Trophies

Joshua never liked mail as a kid.

It often disrupted his household, the mail slipping through the slot in the middle of the day would rile the dogs up. Sending them into a barking flurry of fur and claws scrambling towards the door. As he got older, it turned to his younger siblings trying to get to the door before he did, ripping at the papers like they were some presents that needed to be opened.

Often he didn’t get any mail anyways. No letters from any friends he had made when moving around during his childhood. No family cards saying ‘happy birthday’ or ‘merry Christmas’ or ‘congratulations’, not one.

Therefore Joshua often found mail annoying, it was something he put off until the last minute.

So when Joshua walked up his steps to find a brown package sitting on his stoop, the first feelings were annoyance, irritation. There was no return label on it, but it was his name and address written in a curled scrawl across the lid.

Joshua Hughes it read.

Joshua rubbed the back of his neck with a tired arm. His entire body ached, and he most definitely, did not wish to carry this box inside.

Though it looked like it may have been mailed, a stamp and everything, the box itself was in pristine condition. The corners weren’t bent up from being tossed around, and none of the packing tape was starting to come up. It almost looked like it had been staged, something from a movie, a prop.

Deciding he would deal with it later he used a foot to nudge it out of the way. It moved as if he had kicked it, light enough to slide slightly, and something inside rolled and hit the side propelling the box to tip over on his porch with a soft thud.

Cheek twitching with irritation, Joshua looks away from the box, turning to his red front door. A pretty color, bright, warm, inviting, he had helped his mom paint it all those years ago. The mail slot was now a sad bronze color, but the red still looked new as ever, maybe a few chips here and there in the paint. Unlocking the door, Joshua walks inside, and turns to close the door behind him.

The brown box is in the corner of his eye, an obnoxious eyesore standing out like a sore thumb on his empty porch. Setting his keys down on the indoor table he goes back outside and picks up the box, crouching and wrapping his arms around it, lifting with his thighs, the correct way.

He picked it up and headed inside, it’s not heavy, but it was just tall enough that it made it hard to see past it, but he was able to get inside, closing the door behind him with a nudge of his foot to get it to latch.

He doesn’t go far, just to the living room where he sets the box down on the table, trying to ignore it as he does more things. He makes dinner in the kitchen, but he often finds himself leaning back into the doorway to see if the box has moved. It hasn't.

He takes time to clean up dinner and checks the box again; its still there. He really tries to ignore it. To not care. It was just a box.

But as Joshua brushes his teeth, slicking back his whitening hair. He finds that he can no longer stand the thought of that box sitting unopened in his living room. He needed to know what was in it.

He’s slow walking to the box after rolling out of bed. He’s groggy, and his legs tremble, but he will refuse to say its anything other than his age.

Living room light flicked on, and it blinded him for a moment, the flash causing him to not be able to see any shapes. It clears quickly though, his faded couch coming into view, the tv tucked to the side of the room against the wall, and the dusty brown coffee table in the middle of the room with the box sitting on top of it.

Joshua sat down on his faded leather couch, across from the box. The couch sunk in from his weight, but was a familiar comfort in light of the box sitting there and mocking him.

He brings up his hands and he grips the outside of the box tightly, the cardboard bending under his grip slightly. He sat there for a moment. Just gripping the box tightly in his hands, it squished more under the force, the tape on the box made a bit of noise as the seam of it lifted.

That was enough to get him to let go and move onto the tape. His fingers manage to get the piece that had started to lift up and he uses his nails to weaken a bit next to it widening the area that had been lifted.

Sufficient enough space to grab he uses the lifted tape and pulls. The tape pulls loudly in the room as it comes off the box. Tearing pieces of the top layer of cardboard with it, sticking to Joshua’s hand.

Shaking it off of his hand, he grabs the two lid flaps and opens them up, quickly pushing open the inside pieces too.

What is in there, is not what he is expecting. His stomach drops.

In the box, lays a single pond rock, tinted slightly brown. Attached to it is a note, and a daisy that has been smashed by being rolled over by the box.

The note simply says: I know what you did.

Joshua’s heart stops in his chest, he can only hear his own stilted breathing for a few moments before his heart jumpstarts back to life.

Picking up the rock with shaking hands, though they tremble not from age now, but actual fear that runs cold in his veins. Its grey on most of it, with a brown rust splatter up both sides and more brown at one side of the rock.

He drops it, and it hits the wooden coffee table with a thud.

Blood is rushing in his ears, and he stands up, backing away from the offending box, murmuring a chant of it cant be, that’s not possible.

He runs to his attic access, and quickly finds the hook to open the latch and bring the ladder down. Uncaring of taking his time he climbs up it quickly, it shakes underneath him.

The attic is dusty in most places, however he finds the chain for the light and turns it on.

The dust has been disrupted. Boxes have been torn apart.

"My trophies!” He exclaims, staggering over to where barrettes and hair ties had been scattered all over the floor. They were all messed up, all the girls that the hair accessories went too were mainly unknown to him now, sure he had their polaroid's, but he knew them for their hair. It would take ages to fix his prized gallery of awards he had earned.

However, what really makes his heart stop, is when he hears the sirens in the distance. At first he ignores it, after all there are sirens at night. But then they start to get closer, and closer, lights illuminating behind the blinds of the attic.

Joshua feels the breath seep out of him. Eyes darting around he tries to gather up the trophies, hide them back in their spot, hidden, out of view, his secret shrine to the girls.

There was another cardboard box in the corner where he was trying to hide his things again, and even as the door to the house started banging, the whole house trembling from the force of the knocks and the shouts of the cops, he found himself moving towards it.

This one isn’t taped shut, and he moves the flaps out of the way to see what is inside.

It’s a single polaroid, this girl he knows, Rebecca Thompson. The last one. Her hair was the brightest red he had ever seen.

On the back of the polaroid is a simple note, one that makes him drop the picture and sit in silence until the police make their way into his attic, shoving him to the ground.

He's catatonic, unmoving, unblinking, he had been outsmarted, he was caught.

They drug him down the stairs, and he was mute, allowing himself to be dragged away.

Shoved into a police car that started up to take him away, he looked back to his house where his trophies were being taken into evidence.

There was a car on the street, one that wasn’t a police car, a post office vehicle.

A single person stood beside it, red hair gleaming in the sun, a dark scar on their forehead, and a postal uniform on.

They smiled, and Joshua screamed inside the vehicle.

If only I hadn’t gotten away Mr. Joshua.