The Friedheim Box

I don’t know how it got there, but a plain brown box is sitting on my dining room table, wrapped in thick parchment paper. It is utterly nondescript aside from a simple message scribbled on top in what looks like black permanent marker:

“Friedheim”

It’s been so long since I even thought about the name, let alone read it, that a warm shiver ripped down my spine the instant I saw the package. I have no clue what’s inside. Somewhere deep inside I know that it’s only going to cause problems, but another part of me doesn’t care.

When I woke up this morning, I could sense that something had changed. While I’d normally be laying in bed and running through my plan for the day, the only thing in my mind was the singular desire to go out there and open something I didn’t even know was there.

I nearly did, too. I got as far as grabbing a knife from the kitchen to cut away the paper before I thought better of it. Something felt all too familiar and that tiny voice in the back of my mind told me I would regret it if I opened it up without thinking.

I need to figure out what this is before I do anything else and that name told me exactly where to start.

To my surprise, tucked at the back of my wallet, behind a dozen other business cards, coupons, and scraps that I’ve collected over the years, there’s a folded paper napkin with an old faded phone number written on it. I didn’t intentionally keep it, so I figured I had mindlessly tossed it out at some point when things started to get cluttered, but I guess it survived by sheer chance. Hopefully he hadn’t changed his number since then or all that luck will have gone to waste.

--- --- ---

“Hello, is this Marty?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“Hi, I’m Anne’s kid. I don’t know if you remember me, but we met a while back at…”

“I remember you. Is this about the package?”

“Yes! Thank god you know about it. I was worried you were going to think that I was crazy. Did you send it?”

“...”

“Marty? Are you there?”

“No, it wasn’t me. Look kid, it might be easier if we talked about this in person. Do you still live around your mom’s old place?”

“No… There were too many old memories there. I moved up into the city not too long after the funeral.”

“Really? I should have guessed as much. Are you free today? I live up on the north side so why don’t you swing by.”

“That would be great!”

--- --- ---

It’s barely a twenty minute drive to his house, but it’s no surprise I’ve never run into him before. As I leave my dingy little apartment downtown and head north, the terrain steadily shifts into something completely unrecognizable. The towering buildings give way to open skies, the concrete is replaced with grass, and the streets break away from their gridlines. Mazes in their own right.

I don’t intentionally avoid coming to this part of town, but everything about it makes me feel out of place. Some people might think it’s cleaner or quieter out here, but I’d take that familiar tumult over alienated peace every time.

Eventually, I pull up outside of a large house that looks remarkably like every other one on it’s street, although there is one major difference. A vaguely familiar man is standing out on his patio, dragging from a cigarette. On the surface, he looks like exactly the kind of man you would expect to live in this part of town, but something immediately feels off to me.

It’s like his whole image is a poorly fit outfit. If a house could look baggy on someone, it would look like this.

“Marty?”

“Yeah. Come on in.”

The dissonance doesn’t stop as we move inside. In fact, it gets worse.

It’s gorgeously decorated, like those homes on the covers of interior design magazines. Everything is clean and in its place, like it’s waiting for someone to finally live in it. Even the family pictures hanging on the walls feel like stock photos. The only thing that convinces me they aren’t is the man who looks just like Marty scattered through them. Despite being the only thing that definitively ties him to this place, they are also the hardest part for me to believe. Having to look past the flesh and blood Marty in front of me to see the cheerful man in the pictures, surrounded by his smiling wife and children, I just can’t bring myself to see them as the same person.

“Look, let’s make this quick. Nobody will be home for at least a few hours, but I’d still prefer to get you sorted out as soon as possible. You got a package, right? The size of a shoebox? Wrapped in brown paper? It’s got the family name written on top?”

“Yeah, that sounds about right, although I don’t really consider it my ‘family’ name.”

“Whatever. Your mom’s maiden name?”

“Yeah…”

“Did you open it?”

“I thought about it, but something didn’t feel right. Do you know what’s inside?”

“Nope and I don’t want to. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll never find out either.”

“Why?”

“Nothing good ever happens when people open their box.”

“Wait, slow down. Something like this has happened before? Who else has gotten one?”

“Come one kid, put it together. Do I really have to spell this out for you?”

I stare at him blankly. I have a feeling that I know exactly where he’s going, but I want to hold on to my ignorance as long as possible. I’m not going to like the answer. He also clearly doesn’t want to say it. His focus is firmly set on a faint stain on the coffee table, which he is rubbing at while avoiding my gaze.

He doesn’t make any progress before he gives up on it and goes for the pack of cigarettes sticking out of his shirt pocket. On instinct, with the motions of someone who had done it a million times before, he gets one in his mouth and ready to light before either of us really register his action. Then, just as quickly, he rips it out of his mouth and throws the whole pack across the room.

“I’m talking about Anne. She got her package just before everything went wrong with her and your dad. She reached out to talk to me for the first time in years, just like you’re doing now, but by the time she resorted to that she had already opened it. She wasn’t able to get whatever was inside back where it belonged. I tried to help, but just as soon as she started talking to me again, she dropped off the face of the earth, and the next thing I heard about it was an invitation to her funeral.”

“...”

“She wasn’t the first one either. Before her, your uncle Roger got one too. Almost the same story, although I don’t know how it ended. He called me up, told me he got a package, then disappeared. That was twenty years ago and I still haven’t heard anything.”

“...”

“And before that, it was dad. He went off the deep end worse than Anne and took mom with him. I was the one who found them, you know. They were-”

“Stop! I don’t want to hear about it!”

“Are you sure? Isn’t this exactly what you came here to hear about?”

“No! I mean- not really. I just want to know what’s inside the box.”

“Well, if that’s what you’re looking for, I can’t help you. All I know is what comes of it.”

“Okay, fine, then is there anything I can do to stop it from happening to me? I don’t want to turn out like mom.”

“Of course there is. Just don’t open it and you should be fine.”

“Is it really that easy?”

“Who said it was easy? You felt it yourself. The pull. The need to see what’s inside. Hell, I can see it in your eyes. Even now that you know what will happen if you open it, you’re still tempted. You know that as soon as you get home, as soon as you see that box, the urge will come back and you might not be able to stop yourself this time.”

I open my mouth to try and argue, but instead I just feel the warm flush of tears pouring down my face and the wracks of sobs tearing through my body.

He’s completely right.

“Fuck… There there.”

I feel a gentle arm over my shoulder as he pulls me into an awkward embrace. It only makes the deluge of tears come on stronger. I don’t know how long it takes me to pull myself back together, but by the time I do my throat is raw and my eyes feel painfully swollen. He stops hugging me as soon as I stop bawling, but we still sit in awkward silence, until he taps me on the shoulder.

“Let’s go outside. I need a smoke.”

--- --- ---

“Where does it come from?”

“I wish I knew. There’s no way of telling where the physical box comes from, but there’s something in our blood that brings them to us. That’s all I can say for certain.”

“Do we all get it? Everyone from mom’s side of the family?”

“Most of us, at the very least. There might have been one exception. Dad’s sister, Petunia - I guess she would’ve been your great aunt. Supposedly, she never had any problems with it, but I never met her so it’s hard to say.”

“... Does that mean you got one too?”

“Yup…”

“What happened to it? Did you find some way to get rid of it?”

“Nope. I've tried throwing it out, burning it, giving it away. It always comes back.”

“Where is it now?”

“I've got it stuffed at the back of my closet. Sometimes it does make its way out and I have to stuff it back in, but as long as I’m mindful of it, it doesn’t cause too many problems. It’s odd though. It always seems to show back up as soon as I start to forget about it. I even had it try to trick me once. During the holidays I was so distracted by everything else going on that it slid itself under the tree like the rest of the presents. I nearly opened it up in the rush of everything.”

“That sounds exhausting…”

“It is, but it’s better than the alternative.”

“Am I going to have to do the same?”

“I don’t care what you do, so long as it works for you… Shit. Looks like it’s time. You should get going. I don’t want my kids to know about this side of the family.”

“I hadn’t even thought about that. Does that mean that they…”

“No. We adopted. All the more reason to keep them separate from this.”

“”Right… Can I talk to you more about this?”

“No. Even just doing this much has already got that itch started at the back of my mind. We’re blood, so I wanted to help you out, but I don’t want to add another story to my list and, more importantly, I’m not going to put my family at risk. Good luck, but I hope we never have to see each other again.”

“Sure… Good luck to you too…”

--- --- ---

With everything he said swirling around in my mind, I push open the door to my apartment and immediately see the box, still sitting on my table, exactly as I left it.