Boxed In: A Night Out Ruined

Looking back, we could have avoided this. There were a thousand decisions and had either of us made a different choice we wouldn't be here. He'd tell you it started with me opening the mysterious box. But no, our problems started long before that. It's been months since we've been able to agree on anything and everything seems to go wrong. It was no different last night.

We were late. I had lost the invitation with the address. He couldn't find his keys. My car was low on gas and we had to stop to fill it. He insisted on using Google maps and put north instead of south. We ended up on a dirt road with no cell reception and a flat tire. He fixed it, using a full arsenal of tools, brute force, and curse words that would make your grandmother blush.

Finally we arrived, three hours late. We'd missed the ceremony and dinner. We rushed in, dropped off our gift, our congratulations, and our apologies. We then left starving, not speaking to each other, and speckled in mud.

He just wanted to get drive-thru and head home. I just wanted to sit down and eat something I didn't have to unwrap first. He wanted Mexican and I wanted Italian so we ended up at a mom and pop greasy spoon diner. We ate in hostile silence.

I got up to use the restroom and slammed into the waitress and ended up covered head to toe in a rainbow mix of soda. I retrieved my gym bag from the car, changed into my yoga pants and a sweatshirt, and just wanted to go home, go to bed, and put this whole terrible day behind me.

But, of course, the car wouldn't start.

That's how we ended up in the rundown motel next to the diner. We did manage to agree on one thing: we'd seen more than one slasher movie that started out in a place just like this. So I suppose, I should have known better than to open that strange box.

After an uncomfortable night tossing and turning in angry silence, we dragged ourselves out of bed early enough to get breakfast before the parts store would open. We were headed out the door to give the greasy diner another shot when we saw the plain brown box sitting in front of the door.

"I wonder what this is," I bent down and reached for the box.

He grabbed my shoulder to pull me back, "That's trouble, is what it is."

"Oh, come on Ryan. You are soooo paranoid," I rolled my eyes. "It's probably the stuff you ordered from the parts store for my car."

Ryan still looked skeptical, but shrugged his shoulders. " I suppose it could be but they don't open for another hour."

I carried the box back into the room, easily pried up the packing tape with my fingernails and pushed the top flaps open. Inside was another box completely wrapped in black duct tape. I started trying to pry the tape up but there was no good place to pull from. Ryan got out his pocket knife and quickly slashed through the tape to reveal another box nestled inside.

"What a waste of packaging!" I laughed as Ryan dumped the gray metal cube onto the floor.

Now that I'm telling it, I see we really should have realized this was a bad idea. This clearly was no ordinary box. But even Ryan had forgotten his trepidation as the mystery package became a bigger enigma. Curiosity overcame rationale and without a second thought he flicked out the screw driver attachment on his pocket knife and quickly removed the four screws holding on the lid. The inside of the box was lined with blue velvet to protect the mirror sided cube inside it.

Each side of the cube had the words "7 Years" etched across the center. We gave each other matching looks of bewilderment.

"So to open this we have to break a mirror and accept 7 years of bad luck?" Ryan picked up the cube and spun it between his hands. That's when I noticed the words on the bottom were different.

"Wait, that one says 'break me.' I'm guessing that's the side we’re supposed to break," I pointed out.

Ryan set the cube down and tapped the mirror with the pocket knife where it said "break me." Little spiderweb cracks spread and the glass shattered into millions of tiny pieces.

Inside we found a small rough wooden crate. "You got a crow bar attachment on that knife of yours?" I looked at Ryan hopefully, but he was already shaking his head. Then I remembered I had something that might work in my purse and grabbed it.

Ryan looked skeptically at me, "You keep a crow bar in your purse?"

"No, but I do keep this!" I pulled out an S shaped hook that was wide and flat on the top.

"What is that?" One of his thick dark eyebrows raised high above his crystal green eye.

I laughed at his befuddlement, "It's to hang my bag on the edge of a table."

"How is that going to help?" He shook his head.

"Well, you carry a tool for everything you might need but I figure out how to turn anything into the tool I need." I demonstrated by sliding the flat part into the crack below the lid, wrapped my fingers around the hook and pulled down with all my strength, prying loose the nails and lifting the lid.

"Alright, " He smiled coyly. "That was kind of impressive. "

We then pulled from the crate one perfectly ordinary white gift box. It wasn't even taped shut. We just had to lift the top flap up to open it. Suddenly the entire room filled with a blinding white light for several seconds before slowly dimming so we could see again.

"Kayla, where are we?" Ryan grabbed my hand tightly, panic filling his voice.

We were both still sitting next to each other and my purse was still sitting on my lap. But the box we'd been opening with the remnants of all its strange layers had vanished, as had our motel room. There were no walls, no ceiling, no sky, nothing. There was light, but no visible source. Everywhere I looked all I could see was white, an endless sea of white nothingness.

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The Tale of the Tale: Boxed In was the first story I wrote after joining Vocal and intended to submit it to the Mystery Box Challenge. Unfortunately, my story ran long, way exceeding the word limit. Undeterred, I uploaded it to Vocal two years ago with the intention of editing it down to the appropriate length on the final day of the challenge. With time quickly running out, I learned there were many more steps to submitting a story then just putting words on a page and clicking a button. I had to find a picture. I had to sign up for Vocal+. I had to come up with a subtitle. After all that, my word count still ran long. I read through the story, cutting things wherever I could. Overall, I was a little frustrated with the hastened ending I had to settle for but I decided to just go for it. That's when my internet went out causing me to miss the deadline for the challenge. So, this story has sat in my drafts for two years, waiting for me to decide what to do with it. Now, as I have started resurrecting my abandoned tales I felt it was time to return to Kayla, Ryan, and the mysterious box. I went back to my original, way too long, version and decided in order to do justice to this story, it should be split apart into multiple pieces so I can add more detail and come up with a more satisfying ending.

See where Ryan & Kayla's story goes next.

Chapter Two: