February 20, 2013

HWC: Assignment #2 — The Box

I wasn’t sure what to make of it. That inanimate object that arrived while I was gone sat perched upon my door step. The squared edges were quite nondescript, yet noticeable at the same time. Who sent the thing, was my first thought, followed by my second as to what could possibly be within it?

I wasn’t sure and of course I didn’t have any answers to such obvious questions. Did I dare find out and open the darn thing? Appease my own sense of unease as well as my curiosity? Was I really ready to take that chance? Indeed, I wondered that and more as I gently pushed at the box with the toe of my shoe. The scrape and shuffle against the concrete setting the hairs on the back of my neck to rise, which in turn sent the goose-flesh to roll over the flesh of my arms followed by a course shiver of my entire body.

What the hell?

After unlocking the door I pushed and prodded the box toward the step that would bring me inside the house. I didn’t want to touch it due to some unknown and unfathomable fear crawling from those depths of secrets best kept locked away reared its ugly head and roared “COWARD!” No fool am I, I assure you. But the box contradicted that, you see.

Reaching out from the last time I received a box. That box of horrors that, to this day continues to haunt me. Will I ever be rid of such … macabre injustice? I doubt it. But that box was similar to that of Pandora and the contents of such melee and havoc that it consumed me in all its glory.

Did this new box have similar interests as that of the old one? Will it take me for a ride and then up and leave me? Discard me as if I was nothing? Throw me away and kick me to the curb? Ahhh … such agony in this realization that a box holds such control over the emotions that are still very much packed away for future use.

Again, what the hell?

I am worried about this box that now sits on the table in front of me, still neatly taped closed with its squared and nondescript edges that are nothing but lies and more lies. The contents are unique, I suppose, but again, I am not comfortable with that exploration, no matter the significance or, for that matter, the repercussions.

I do not want to relive what happened last time. Yet here I am, sucked into a facsimile of benign intervention. What the fuck? Strange, I agree, yet there is much truth to that which I cannot expand upon at this time. The old box didn’t survive, but I did. Barely. What then, would my chances be of survival if I were to take a peek into this one?

That’s not going to happen. It still sits, quietly waiting, expectant and greedy. Almost needful in its silent plea to be opened and explored and let loose to wreak its joyous, and malignant havoc. I cannot allow that to happen in spite of the familiarity of the box. I cannot.

That box with its squared edges that are not really that nondescript after-all.

HoopsWritingClub

February 21, 2013

please leave a note submitting this story so i can post a link…thanks

Good story! I like that you left it a mystery and left something to the imagination. If I was going to offer a criticism, I’d only mention the truthfulness of the “inner dialogue.” For instance, if a story is narrated, calling the object inanimate doesn’t seem false at all, but as part of inner dialogue I’m not sure it fits. If the narrator has a quirky mind and thinks that way, of course, it’s fine, but if that’s the case I think it needs to be built up a bit and established and maybe even acknowledged by the narrator to make it more accessible to those who wouldn’t ever internally describe things that way. Still, a great story. Lots of possibilities if you ever wanted to flesh it out a bit too.

ryn: thank you for linking, but please read the instructions for submissions. no extra words, in the future, please. just the blurb and the link. comments should be in separate notes. thanks. -mgmt

Peter_24601

February 22, 2013

Wow, this was pretty cool. While part of me wants to know what’s inside, this is how you keep the reader turning the page and reading your work through the ngiht. Well done! Cheers,

I’d love to see this story expanded a bit.

GettingAway

February 25, 2013

This definitely leaves me asking for more…more about the last box, more about this one. I am curious about a character who uses phrases like “sucked into a facsimile of benign intervention”…not sure what to make of this person.

*Tagonist

March 1, 2013

This was well-written, I think, but I would like to have seen it fleshed out a little more. It’s a lot of build up without any real resolution, and you hint at a lot of things that could be really awesome. Still, well done!

This is a very cool exercise in tension. I enjoyed formulating different ideas of what might be inside the box while the narrator grew more and more disturbed. But in the end, I feel like it was missing a resolution. We don’t need to know what’s in it, or what the narrator intends to do with it, but we DO need a sense of conclusion, of a decision being made, and those last few paragraphsdon’t drive that home enough. That being said, you accomplish a LOT with a few key ingredients, and I feel like YOU know the narrator well, even if the reader learns precious little about the speaker. That confidence comes through. I want to give you more specific notes regarding two lines in the story. “The squared edges were quite nondescript, yet noticeable at the same time.” I get what you’re trying to say with this line, but it’s a bit fumbly.

“The scrape and shuffle against the concrete setting the hairs on the back of my neck to rise, which in turn sent the goose-flesh to roll over the flesh of my arms followed by a course shiver of my entire body.” This sentence is doing a LOT of work, and some of it is unnecessary. That opening part (from “the scrape and shuffle” to “my neck to rise”) is DYNAMITE, but loses its punch as the sentencecontinues. All in all, a very cool effort. Nicely done.

MollyGolly

March 7, 2013

i found myself more curious about that other box than this new arrival, and i’m not sure if that was the point. but i’ve definitely caught on to the sense of dread and deja vu sparked by the arrival of the box. a bit of that gets lost with long run on sentences tho. i’m terrible for having run ons too, they’re hard habit to break! 🙂

wutabouttharum

March 14, 2013

I agree with the run on sentences, It lost me a little bit and I had to re-read a few sentences to make sense of them. It also makes me curious about a person who uses such words with an inner dialogue. It makes me very curious about this person and what their back story is. I also would have liked some sort of resolution at the end. Was the narrator going to open the box? had they come to a

decision? Of course I would like to know if the box really held something bad in it or if the narrarator is just afraid because of their previous experience…Overall this was good, it got me intrigued and I wanna know more!