The Box

 The story doesn't begin where you think it should. It begins twelve years ago in the middle of the night during a dream by a boy named Josef. He wakes up at 3:27a.m., disturbed by what he's seen and unable to sleep. He remains awake and sees the sunrise. He writes the dream down on a piece of paper and puts it in the box on the shelf in his closet. He falls asleep for an hour before his mom comes to wake him up. It's Saturday morning. "Wake up, Sleepyhead." His eyes open just enough to see his mother is wearing a green sweater, the same one that once belonged to his Grandmother. "Did you sleep well last night?" He looks toward the closet and his eyes pause there for a moment. "Yes, Mom." That's how it all began.

The years went by and it would feel like he had forgotten all about the dream. In that lull of memory, it would race back like a wave crashing onto the shore. He would close his eyes, focus his breathing, and try to move on. On and on it went this way for many years. The box moved with him when he left his parent's house and went to college in a neighboring state. It would move to his first apartment the city over from his parents at his first real job after graduation. In his thirties he married Marcia. The box moved in, too.

Marcia and Josef had two children, Jane, and Eberly. The girls were as joyous and full of life as they could have hoped for. They had all the usual fears The box, as much as he wished to forget it, he could not. He couldn't bear the thought of his wife and daughters reading the page in the box and destroying everything. The fear grew like the grey hairs in his hair and beard.

The cursed dream had haunted him for most of his life. He had never burdened another soul with the knowledge on the page. 

One week Marcia asked him if it would be ok for her to take the girl's for the weekend to her aunt's house in Brighton. He agreed, but only on the condition he stay home that weekend to work on repairs around the house he'd been meaning to get to. She grudgingly agreed.

That Friday, as Marcia, Jane, and Eberly, were about to leave, he hugged them tighter than usual, told them just how much he loved them. He kissed Marcia with a tenderness she hadn't felt since they first started dating. She looked into his eyes and said, "It's only the weekend. We'll be home before you know it. The girls took turns saying "Bye, Daddy" as he hugged them.

He watched the car drive down the street beneath a sky so deeply orange that it could have been another color.

He slept fitfully that first night and dreamt. In bed, the room dark like a moonless midnight, a crushing weight bore down on his chest. He couldn't breath. He couldn't open his mouth to cry out. He could feel its eyes in the void, gazing down at him, laughing, mocking him in a language no man has heard.

It was a dream. It was a bad dream. It was a very bad dream. That's all it was. He told himself that over and over when he woke up, until he was ready to get out of bed and do the work. 

Marcia called midday to check in. The girls said hi to their Daddy and just how much they missed him at their aunt's house. He told Marcia he loved her. She told him she loved him back. When they got off the phone she could feel a knot growing in her belly. 

Later that Saturday afternoon, after having replaced the burned out bulbs in the recessed lighting, mowed the lawn with old mower, and pulled the weeks, he decided to have lunch on the back deck with a beer and a couple of slices of leftover pizza from two nights ago. The clouds had grown a dark pregnant grey and appeared to be growing darker. After just a couple of minutes, the first heavy drops began to fall with pummeling splats. He went inside and latched the sliding door shut. He turned on the lights in the living room and sat to finish his meal.

It was strange for such a heavy rain to fall. The forecast hadn't said anything about rain. What must have rain been like on a tropical and ancient earth, he wondered? Was it anything like this? 

He wasn't sure if it was the peal of thunder he heard first, or the bolt of lightning scarring the horizon he noticed first. The lights flickered and steadied. "It's ok", he thought, though he had his doubts.

Suddenly, the house shook, and the lights flickered into darkness. He wanted to run, but where? He knew he could not escape. He grabbed the flashlight from the kitchen and went to the garage. He stood before the box, while the sound of the pelting rain filled the world outside. Was it reading his thoughts? His body began to feel electric, the hairs raising all over his skin. Finally, finality.

The firefighters told Marcia it was a million to one shot that the lightning would strike him in the garage. Almost everything had been charred except for a couple of boxes.