Third Short Story

John did not know who the package was from, but the labelit claimed to be from a relative of his. John did not recognize the name at all but it did have his last name, which was not a common last name, so he assumed the package was not lying. John found the package one morning when he was about to go to work. The package looked as if it had been sent over six decades ago, which made John wonder how it managed to get to him. When John opened the weather beaten box he was surprised to find another metal box. The metal box had the appearance of being made in a factory. After a few minutes of inspecting it John noticed that there was absolutely no way to open it and it was in fact just a metal cube.

John had no idea what to do with the cube and realised that he had spent about an hour looking at it. He was going to be late for work. He tossed the cube onto his couch and ran out the door to his car. When he got to work he saw his boss waiting for him and John reluctantly approached him. This had been the third time John had been over an hour late to work that week and his boss told him that if it happened one more time he would be fired. The rest of the day John didn’t do anything productive besides sit at his desk, stare at his computer, and thinking about his life.

When John got home he felt exhausted. He collapsed on to his couch, and after a couple of seconds John realised that the metal box was no longer on the couch and that his whole house was in ruin.  All of his electronic equipment was gone and there was things that should have been in closets all over the ground.  John’s first reaction was to stare blankly at the mess around him, and then call the cops.

When the police had finished searching John’s house they told John that there were no fingerprints they could find to suggest how a person might have got in. All they found was a letter that seemed to be from the intruder. The letter that the police found thanked John for returning the cube to its rightful owner. It explained that the reason most of his electronic devices were gone was a payment by John to the intruder for it taking such a long time for him to give back the cube. When the police finally left John’s house it was late at night so John went to sleep very quickly.

When John woke up the next morning he was startled to see the metal cube at the foot of his bed. John decided the best thing to do was to take the cube with him to work so that if somebody wanted to take it from him they would not break into his house to do so. John put the cube in the passenger seat of his car and started to drive to work. While driving John would glance at the cube every once in awhile and noticed that it started to disappear slowly as he got closer and closer to his work. By the time he got to his work the cube was gone, but there was a letter on his seat threatening him to not take the cube again.