Porch Delivery

TW: Animal mutilation and death

A splinter lodged itself in my finger as I ran my hand over the rough wooden box that had appeared on my porch. The pain gave me a small jump, but I was too focused on the contraption in front of me to even bother trying to get it out. From a mere glance one could tell it was homemade - there were gaps and wooden overhangs in each of the corners from misaligned boards, and the wood itself had to have been gathered from leftover scraps. It was rough and looked like it was close to rotting. I looked up from my inspection to see if any hints had been left as to who had dropped this enigmatic present on my front porch, but there were no cars on the street and no shadow figures loping away through the sparse trees on the other side of the road. Someone had to have lugged the box up the porch steps in front of my house, or maybe two someones with how large the coffin-shaped box was, but they must have rang the doorbell that once and absolutely bolted. It hadn’t taken me more than a minute to reach the door and they had already been long gone.

Suspicious packages weren’t my forte. I was sure I could call the police station and make them come open the box, but that seemed like a lot of hassle for something that was probably an elaborate joke from the teenagers in town. Working at the high school had its downsides, and the amount those kids ding-dong-ditched my house was up there in the list. With the lamentable construction on this gift, teenagers made even more sense. Thus I sighed and resolved I would just have to open it myself and go from there. I returned to the porch seconds later with a hammer so I could use the back end to pull out the haphazardly-placed nails from what I assumed to be the top side.

The first two pulled out without issue. The third one must have taken twice the time and effort. The fourth one had me stuck. I pulled it straight up, I wiggled the damn nail left and right, I even braced my foot against the box for additional pressure. It did not want to come out. When it did, I flew backwards from the release of all that pressure and landed on my ass right by the edge of the stairs. Beads of sweat lined my forehead from the effort, and I just sat there for a moment, staring at the unsecured lid of the box. Curiously, I thought I could see some sort of smoke or fog rolling out from within it, contrasting oddly against the rays of afternoon light that were just starting to fade into night.

I stood and walked back towards the box. Both hands gripped different corners of the lid and I pulled, lugging that top wooden sheet away and leaning it up against the side of the house. It scratched away a bit of the paint as I propped it up, but the pale blue color on that house had been fading and peeling away for years. That was a project for another day. Instead I turned back to the box, which was definitely releasing some sort of smoke now. My hand automatically went to my phone, lodged into my jacket pocket, and I considered if I should indeed call someone. Ultimately, I just kept my right hand on my phone as I re-approached.

The smoke was coming from dry ice. Something was being preserved inside the box, and it wasn’t food. There was a black garbage bag, left open at the top, that I knew I would need to peep inside. It was surrounded by chunks of the ice that I carefully avoided contact with. I didn’t have gloves out with me, and I wouldn’t have trusted my flimsy pairs anyway against a component like dry ice. My left hand slowly reached toward the bag and aligned the hole within my line of sight, but the darkening sky around me led to no light reflecting into the bag naturally. I couldn’t see what was within. Carefully, I opened my phone light and shone that inside with my opposite hand.

I gasped and sprung backwards at the sight.

Inside the bag was a gruesome affair. It looked like the contents had once been a fox, judging by the size of the mangled mass and the appearance of a long furry nose that had retained the smallest semblance of structure. Blood coated the inside of the bag, and the animal’s insides were smeared around him. I gagged reflexively, letting my stomach empty over the side of the railing now directly behind me. The worst part were the glossy eyes, still miraculously in the animal’s skull despite that being where the head started to look shredded. Those eyes were angled to stare directly at me. They were purple, a rich, deep shade of the color that felt unnatural for a creature like this. In fact, no creatures with purple eyes came to my mind when I tried to consider such.

This was about the time that I swapped my phone from flashlight to calls, and dialed the non-emergency line for the local police station.

A pair of cops stopped by ten minutes later, and I had not moved. I hadn’t turned the flashlight back on yet; the idea of investigating the bloody corpse myself was unappealing at least and could create issues in the worst case. Maybe there would be some fingerprints or something on the bag that could give a clue as to who had felt the box here. I gave my statement to them, explaining the doorbell ring and those intense purple eyes that still felt like they were staring at me from within. They took out their own flashlights, and pulled back the edge of the bag slightly to look at what was inside for themselves. I saw a series of quick flashes as they photographed the desecrated animal, and stood by patiently. When they finished, they turned back to me.

“Ms. Dames, you said the creature’s eyes appeared purple when you looked inside the bag correct? And you did not touch these contents yourself?”

“No, sir, I took one look inside and got away. I didn’t want to mess up any evidence.”

“Come here. Look at this photo.”

Despite the fact that my stomach was still reeling, I walked just close enough to take the camera into my hands. The cop had pulled up the picture he wanted me to see, and I braced for some version of the same eerie stare from earlier. Instead, my jaw dropped a little.

“Can I look at the bag itself again?” The photo had me thoroughly confused. I was sure of the purple eyes that I had seen. They had made a huge impression on my mind when my flashlight first shone inside.

“Of course. Here.” The cop flipped his light back on and pointed it back towards the bag.

The creature did not have purple eyes. In fact, it had no eyes whatsoever. There were only small craters in its skull where the eyes used to sit. The confusion, mixed with my already turning insides, caused me to run back and release more stomach acid over the porch’s side.

“Okay, no more of that.” I murmured under my breath. Thoughts spun around inside my head: had I been wrong in thinking I saw such magnetic eyes? Would they have…popped out during the course of the cops’ investigation?

They obviously thought I had simply misremembered what I had seen before. The pair of cops explained that people think they see certain details all the time, and it was simply part of the deal being human. I nodded along, not wanting to dwell on the conundrum. I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep it out of my mind forever, so for the moment I let all of my thoughts go peacefully dark.

The cops ended up taking the box with them. They wanted to send it to a forensics lab and get whatever details they could from it. I watched them drive away, now shivering from being outside in the early hours of night without my normal amount of layers. Only after they turned the corner at the end of my street did I stumble back inside. I stood there in the entryway for several additional minutes just breathing, letting the thoughts slowly return to my head. The cops had told me to lock my doors and windows tonight in case the package was any sort of threat, and to keep 911 on speed dial in case I heard the sounds of a potential break in or other issues in the following hours. With that advice in mind, I numbly went to close up any potential entrances into my abode. I was walking by the mirror in my bedroom when I glimpsed my reflection for the first time that evening. My brown hair looked ratty and untamed, and the mascara I had applied that morning was gathered under my eyes from the combination of sweat and fear. My eyes though, they shone bright. Despite my scattered thoughts, they seemed focused and serious, and I caught myself staring into them through the mirror - these supposed windows to my soul.

They were a deep, rich purple.