevitability - even a needful feeling. Something that would alter her life with finality.

She used a tape measure to note its dimensions (ten inches by fourteen by nine). She discovered that the twine had the texture and sheen of human hair, auburn strands twisted around each other for strength and durability. She was rather jealous of how neatly they tied into a bow. Her unruly blonde locks didn’t behave so gracefully.

“Alright,” she sighed. “Enough. Just get it over with.” She fished in a drawer for a pair of industrial-strength scissors Jill had ordered. Her hand hovered over the package, scissors open and hungry, and she worried again about angering the box. “Not every problem is a nail,” she declared, and set the tool on the counter. She grasped the end of the twine and gently tugged. The loops pulled loose easily, and the twine, string, hair or whatever it was dropped limp and still to the counter top.

“Huh,” she grunted, and studied the package again. The wrapping was still tight and sound against the box beneath. The triangular flaps appeared to keep in place through sheer force of perfection. She slid a finger nail under one end, and it lifted neatly, staying in place ninety degrees up from its original position tucked against the box. “Huh,” Astrid said again, and repeated the maneuver at the other end. She unwrapped the paper with the reverence it had obviously been wrapped with. The covering lay flat and level on the counter, showing no signs it had once been folded around the box. Astrid shook her head, and poked at the naked box. It looked like your standard corrugated brown box, but closer inspection revealed a precision of manufacturing that no sensible cardboard box company would emulate. There were no stamps of size or brand, just a featureless brown expanse of cardboard. She lifted the flaps to reveal rectangles of shiny black metallic slabs. She counted seven rows each the length and width of the box.

“49,” she breathed, and wondered if that was something significant.

She tried to pry out one of the rectangles of metal, and was astonished at how heavy it was. “This is impossible,” she laughed. She lifted the box easily, but the tiny ingot clearly outweighed the totality of them in the box. She managed to pull one out, and laid it on the counter with a solid thunk. It was shorter than expected. After she pulled up several more of the objects, she noticed that there was a second layer beneath. She lifted the box, and it was heavier now. What in the infernal hell is this nonsense? she wondered. She removed all of the top layer, save for one in the center. She tried, but could not lift the box now. She scowled at the remaining shaft of metal – or whatever – in the center, and then noticed it was just a topper to another beneath it. She grabbed the top, cube-shaped ingot, twisted and pulled and strained to remove it until it seemed to fly off the object beneath it and drove her hand painfully down onto the kitchen counter. She had to push the little block off of her palm with her other hand, which then cradled the wounded one as tears formed at the corners of her eyes.

That really hurt! she thought. What the hell am I doing this for?

Poking out of the bottom layer of black slabs was a cyan-tinted silver shaft that should have reflected everything around it, but it’s beauty was too greedy to allow anything else to play across its surface. Astrid stared at it, hypnotized as she sucked on a bruised knuckle.

Don’t you dare touch that, she thought. It will not end well. But she knew she had to, and that she would. Her teeth let go of her knuckle, and her hand shook as it moved towards the center of the box. Her extended index finger began to tingle, a sense of attraction forming at its tip as if the digit were falling into it, and she realized she was caught in its gravity and there was no escape. She almost – almost! – gasped as her hand then arm then all of her was drawn into it in less than an instant, and she was gone. The black slabs rattled and shook on the counter, then flew back to their original stations, the flaps slapping shut and the paper wrapping itself around the box. The string retied itself around the box and into a bow on top. A careful observer may have noticed it was now a pale blonde color, but they more than likely would have missed it – the box collapsed in on itself and was gone before it had even been there.

* * *

For a moment, it seemed as if there was a new constellation in the night sky. Before too many astronomers – amateur and professional alike - could marvel at its appearance, it was accepted as always having been there. The Greeks had imagined her as a reclining nymph reaching out, finger pointing – it’s tip a lovely blue dwarf star. A pale wash of a nebula made up her hair, and of course a lot of imagination filled in the rest, but the universe was pleased with its new display of divine beauty. That someone on an insignificant speck of dirt missed her girlfriend with an aching heart did not matter to the heavens. When did that ever matter, when there was glory to behold?