What's in the Box?

The box stares at me, full of secrets it refuses to reveal. I can feel them, just inside the cardboard barrier, itching to get out. But the box will not let them. The white and black stripes taunt me as I turn the box in my hands several times, then open it suddenly. Nothing’s inside. Sometimes, if I open it fast enough, I see a flash of something. I think it’s another world. Or maybe a portal to Hell. Sometimes the glimpse I catch is dark with swirling shadows, and sometimes I become blinded by a flash of a red, fiery inferno inside my box. Other times, things come out. They slip out through the cracks between my fingers, black and indistinct. Like shadows. Or spirits. Maybe they’re demons from the other world that’s inside my box. I can never catch them, although I try for hours after one gets out. Sometimes they get outside my house, and I follow them, shouting at them to come back. I only want to know where they come from. I chase them, shouting at them.  I cry,“What’s in the box??” as I follow them down the dreary alleyways and busy streets. “I just want to know where you’re from! What’s in the box???” Once or twice I've felt for a minute that I’m one of the shadows, slipping out between the lips of the box and wriggling out of the cage my fingers make. But it never lasts long. My finger twitches as I put the lid back on the box. I keep spinning it in my hands. I’m trembling. I stare at the window, and a gaunt face with dark eyes stares faintly back at me. Is that me? Or is it one of the demons? My hands slow down their spinning for a moment as the thought crosses my mind, but I quickly resume the action. I can’t stop, or the world will disappear forever, and I’ll never get to see it. The image in the window stares at me, and its eye twitches a couple times as I spin faster and faster, more and more frantically. Spinning, spinning, spinning. Gaunt faces in windows and spinning. This is my world. But...I want into the other one.

The one in the box.

The trembling in my hands gets worse as I continue to speed up my spinning. The faster I spin, the more likely it is that I’ll catch a glimpse into the other world, the gate to Hell or whatever it is. My eyes sting, because I haven’t broken eye contact with the thing in the window. If I don’t watch it it’ll disappear, and I can’t let it disappear if it’s from the other world. I have to watch. I have to watch and I have to spin, to keep the portal there so I can get in. Maybe the window-thing will lead me there. I pull the lid off and stare in. For a moment, there’s a flash of fiery red, then there’s nothing. I glance back up at the window, but the face that was there is gone now. I turn my attention back to the box, but...I've stopped spinning it. The portal is gone forever now. An anguished scream echoes around my room, and I think it’s mine, because now I’ll never find out what’s in the box.