NOSY
DREADFUL - EVENT #5
The United States Postal Service (USPS) is a supply chain marvel, even with all the disadvantages tethered to it—stiff competition, politically motivated leadership, questionable infrastructure, an aging fleet of vehicles that routinely drive on the wrong side of the road, and miserable employees who rival the low bar set by the DMV. Each year, the USPS delivers hundreds of millions of packages (an expansive category in and of itself), magazines, pamphlets, political flyers, bills, birthday cards, sympathy cards, wedding invitations, RSVPs, diplomas, credit cards, drivers licenses, and junk mail. An ungodly amount of goddamn junk mail.
In addition, the USPS isn’t propped up by tax dollars. Instead, it survives on postage and shipping costs. Like a child of divorce, this essential service is loved by both parents, despite their every intention to fuck things up.
It’s easy—too easy—to become an advocate for the USPS. One look through the fact sheet on their website and you too will be indoctrinated by their expanse and capabilities. They employ thousands of veterans, own more retail space than any other company (beating out juggernauts like Subway, Starbucks, and McDonald’s), have the cheapest postage in the world, and the service itself is protected by over two hundred federal laws. Which makes the USPS more fiercely guarded than Native Americans, unborn children, or any marginalized group. If that isn’t worthy of gushing over, what is?
This isn’t meant to be a celebration tour about why the USPS deserves the adoration and respect from the masses. No, this is an introduction, a prologue.
Setting the scene, you may say.
This is Rod Serling appearing from the shadows to provide enough information to push along the narrative.
Consider this footnote buried within the more appealing stats:
The USPS completes over twenty million yearly address changes to ensure that customers and businesses alike continue to receive the correct mail.
What happens to those parcels that don’t get corrected, or the individual doesn’t provide a forwarding address? They still ship. The system only knows how to do one thing, after all.
The more interesting aspect to contemplate is what happens to the parcels after they arrive at the incorrect destination.
The gate shambles open against its better judgement. If it exhibited any cognitive function, the gate would have opted to remain closed forever.
Just another example of how no one (or no thing) wants to work anymore.
The neglect is noticeable to someone with knowledge of retracting gates and their intricacies, but Juniper is not of that ilk. She doesn’t realize that in another three minutes and twenty-eight seconds, the gate will no longer open, fulfilling a wish it can’t realistically formulate. Instead, a veil will fall over The Amorphophallus that proves to be quite the impediment. Those who wish to enter cannot; those who wish to leave can, but at a significant cost. Although it appears that the supposedly established rules are muddied and unclear (read: depressed vampire who waltzed into the night unharmed). To understand the mind and motivations of something otherworldly is a fallacy not worth pursuing.
For the sake of this story, Juniper makes it inside the parking garage and drives to the fourth floor. Availability is sparse, so she is forced to park further away from the door than usual.
That’s what she gets for staying at work late.
Staying isn’t the right word.
Guilted.
Forced.
Shamed.
Something to that effect. As a secretary for a vice president at the nearby corporate farm, specializing in displeasure and waste, Juniper’s core working hours fluctuate like a toddler’s mood. There are weeks when her boss is off visiting another site and likely spreading disinformation about the company’s performance and how much he appreciates the work the peons accomplish. Regardless of what he might be doing, those weeks are preferred because Juniper sits at her desk and clicks through his inbox, clearing out the non-essential emails and scheduling repetitive meetings. Juniper flicks through the calendar on her phone and scrolls to a year far, far, far into the future. Her record is the year 8657. Human life will most certainly be extinct by then, so it’s challenging to picture what the world may be like. Still, Juniper tries. Landscapes filled with a variety of colors, ones currently unknown. Water crashing onto the shore and gobbling up more land. Wildlife flourishing because natural selection loses its heft when humans are no longer in command of it. Vague images paint inside her mind and help her pass the hours. She finds comfort in the unknown. The idea of what if is intoxicating.
Other times, Juniper will scroll deep, deep, deep into the past. Anxiety drills into her as the years descend back to a primal time. A time when history tells us the outcome. Death, despair, misery. Failure after failure. Countless reigns rose and collapsed. Wars dotted the maps as the lives lost added up to a rounding error. Filth, grime, muck. No running water. No electricity. No supply chains for easy access to food or supplies. Those who did thrive still lived a fraction as long as people do now. Anyone deemed different was shunned, maimed, burned, hanged, locked away, or forced to do strenuous labor. Juniper finds it sickening. She’d rather take her chances with the future and the unknown rather than venture back to where the results are extensively documented.
On the weeks when her boss is in the office, she pretends to care about the details. She pretends to understand the jargon he leans on. “Increased efficiency” or “higher ROI” or “discover new synergies.” The phrases drive her to the brink. She nods with understanding whenever someone lapses into a rant about the company culture and how it beats out the other corporate farms in the metroplex. Juniper feigns annoyance and empathy when a nobody bursts into the office raging about an Excel spreadsheet or a memo sent.
The pay barely passes the threshold necessary for her to stay or not spend her evenings desperately searching for an alternative. Apparently, there is a path to financial freedom at the corporate farm. You just need to grind it out for years and years and . . . years.
The only saving grace is the gossip. Any corporate farm is good for that. People meander down hallways and spill their personal information as if they were in a Shakespeare play. They occupy tables during lunch and openly bitch about other employees. Even the most reserved slip. They wait until the meeting room clears out and all that’s left is the ditzy secretary who came in to clean up the mess. She floats through those moments unnoticed because they view her as a meaningless addition to an already bloated organization. Juniper doesn’t mind. The invisibility has allowed her to amass an archive of information.
To put it plainly, Juniper lives for the drama.
To put it more plainly, Juniper lives for other people’s drama. Why else would she watch countless hours of reality TV? Why else would she press her ear against the wall to hear the mutterings from her boss during heated exchanges? Why else would see keep a log of everyone who walks by? She looks for patterns. She hopes for scraps of information that she can tuck away and pass along when the timing is right.
From the parking garage, Juniper walks through the hallway and stops in front of the elevator. She presses the button a dozen times until the door opens. She takes it to the first floor, where she walks past the deserted leasing office and to the mailroom that sits adjacent to it. The mailroom is tidy, except for the trash can overflowing with garbage. Each slot is numbered to match the apartment, which follows logic. The part that doesn’t track is how the placement of the numbers is scattered. Apartment 105 is next to Apartment 354. Floors intersect and dissect one another in a wonderful display of disarray. When questioned on the intention, The Amorphophallus staff suggested that beauty often develops from confusion.
This walk to the mailroom is a daily ritual for Juniper and, as such, she traces her usual way around the perimeter until she stands before her rectangular goal. The detour provides a slight delay from spending the evening wasting away or hearing the senseless chatter from her roommate. For as much as Juniper loves her reality TV, too much of a good thing is a surefire way to sour it. Right now, her rotation of shows is up to two dozen across seven different streaming services.
And she is always on the hunt for more.
Juniper fishes the keys from her pocket and opens the mail slot. She pulls out the paper pile and sifts through it before tossing everything into the garbage. No recycling of any kind at The Amorphophallus. Juniper tilts her head down and peeks inside the slot one last time. Buried in the back, Juniper spots the key and snatches it. To complicate matters further, whenever a resident has a package that doesn’t fit in the mail slot and isn’t deemed large enough for the package room in the leasing office, the deliverer of mail places the moderately sized package in one of the larger rectangles next to a column of mail slots. They then lock the rectangle and place the key in the designated slot for the resident to find during their next visit. Clear as mud, eh?
Juniper has ordered nothing worthy of having a key delivered to her mail slot in months. Perhaps it is something for Mar. Typical. Juniper is always left to bring in her mail and clean up her remnants. This could set an example. This could be the time when Juniper finally lets Mar sink or swim. So what if she misses a bill or finds the letter from her schizophrenic grandmother two days late? Not her problem. Nope. Juniper decides right then that Mar is on her own. Party of one. Solo dining from here on out.
But.
Juniper feels it. The pull of what’s behind the metal door. She knows the package isn’t for her or Mar. She doesn’t care.
It’s hers now.
Juniper misguides the key into the lock five times, stabbing at the keyhole like a deranged killer. Her hands tremble with anticipation. Longing, desire, an insatiable need. Juniper grips her right hand with her left and correctly guides the key. The lock turns and bliss pours out from within. She tilts her head again, this time into the larger, more obtuse rectangle. Inside, the package thrums with the faintest pulsation. Its edges brush up against the sides of the metal rectangle. The delivery person worked wonders to sneak the package in. Determination and the need to deliver a thousand other parcels likely helped move things along. Juniper licks her lips and reaches out both hands to snatch her prize. Her fingers barely fit between the package and the metal wall encasing her future. Her knuckles rip against the jagged ridges lining the wall. Still, she persists. Using her hands as suction cups, Juniper squeezes the package on both sides and pulls it toward her. The package meets resistance at the edge of the rectangle. A small lip surrounds the shape and prevents the package from leaving.
Juniper grits her teeth and lets spittle fly from between the gaps. The package continues its final stand.
She needs it. She fucking needs it. A sensation of potential loss and emptiness pour into her. Without that package, she will remain nothing. Her nails scratch into the paper wrapping, tearing away at the outermost layer. Juniper lets out a whine like an agitated puppy. She pushes the package back into the cubbyhole, removes her hands, and punches at it with full force. Pain erupts from her knuckles and fizzles out halfway up her forearm. She steps away from the package and paces throughout the mailroom, muttering obscenities and cursing the existence of every reality TV star she despises. It’s their fault. Fucking phonies with their fake tits and ballooned lips. Her wrath unfolds itself. She’d plea temporary insanity if someone showed her the playback from the camera that hides in the corner. No one will ever see the footage. Not much of what happens within the walls of The Amorphophallus on this Wednesday night will ever be discovered or pieced together.
You, though. You get to witness it all. You foul, stinking voyeur. You’ve got nothing better to do, huh?
Here you are enjoying another person’s downfall. What’s one more to you?
Juniper takes a breath, considers her options, and returns to her newfound nemesis. This time, she takes the key from the lock and wedges it into the metal lip. Her leverage is shit, but an animalistic hunger can provide a higher ROI, as the corporate farm fucks would say. She presses her full weight against the key and watches as the metal pulls away. The gap widens enough to pry her torn fingers underneath. She grunts and grinds her teeth as she tears at the metal. It resists and begs to snap back into place. Juniper continues her assault and howls like a ghoul. The metal groans and relents as it pulls away further from the rectangle. In a blink, it detaches, and Juniper falls backward onto her ass. She slides across the floor, gripping the thin metal frame. As the realization settles in, she tosses the waste aside and scrambles to her feet. The discarded piece scratches against the tiles before plinking off another column of mail slots and coming to a stop.
The package slides out with ease. It has heft, like a half-full grocery bag jammed with fruits and vegetables. Juniper cradles it to her chest.
It’s hers. It’s hers. It’s hers.
The delusion fades, and normalcy flows into her. The craving is gone and replaced by a need to flee. She knows the leasing office will not appreciate the damage done, but there’s a chance that if she leaves now, the footage will be inconclusive. A white, blonde woman is a description that could fit a fat percentage of residents at The Amorphophallus. They are an invasive species in any gay neighborhood.
Juniper examines the package more closely on her walk to the apartment. The outer wrapping hangs in pieces like flayed skin. The width is as long as her forearm and as high as a plastic water bottle. Underneath, she can see the dark, stained wood glued together. Mahogany, maybe? Or oak? Birch imported from the forests of Madagascar? Fuck if she knows. She’s a secretary, not a park ranger.
Across the top is the name of the intended recipient:
Mr. Octo Burns
4343 Congrass Ave
Apartment 408
Dallas, TX 75219
Juniper refuses to believe that anyone with such a dignified, bizarre name would ever have lived in The Amorphophallus. The apartment complex suffers from mediocrity from top to bottom, like an entrepreneur’s first attempt at a restaurant—the furniture looks nice, but the menu is convoluted and overpriced. Juniper shifts the package and balances it on her right hand as she fishes out her phone. She taps away at the screen as she waits for the elevator. Upon request, Google returns its AI summary, each bullet point pointing to an article about Octo Burns. The titles are clickbait, but the message is clear: he is real and has most certainly never lived at The Amorphophallus. Dr. Burns is Austrian and may have trouble picking out Texas on a map, even with the subpar notoriety the state has garnered in recent years. More noteworthy, though, is how he won the Nobel Prize in physics three years ago. Juniper clicks into several articles and skims through the contents. None of it makes sense. She steps into the elevator and lets the hypotheticals lift her to the fourth floor. She theorizes that someone deliberately chose that name as some sort of message. Does she have any enemies? Does she need to explore Dr. Burns’s extended history to uncover a clue as to why his name was used?
Should she refrain from opening the package?
Juniper arrives on the fourth floor and engages auto-pilot mode. Her legs do the necessary work while her mind juggles the potentials and possibilities. As she navigates the hallways and makes it to the apartment door, her conclusion is this: there will be no answers. Life doesn’t provide answers and satisfactions. Instead, it delivers packages. And when you receive one of these packages, you had better open it.
The consequences of not doing so could be astronomical.
So she tells herself.
Inside the apartment, Mar is slicing away at a zucchini. She began by slicing down its length and is now trimming the two halves into smaller bites. Mar finds time to cook each weeknight. She has said that the effort of taking a batch of unrelated ingredients and turning them into something edible and enjoyable is therapeutic. Juniper would be more appreciative if Mar’s list of faults didn’t eclipse the thoughtful gesture.
“Is that for me?” Mar says, pointing the butcher’s knife at the package.
“No,” Juniper says.
“Is it for you?”
“Indirectly.”
Mar squints her eyes and shakes her head. “Juni, let me see.” The nickname is simple, and yet it’s something Juniper has always hated. Her family uses it in a condescending tone, and somewhere throughout their friendship, Mar has picked up the same habit.
Juniper slides the package across the countertop. It bumps into the cutting board with the massacred zucchini on top. Mar can’t help herself. While Juniper’s love of gossip is relegated to the shadows and the privacy of the apartment, Mar is more showy and outright with her insistence to be a part of everything.
“Octo Burns,” Mar says, like a principal reading the name at a graduation. “This isn’t addressed to you.”
“Very perceptive.”
“Why did you take it?” Mar flicks at the strands of wrapping still attached to the package. “And why does it look like it’s been mauled by a raccoon?”
“Because it was in our mailbox. Why are you asking a thousand questions about this? You’ve never taken an interest in anything relating to me.” The statement is partially true. Is life anything more than a string of meaningless lies and over-exaggerations? Juniper lets out a long huff and reaches across the countertop to regain possession of the package.
“I only want what’s best for you. Anyway, it’s illegal to open mail that isn’t yours,” says Mar.
“Uh huh. It’s also illegal to jaywalk, marry your cousin, and murder, but that doesn’t stop people from doing it.”
“I’d hate to see you in jail, Juni. The lesbians would eat you up. Literally.”
Juniper tries to shift the conversation. “Are you going to the gym tonight?” The tactic has a high potential for success. The corporate farm would approve of this strategic initiative.
Mar accepts the bait and tosses back some of her own. “Yes, right after I finish prepping. I’ll cook when I come back. Not that it matters to you. You never appreciate my cooking. Actually, you don’t appreciate anything I have to offer. I’m eclectic and vibrant. You’d know that if you ever took one solitary second to see what I own.”
Juniper clamps down on the package and swallows the urge to respond. It’s what Mar would want. Mar likes to pick away at people. Dig into their core and come back carrying some vital organ. Why? Fuck if Juniper knows. She’s a secretary, not a psychiatrist.
In the interim, Juniper sits on the couch and watches an episode of Teen Mom 3: Young, Sexy, and Carefree. April, seven months pregnant, is on the outs with her baby daddy, who was recently arrested for shoplifting beer from the local convenience store. Augusta, due any day, had to move back in with her parents after spending three nights in her car and running out of money. In classic fashion, her parents are so snide and uppity about her “crawling back” to them.
The package waits patiently on the coffee table. Juniper tugs at her fingers and feels the joints pop. The anxious energy re-emerges and disperses itself unevenly. She tells herself to have patience. Mar isn’t deserving of witnessing the reveal. Sure, Juniper could skulk off to her room or lock herself in the bathroom to proceed with the unveiling, but that would arouse suspicion. It’s best to stay calm and appear unfazed by whatever may be sitting before her.
Eventually, Mar cleans the knife and the cutting board. She moves all the containers to the fridge. She goes to her bedroom and comes back out dressed in her gym clothes.
About fucking time.
It’s Christmas morning for Juniper. She has just woken up and walked downstairs to see the tree brimming with gifts. In this illusion, though, the same gift is replicated and scattered around the tree. The thrumming sound runs in unison. It welcomes Juniper. Invites her in. The time is now, it whispers. Explore the offering, it implores. Juniper reaches ou—
“I’m going now,” Mar interrupts. “To the gym. Like I said I would. I always keep my promises.”
“Okay,” Juniper says. “Good luck.”
This wish for favorable fortune causes Mar to pause. “Good luck? Why would you say that? You’ve never said that to me before. Is something going to happen now? Juni, you’re upsetting me.”
Juniper looks away from the package and breaks her Christmas fantasy. “I meant nothing by it. Have fun. I meant, have fun, not good luck.”
“Have fun? It’s the fucking gym, Juni! Nobody has fun at the gym. It’s practically hell, and anyone who says otherwise worships the devil. People go there to suffer, and now my suffering will be extra worse, thanks to you. Like, what the fuck? You do this to me all the time. I just don’t understand. You . . .” Mar rambles on and parades around the kitchen as she expresses her displeasure.
Juniper refocuses her attention on the package.
Stab her in the fucking neck, it suggests.
Rip out her tongue, it declares.
Break her bones and throw her worthless corpse into a furnace, it says.
“No,” Juniper whispers. She is not that easily penetrable. She’s seen the movies where power corrupts and corrodes even the purest. She’s watched the best reality television where the fan favorite devolves into a cheap villain. Juniper is stronger than that because, right now, she is far above taking orders from a malicious package. So instead of mutilating her roommate, Juniper says, “Mar, you need to leave. Right now. Or else you won’t see the guy you’re in love with.”
Mar stops gallivanting around the kitchen and stares back at Juniper. “Oh, him?” She scoffs. “He needs to drop dead. He doesn’t even look my way. Do you believe that? I mean, look at my ass in these leggings.” Mar turns around and thrusts out a butt cheek. “I’m a goddess.”
“You sure are,” Juniper says. “See you later.”
Mar eyes the package and then Juniper. She says nothing else before leaving the apartment. The door thuds shut, and Juniper is finally alone. She rushes to the door and locks the deadbolt, keeping Mar from barging back in. By her estimation, she should have forty-nine minutes before Mar comes back sweaty and intent on giving a rundown of every single detail of her gym visit.
Juniper no longer waits. She tears into the wrapping and tosses it aside. The name Octo Burns gets shredded, limiting the evidence that the package was ever meant for him. The wood beneath reveals itself to be a box. How original. The clasp on the front is shut but not locked. Whoever sent the box wanted it easily opened.
And yet . . .
Sitting atop the box are a note and a disc. The note is folded in half with the words “FoR YoU” written in blocky letters across the front. Juniper pulls the note free and reads the message. Or warning, depending on your interpretation.
YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU,We found it Don’t ask me how or what it cost
YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUwouldn’t want to be complicit The provider asked me to include the CD as well They insisted I don’t look ahead of time so I can’t speak to what it may be Please reconsider going forward with this Think ofYOURRRRR——————— andYOURRRRRRR————————————regardless of
YOURRRRRRchoice, this is it no more do not ask me forA
N
Y
T H I N G elseY O U W i l L b E M I S s e d,
-JAN
Juniper reads the note three times, working to make sense of its contents. She flips the note over and looks for more. Jan appears to have lost their marbles. Is it tied to whatever is in the box?
Of course it is. That much is obvious. Maleficence lies within the box.
Juniper moves the note aside and picks up the CD. A relic from another era. “What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?” she asks herself. Nothing she owns has a CD drive. Like everyone else, Juniper exists in digital bliss. The cloud, streaming services, and microtransactions dominate her life. She has heard her parents talk about the golden days of television where fifteen hundred channels were at their fingertips. You could watch courtroom dramas or Hallmark classics. You could switch between Wife Swap and Swamp Monsters. And if you were feeling really ambitious, you could shake off any sleepiness and flip to the HBO channels to catch some softcore porn. That’s when the world still had sanity and packages were delivered to the correct addresses.
Juniper paces around the living room, weighing whether the CD is required viewing. The box sits alone on the coffee table and waits for interaction. The magnetic force grows ever stronger, but the sequence of events must be followed. The note alluded to darkness and despair. Maybe the CD is actual proof. She needs the full picture.
Mar’s bedroom has always been a black box. For all of their accusations against one another about never taking an interest, Mar has never allowed Juniper into her room—a sacred space for most. Something about her privacy or how their friendship hadn’t reached that level yet. Whatever the reason, the door to the bedroom was always shut and adorned with a sign that read “Keep it this way.”
Juniper barges into the bedroom, expecting to hear sirens or be picked off by a sniper. Neither event happens. Instead, she peruses through Mar’s belongings, none of which bear an ounce of excitement.
Juniper checks under the bed and begins pulling out the totes. They are littered with clothes and objects that have no meaning to her. Mar doesn’t have any hobbies that Juniper knows of. She doesn’t collect stamps or Beanie Babies or news clippings from tragedies. For being a self-proclaimed goddess, Mar is just as boring as everyone else. That alleged fact doesn’t stop Juniper from borrowing deeper. By the fourth tote, her hands have grown numb and wish fulfillment is at the forefront of her mind. She pushes the tote full of childhood mementos aside and reaches in for the last one.
Come back, it says. The voice gaining momentum yet again.
Juniper brushes it aside and finds her treasure trove. Persistence is key to survival and advancement, as the corporate farm animals would say, and this proves their point. Within the last tote is a graveyard of aged electronics. Laptops, phones, and cables galore. The cords are tangled in tight knots, and the electronics are haphazardly lying on top of one another. Juniper picks up the first laptop she sees. It’s a brick. Dense, thick, and likely runs at a snail’s pace, so naturally, it has the CD drive she needs. Why did Mar keep all of this junk? Sentimental reasons or for no reason at all? Juniper tries to keep herself from getting lost in the questions. Not all of this is supposed to make sense. She doesn’t deserve to know how certain objects have been placed and positioned for this night.
Although the laptop is dated, it appears to be in a sufficient condition. All the keys are present and the screen is blemish-free. Juniper doesn’t even bother to try turning it on without plugging in a power cable first. She scavenges through the tote until she comes away with the right cord. She plugs it in, and the startup screen appears. No password is needed as it runs through its paces until the desktop shows up with a bevy of icons. Another bout of luck for Juniper. Everything is going according to a plan she wasn’t aware existed until an hour ago.
Juniper stifles any desire to click through the computer and invade the personal details of Mar’s life. To be honest, the desire is minimal compared to the constant buzzing from the box. Hurry, it says. We won’t wait forever, it warns.
Juniper slides in the CD and listens to the laptop struggle against the labor. Eventually, she clicks on the icon that appears on the desktop. A folder opens with a single option titled “HERE.” After clicking on that, a black screen jumps into view. The playback bar at the bottom shows its length as almost five and a half hours.
Juniper starts the video.
The black screen stays stagnant for the first twenty seconds. No music, no flair. Just darkness. Then, the words fade in, centered and in a readable font. Juniper blinks slowly. She twists her neck and tries to alleviate the shiver that runs down her back. She waits for the words to change to something less foreboding and more informative. They don’t.
T H I S W I L L D E S T R O Y (U)
The words stare back at Juniper. But that’s all they can do. They have no power and are purposely vague. Her only guess is that Jan made the video. From Juniper’s two encounters with Jan, she is finding them to be insufferable. Jan is like a cold breeze on an already frigid day—a worthless nuisance. The message doesn’t dissuade Juniper from opening the box. If anything, it’s strengthened her craving.
Still, she fast-forwards through the video to see if anything else ever shows up. For the first four hours of runtime, the message stays steady. A heavy reminder of what’s coming, or so Jan would have her think. But in a blink-or-you’ll-miss-it moment, the words change. They flash a modified phrase and then snap back to the original. Juniper pauses the video and combs backward until she has the new words isolated.
T H I S W I L L D E S T R O Y J (U) N I P E R
There it is. Written as plainly as could be. A warning. An omen. The declaration she was promised. Regardless, Juniper isn’t swayed. She doesn’t throw a hand over her mouth and let out a piercing gasp. She doesn’t storm out of the room and question the feasibility of such a thing. She doesn’t burn the box and let the answers slide away.
She persists.
Juniper sees all she needs and closes the laptop. She places everything back in the tote and does her best to erase any evidence of her presence. Back in the living room, the box beckons. She isn’t the first. A long, illustrious history of descendants has interacted with the box. Kings, beggars, peons, popes, children, elderly. The box harbors no discrimination or preference. The box holds power and sway over all. Some take their time and let the box linger for weeks or months; others dive in immediately, allowing curiosity to control their decisions. Afterward, there is a lull. Although time has no meaning to this object and idea, time carries on regardless as the box waits for the next one. This endless cycle has carried on for centuries and will continue on until the earth decays into an inhospitable chunk of rock. The repetition feeds and feeds, engorging itself on its singular purpose. A parasite with no origin. A disease with no cure.
Don’t be mistaken: this box is not unique. Perhaps it is in design, but the intention can be found in dozens of other places, infecting those who come into contact.
Its purpose is quite simplistic. You’ll see.
Juniper unclasps the latch on the box. She has moved the box into the kitchen. Both she and the object sit at the kitchen counter. The lighting is better, and Juniper no longer has to hunch over the box like a menacing villain in a Broadway show.
Finally and unceremoniously, Juniper lifts the lid and peers inside to find . . . nothing. “No, no, no,” she says. She feels around the interior of the box in search of a button that opens a secret compartment or any sort of clue for what will come next. The wood is sanded and smooth to the touch. No obvious cracks or bumps. She checks the exterior of the box and repeats the same process. No luck there either. Juniper bites back her frustration and reminds herself that an opportunity like this will never come to her again. Does she want to return to a dull evening of watching reality television or venture deeper into the unknown? The answer comes through Juniper’s attempts to coax the next step from the box. She tries to match the frequency of the thrumming that has been running nonstop since the box came into her possession. She recites words like abracadabra and open sesame. She paces around the kitchen and waits for an epiphany to smack her. The clarity never emerges. Instead, Juniper begins to pull at her eyelashes. Her left eyelid extends out an uncomfortable amount before it snaps back against her eye. She looks down at her loot—tiny, insignificant hairs that protect her from larger issues. Juniper drops them into the box. They blend into the wood and disappear.
At this point, the corporate farm would bring in consultants. The outside experts would stare and mutter about the complexity of the box. They’d charge two thousand dollars an hour to drool, scratch their butts, drink cheap Americanos, and come to no useful conclusion. Whenever consultants were brought in, it meant a project was in a failed state. Juniper had seen plenty of those during her time as a secretary. The muted, contemplative emails to her boss, where each word was curated to minimize blame. She didn’t care about the unnecessary expenses of poorly run projects or rampaging consultants. No, she just thought people should figure their shit out.
As Juniper takes this thought detour, her frustration springs a leak, and she knocks a fist against the inside of the box.
Something echoes back.
Juniper knocks twice, and the echo repeats the gesture. Perhaps the box is a doorway and she needs to summon whatever was waiting on the other side. The issue now is whether a specific sequence is required.
Juniper continues with her knocking, increasing the amount by one each time. The box mimics the gesture, but nothing else changes. There was nothing in the letter or video that alluded to the answer. The sequence could be anything, which let the word impossible creep into Juniper’s mind. She refuses to believe that the box doesn’t want its recipient to figure out the mystery. Why else would it exist? Secrets are meant to be discovered. Secrets are meant to be hoarded by those who hide in the shadows. This box is an extension of gossip, and Juniper is the resident expert on that.
Juniper returns to knocking. That’s the only interaction that has caused a response, so why exhaust the path? She reaches ten knocks and waits for the box to reciprocate.
It does.
And this time, a tiny black hole opens in the center of the box. It looks like a smudge from a permanent marker. A dot on a larger canvas. Juniper swipes a finger across it, expecting the hole to disappear.
It doesn’t.
The hole remains static. No pulsating or thrumming. Does she need to do more? Is this only the first step? Questions. It’s always questions. They are meaningless to ask and yet we still do.
Juniper leans closer to the hole to get a better look. That’s when the blackness expands and swallows her. She falls inward and feels herself tumbling end over end. The box lid snaps shut, and all evidence of Juniper’s presence is erased.
The darkness is unending and so intense that she can’t see any portion of her flailing body. She screams until her voice cracks and gives out. The effort doesn’t matter. Whatever she does will be suffocated by the void.
This is the transit portion of her journey.
During this interim, Juniper goes through bouts of silence, more screaming, and condemning her foolishness. Out of the three, her condemnation is the most entertaining. She taunts herself for wanting this, for going through multiple hoops to make this happen. She chastises the United States Postal Service for delivering the package. She spews hate at Jan and Octo Burns. She calls herself a stupid bitch and a ditzy fuck, the latter of which was said to her by an ex-boyfriend during her college years. For a while, she believed it. Such a simple insult made her spiral. Juniper took an extra millisecond to respond in conversations. She spent longer spurts of time by herself, neglecting the group of girlfriends she had built up. To be defeated by the words of a self-identified douchebag created a deeper, heftier spiral from which to pull herself. A bystander might say that the event was the catalyst for Juniper’s wallflower behavior. Others may argue that it was the uncle who tormented her childhood and made her feel awful for being herself. You see, families of any variety have a real fucking knack for being hurtful. Call it a cliché, but clichés are only truths we’d rather ignore.
Juniper touches ground sometime later. It could have been minutes, hours, or decades for all she knew, but time had a way of hurtling by when you are engaged in self-loathing. The landing is soft and controlled. Her left foot shifts forward and causes a squeaking noise to reverberate. Juniper freezes, unsure what lurks around her. She convinces herself that there is nothing here meant to do her harm. The alternative isn’t worth dwelling on.
The darkness still engulfs her, but a tiny speck of light beams into view. It’s impossible to determine how far ahead it is, but with no alternatives, Juniper moves toward it. Her footsteps feel light and floaty, as if she is traversing the most vivid dream.
She doesn’t see any walls or ceilings, even when the circle of light expands into a more prominent source. The floor is stone? Maybe marble? Fuck if Juniper knows. She is a secretary, not an interior designer. Still, it looks otherworldly. Sterile and free from blemishes. There are no seams or clear breaks in the material. They—whoever they might be—are striving for perfection.
Or at least the appearance of it.
A few thousand steps later, Juniper walks into the light and emerges into an office space. The palette shifts to grays mixed with other shades of gray. The cubicles are ordered into neat rows, with half-walls separating each and giving the illusion of privacy. The desks themselves hold no monitors or keyboards. Instead, they are barren outside of what appears to be a circular terrarium sitting in the center. Its dimensions are similar to an average-sized fishbowl, except the contents inside are wet soil and sprouts of greenery.
Ahead, Juniper sees a clearing. The cubicles have been moved to the side. In the middle, an intercom sits on the floor. It emits a hum.
An ou nderstand his? it says.
“Sort of,” Juniper says. She steps closer to the intercom. The hum changes pitch. It’s subtle.
How about now? it asks.
“That’s better.”
Wonderful. Welcome. We are happy to have you.
“Thank you.”
Push the button, will you?
“What button?”
Behind her, the cubicles shift and scratch against the floor. The button appears in the open space. It’s as gray and lifeless as everything else surrounding it.
“What is this place?” Juniper asks.
A corporate farm, it says.
“Oh, right. That makes sense. Is there more to this?”
Push the button, it says.
Juniper now stands before the button. She bends down on her knees and holds out a hand. “What will this do?”
Push the ucking button, it says. The voice is measured, yet strict.
Juniper does as told. A satisfying click echoes out. Nothing happens. The space remains unchanged.
Good. Do it again, it says.
Juniper presses down on the button again. And again. And again. She follows all the instructions. She’d push that button ten thousand times if they asked her to. A power has flowed into her. This is her button. What it does is unknown, but she knows that her purpose has finally been achieved. Juniper doesn’t need to be a spectator to gossip and drama. She needs this. She needs this level of control and authority over something. No longer relegated to being just a secretary or a discarded friend, Juniper has evolved into a button-pushing trailblazer. Her mind turns and rationalizes that the repetitive motion is soothing and worthwhile. The humming continues in her ears. Juniper understands what must be done. She has a quota to meet. Everybody reports to a boss, and the hum spitting from the intercom is hers. Push, push, push. Keep going. Over and over. Eternal. A singular purpose is a beautiful existence. The effort brings about destruction on an unfathomable scale. She is destroying what is, what has taken millions of years to build. She is preventing tragedy and sorrow and loss. She is the dictator with the nuclear codes, waiting for the correct moment to send annihilation to all. She is watching the mushroom cloud plume from the safety of the bunker. Innocents melt and disintegrate. Buildings cease to exist. Biological systems are eradicated for the pleasure of one. Futures are erased each time she pushes the button. Power unlimited. It ends. It begins. It continues until the universe flutters away like a stale fart. What is it? Everything. Everywhere. It’s all hers. It’s—
Near the entrance, the lights flash a bright purple and Juniper is thrown from the button. She soars through the air like a Cirque du Soleil performer. She laughs and laughs and laughs. She returns into the darkness. It’s heavier on the way out. Almost as if she were reentering the atmosphere.
With a snap like a whip, the box opens and spits Juniper out onto the kitchen floor before slamming shut again. She slides across the faux hardwood planks until she stops at the edge of the carpet. Juniper continues to laugh as she stands up and surveys the room. The apartment door is still locked, and no one is banging on the other side. Mar must still be at the gym. Or maybe so much time has passed that Mar is no longer a person—just a past tense.
Juniper regains her footing and scrambles back to the box. She tries to pry the lid open but has no luck. The clasp has melted into a mess of metal. Juniper finds her keys and attempts to recreate the same feat from earlier. She jams the key into the seam separating the lid from the base. Again, no luck. The key keeps sliding away and scratching the exterior.
Juniper unleashes a primal yell. Her emotions continue to heighten. She sees red, as they say. She beats her chest with a fist and stomps a foot on the floor. Her rhythm is commendable for someone who has no artistic ability. She hums to herself and begins plucking more eyelashes.
Five, six, seven.
She counts her haul. The tiny hairs are useless to her. To think that she spends time each morning on her face to be presentable to the world. For what? She sits at a desk all day. And when she isn’t there, it’s not like people compliment her. They just expect her not to look like a slob, but the fat, grotesque men she works with come in with stained shirts and receding hairlines and guts that could incubate triplets.
Juniper considers all the fucked-up bullshit in this world. She beats her chest harder. She needs to return. She needs to keep pushing that button.
She needs to end it all.
Poverty, crime, corruption, egos, pollution. People. Oh, yes, of course. People. She can erase all of it. Poof. Gone. Into a flash of nothingness.
The fucking button. She needs it. She would kill for it. She would mutilate herself for the opportunity. Juniper never knew true power could be so accessible.
When her eyelashes are gone, Juniper rips out chunks of her hair. It’s okay. Large portions are only extensions. No one will notice the change. She’s a wallflower. An observer. A curator of other’s mistakes.
But now, she is a harbinger for this godforsaken mistake. How could anyone refer to it as anything other than that?
She doesn’t feel the pain or the blood that trickles from her scalp. The strands flutter to the floor, creating a pile of wasted time and money. She continues with her internal crusade, blaming every living thing and idea.
With no notice, the clasp falls off the box and the lid opens. Juniper rushes to it and looks inside. A worm wiggles around the edge. It has no urgency or destination. It has the same gray color as the corporate farm. The worm lifts—what must be its head—to Juniper. No words are transmitted. No hum radiates from the worm. Instead, it refocuses its attention and continues inching forward.
Juniper does not know what type of worm she’s looking at. It’s round and slimy and segmented. Perhaps it’s a parasite or an earthworm. As with the other situations, fuck if she knows. She’s a secretary, not a worm aficionado.
Juniper runs a hand across its back, or what could be identified as such. The worm has no reaction to this. Juniper then places an outstretched finger into the box. She watches as the worm limps its way toward the new obstacle. It takes time, but the worm pulls itself onto Juniper’s finger. She lifts the worm to her face. Juniper smiles and laughs at her new friend. It has even less of a purpose than she does. Imagine that! And yet, it keeps moving forward. Could Juniper say the same?
No, no. Absolutely not.
The thrumming/humming/buzzing returns. It picks up momentum and changes frequency until the words drill into Juniper’s brain.
Look at us, it says. Magnificent, aren’t we?
“Truly,” Juniper says. She wants the power. She wants what they have. Most of all, she needs to return. Juniper opens her mouth and places the worm on her tongue.
NO, it says.
Juniper obliges. She sticks her tongue out and lets the worm slither back onto her hand.
“How? How? How?” Juniper questions.
Through the nostrils, it says. Give us access.
There is no hesitation. Juniper situates the worm on her finger and then coaxes the diplomat into her right nostril. Her eyes water. She clenches her teeth. Discomfort is part of rehabilitation. Discomfort is the key to evolution. Juniper remembered the nights she went to bed as a kid and her legs ached. Her parents said that she was expanding.
This is no different.
The worm moves at a snail’s pace. Upward it travels until it reaches Juniper’s brain. In a series of flashes, Juniper returns to the corporate farm. The spacious room is a deeper shade of gray. Unnoticeable to most, but no one else is as observant as Juniper. The color resembles ash. Death, perhaps. It is what’s buried beneath the pristine surface. They needed to use something as the foundation.
Juniper sprints between the cubicles. Dashing from row to row until she finds the button sitting on the floor. The top is cracked now, a large gash running across it.
Juniper falls forward and slams a palm against the button. A simple click is the only feedback she gets, but she knows the ramifications are far greater. Is this how The Amorphophallus dies?
She could do this forever.
She will do this forever.