The Box

By Megan Mak

Since the time I had a panic attack at home because my mailman knocked on my front door when I was 13, I have been looking out the tiny door hole before I had a full-on mini lockdown at home. However, today? It’s a whole other story…

I was simply chilling on my couch, binge-watching Netflix shows, gaming, and eating snacks when the doorbell rang. Like I said, I always answer the door when I’m home alone, nothing really happens to me.

I got up, looked through the door hole, and opened the door. I stepped out of my house, and guess what? There was nobody there! I didn’t think much about it, I just thought it was my annoying neighbor Caleb, ding-dong-ditching me. So I just kept doing my thing.

Suddenly, something in my brain urged me to check the door again, so I did. I went with the flow and opened the door. That’s when I saw a box, a plain brown box. A random box, sitting on my doormat. I heard creaking, crying, and other weird noises coming out of the box. I listened closely as I fought the urge to bring the box into my house.

Then I randomly thought, what if it’s a human? What if it’s alive? Is this a trap? Or is this a test? This can’t be safe… But that was only half of me, the other half of me was insanely curious about what was inside the box, and what would happen if I actually opened the box. So me being me, I decided to bring it into my house and open the box.

Don’t blame me, I’m home alone as a teenager… What do you expect me to do? My parents died in a plane crash when I was 11, I had to learn how to take care of myself and how to get a job!

I slowly approached the box and placed it on my coffee table. I took the 3 layers of secure masking tape off, my hands were shaking so much that I almost dropped the tape that I just peeled off the box. After I took the tape off, I noticed that the noises got louder and louder. I started getting very nervous and kept questioning myself.

I flipped over the flaps on the box and there was a baby… Not just any baby, a half-human half-robotic baby. It has blood stains on it and everything. I didn’t know what to do with the baby so I continued to stare at the baby.

At this point, I didn’t know what to do with the giant box over all so I put the baby back in and tried to ignore it and get back to my show and games. Even though I told myself not to open the box, the noises coming out of the box urged me to open it. So I did it again.

As I opened the box, I had a feeling come in my gut telling me not to open the box. And, trust me, I wish I didn’t open the box because there was a knife when I did. A knife. A sharp kitchen knife, with the same blood stains on it. And well dear me, I picked the knife up. I still regret that to this day.

You might be wondering why I regret picking up the knife so much, so I’ll tell you. I regretted that so much because the knife had some type of magic power to it. No, I’m not crazy, when I held my knife in my hand, my hand was shaking like crazy. My hand wasn’t shaking because I was scared, I was genuinely shaking because of the knife.

Like every other person, I put the knife back into the box and closed the box.

I do not know why, but I opened the box again, out of curiosity, which I know was not a good idea. As I opened the box, the door creaked a bit, but I just assumed it was the wind. I looked into the box, and guess what?

There was a death note… An opened death note… With my name written on it… I knew that if I saw my name on it I would die or whatever. So of course, I was scared and didn’t know what to do, considering there was a transforming half-robot half-human baby in my house. Even though the box didn’t contain a baby anymore, instead a death note, it still made weird noises…

I was too scared to do anything this time so I stayed still for about 7 minutes until my phone started buzzing, so I checked it. And it was my neighbor, Caleb, calling me. At first, I thought he was pranking me, but I needed help, so I picked up the phone and he started talking. It turns out, it was April first and someone in my neighborhood was pranking my whole neighborhood. He put a speaker in all the boxes for the noises and the stuff didn’t transform, it was just a mind trick.

I guess I’m safe, for now…