When is a box just a box? The one I have in mind is small enough to fit into your palm. It's wooden and the edges are perfect and it's hard to open. There are two brass hinges, or brass finished anyways.
It sets, mute and still where ever you leave it. It collects dust just like anything else and its presence invades. The ripples that shimmer from it crash against everything you own and it works itself into the center. The center.
This box has two ladybugs carved into the top with six black dots on their backs; three on each side of the black split. These dots hint at symetricality but are not so, these dots are the slowly pivoting axis of the universe coming undone.
People pick up the box and make a small frown. A question forms but it's too vague to utter and the box is placed back and the ripples crash against the walls. The curtains sway...just. Those ethereal ripples soak into books, every page shivers and if some impossible micronaut had witnessed this the terror and the beauty would swell their heart into a blood climax.
Hours earlier the box had been at an estate sale, on a table setting amongst other boxes and the like. Everything on the table had a small blue price sticker on it, except this box. It was picked up and held dimly aloft until someone offered, "You can have it."
There was no response from the box, but maybe the curtains swayed...just.
In the car the box was gently pried open and the interior smelled, instinctively. If the contents of the box had been the smell it would have been disappointing. No trace of...anything, but thoughts of ancient Pharaohs in their tombs pervaded, thoughts of that deadly dust exhumed by....
What was in the box...
Now it sets...lies in wait. The ladybugs in their eternal dance, skittering against that soft wood making a noise alien and insectoid and maddening.
The box waits for someone else to pick it up long enough to hear, "You can have it."
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