{"id":4127,"date":"2024-05-11T14:24:40","date_gmt":"2024-05-11T18:24:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=4127"},"modified":"2024-05-11T14:24:59","modified_gmt":"2024-05-11T18:24:59","slug":"the-box-at-the-door","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=4127","title":{"rendered":"The Box at the Door"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><b>The Box at the Door<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-4128 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/the-box-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"http:\/\/hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/the-box-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/the-box-300x300.jpg 300w, http:\/\/hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/the-box.jpg 432w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was just a cardboard box. I thought it was empty. It certainly was light. There was no movement discernable when shaken. No labels on it identified who put it there nor who it was sent to.\u00a0 How it got on my doorstep was unknown. What would you do, given that scenario?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As I looked up and down the street,\u00a0 I noticed the anomaly. Mine was not the only house with a box by its front door. Every house along the block had a box. Interestingly enough, none of them looked the same.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some were small, some were large, and all had unique colors. Mine just looked like a common shipping box.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I\u2019m a curious person. Most people I know would call their neighbors and ask them if they knew what was meant by all these boxes. Some might even ignore or get rid of the boxes. I, on the other hand, wanted to know what was in them, or at least what was in mine.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I was not about to let anyone else see, so I took the box into my house.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Taking out my McGiver utility knife, I cut through the seal on the top. I was about to open the box when I heard the music. It wasn\u2019t any tune I recognized. However, it was quite mesmerizing. Looking down at the box, I noticed a faint light coming through the crack I had cut.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As the music intensified, the crack grew wider, and the light grew brighter. Rays of light filled up the room and coalesced to form an image.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At this point, I was entranced and couldn\u2019t take my eyes off the image. It was of a car\u2014certainly a very futuristic car.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Then I heard the voice.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cOne day sale. Yours for the mere price of your\u2026something sounded very garbled\u2026then I heard, \u201cAct NOW.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I\u2019m not sure what it was, but my senses returned. Maybe it was the cat scratching my leg. But all of a sudden, the music stopped, the image disappeared, and the box was gone.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I quickly went and looked out of my front door. I scanned the street up and down. Some of the boxes I had seen before were still there. Some were not.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some with no box in front of them stood the same as mine. However, there were a few actual spaces. The houses that had stood there were gone. Left in their place was just a charred piece of land.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, if you get an unlabeled box at your doorstep without explanation, think twice before you open it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Box at the Door It was just a cardboard box. I thought it was empty. It certainly was light. There was no movement discernable when shaken. No labels on it identified who put it there nor who it was &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=4127\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-story-writing"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4127"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4130,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4127\/revisions\/4130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}