Boom.

It was cold that night. She shivered through her thin coat, not having expected the temperature to drop so dramatically. She was with her friend, Macy. Macy was short, with pale red hair and brown eyes. Ellise herself had dark blonde hair and blue eyes. She was taller than Macy, if not by much.

They had gone to get dinner together after a long day at the hospital. It was dark, the stars largely covered by a thick cloud. Most of the streetlights were intact, although dim. There were only a few people on the street.

Suddenly, a car came down the street. This would be ordinary if the car wasn't completely black, with the backseat window rolled down and a sniper poking out from the darkness.

BAM! BAM! BAM!

Bullets went soaring. Someone screamed as a bullet bit their flesh, squirting blood. Ellise cried out when one launched itself into her arm. Macy however, did not scream when she was hit. She fell to the ground, dead.

Ellise forgot the chaos, the raining bullets, the screams of pain. She crouched beside her friend, willing her back to life.

But Macy had been dead before she hit the ground.

The car sped away, leaving everyone either dead or injured. Ellise’s adrenaline had spiked, causing her to forget the small piece of metal embedded in her arm.

***

A week later and since she’d left the hospital Ellise hadn’t walked out of her home. She didn’t want to see anyone. She couldn’t stop staring at pictures of Macy, wishing she’d return.

Her doorbell rang unexpectedly. She stood groggily, still in her pajamas. A quick glance at the clock on the wall told her it was nine-forty.

Her table was littered with whiskey glasses. But she was sober now, with a slight hangover.

She opened the door to find a little boy on the front porch with a brown box in his hand.

“Will you give me my money now?” he asked, huffing. “The man said you’d give me five bucks if I brought you your box.”

“S-sure,” Ellise replied, confused and delirious. She absently found her wallet and handed the kid his reward. She closed the door before she was certain he was completely out of the threshold.

After she’d taken a knife from the drawer she stood before the box, slowly cutting it open. The tape shrieked as she tore it apart.

She opened the box to find a large object wrapped in white paper and stained red. She could feel her pulse as adrenaline began to settle in her system.

She unfolded the crinkled paper, releasing a shriek of horror once she discovered its contents.

Inside was a human hand. Not just any hand; she recognized her mother’s wedding band. It’d been dirtied with dried blood.

There was also a note inside the package. Her hands shook violently as she smoothed out the crease.

Hello Ellise,

How do you like my gift? It’s what you deserve. It’s what your friend deserved. How are you handling that by the way? I noticed you haven’t been leaving your house. Don’t call the police. If you do, your mother will suffer even more.

She didn’t know she was crying until she went to wipe the tears out of her eyes. Someone had kidnapped her mom and this same person had killed her best friend.

And there was nothing she could do about it.

***

The next week Ellise was on the verge of losing her job. She still hadn’t come back to work. Receiving her mother’s hand had kept her inside, scared she would find something worse on her porch.

So when her doorbell rang she found herself frozen.

When she opened the door she knew instantly something terrible was in the box. A sweet, smiling girl held it in her small arms. Her pale blonde hair was in pigtails.

But the box had nothing written on it, just like the one with the hand still inside it.

Unwilling to hurt the child’s feelings, she accepted the package and set it on her table.

It sat there, unopened for an hour until she could stand it no longer. She had to know its contents.

She found her keys, them being the closest sharp object, and sawed it open.

Her mother’s blue eyes.

They had been shoveled from her face and set delicately on tissue paper.

She screamed to the empty room, wishing someone would hear her. Wishing there was someone still alive she could talk to. Her father was gone. He’d died of cancer, despite her efforts to save him. Her mother was gone, kidnapped and only returned in the form of body parts. Her best friend was dead and would she would never see her again.

No one heard her and she went on to remove the slip of paper from the box. There was a number on it.

She called it.

Each ring of the phone shattered her confidence, as if she had any to begin with. On the last ring the call was answered.

The silence lingered for a long moment before Ellise blurted, “Why?”

A chuckling fired from the other end of the receiver. Then suddenly the smugness turned to anger.

“Why?” the voice growled. The man on the other end sounded young.

“Because you deserve it!” he shouted. “You’re a doctor; you’re supposed to help people. You could have at least tried to save my father but you only looked after yours! He was dying and you let it happen!”

“My father died too,” Ellise whispered into the phone, her eyes misting again.

“I know,” he snapped. “And you had it coming. But don’t worry. I only have one last package to send.”

He laughed, smug again, before the line went dead.

***

Ellise had been officially fired from her job. Not that it mattered. In just a short couple of hours, nothing she did would ever matter again.

The doorbell rang when Ellise was making coffee. Her resolve had been stretched thin. She couldn’t handle the sight of another body part. She decided she would not open this one and yet she couldn’t stop herself from taking it inside.

The child at the door, this time, was another girl, who looked eager to help. “The man said you needed this for your puppy. Is it sick?”

Ellise forced herself to smile. She had no reason to plague the child. No reason to tell this delicate creature what she was handing over.

“It won’t be soon,” Ellise promised, although she had no puppy.

***

Hours later, there was a sudden loud beeping sound.

Beep, beep. Beep, beep.

It was coming from the box. She realized it wasn’t a body part.

But it might be a bomb.

She ran to the box as the chirping became more frantic. As soon as her fingertips grazed the cardboard it exploded.

BOOM.