Inside the Box
Wanda slammed the front door so hard her whole family tree rattled the wall. She threw her backpack down on top of the shoes she flung off her feet and ran upstairs into her room. With another slam of her bedroom door, she dove under her bed and pulled out a small black metal box. The box was rusting around the edges and had writing circling the sides that looked to be in a foreign language. Wanda slowly opened the lid and pulled out a sloppily folded piece of notebook paper. She unfolded the paper and read a message scribbled in pencil. The note read; This is not true. I am but a box, a box with no virtue.
Wanda sat for a minute and stared at the writing as though if she waited long enough, the words would change. She then threw down the paper, jumped up off the floor and went to her desk, where she pulled out a piece of paper from a notebook. After giving the matter some good thought, Wanda wrote on the paper; Do you have secret compartments where little tiny people live? After folding the paper up and setting it gently into the bottom of the box, Wanda closed it, shoved it back under her bed and went downstairs to watch the afternoon cartoons.
The next day at school Wanda spent half of the math lesson daydreaming about her magic box filled with little dinosaurs or maybe ancient jewels that once belonged to Cleopatra. In fact, ever since Wanda had found the box in her attic she’d been having these magnificent day dreams. But it wasn’t until she decided to keep her rock collection in the box that she realized its true magic. A day after she put the rocks in the box Wanda opened it only to find the rocks replaced by a small piece of folded notebook paper that read; Is this some kind of joke? I don’t fill you with rocks. Please have a little courtesy next time.
But when Wanda’s teacher yelled her name for not giving the answer to four times seven, she jerked out of her trance and her cheeks went pink. The laughter from her classmates haunted her all the way home on the school bus. Her only distraction was the anticipation for today’s discovery from the mysterious black box. This time her hands shook as she opened it. Half expecting to see little tiny people smiling and waving up at her, her heart sank when all she saw was another small piece of paper, sloppily folded in the bottom of the box. What do you take me for? I am but a box, just like any other. Wanda decided to wait until the evening to respond this time. She needed time to think.
At dinner Wanda’s baby brother Joshua, was making funny squeaking noises in his high chair and slapping his mashed potatoes with a spoon. After wiping Joshua’s face, Wanda’s mother asked her how her day at school was.
“Fine.”
“You don’t sound fine. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing… Mom, what makes someone special?” Wanda’s mother put her fork down and gave her a concerned head tilt. It took her a minute to respond. Before she could answer however, Joshua threw his spoon at the table and it landed in a bowl of peas. Joshua started screaming and Wanda’s mother spent the next five minutes attempting to calm him down and clean up the peas at the same time.
“Everyone is special in their own way.” Wanda’s mother finally let out, half in a sigh. “Did someone say you weren’t special? Because-”
Wanda cut in, “-no.” and before her mother could fathom any kind of response Wanda leapt off her chair and ran upstairs to her room. She tore a piece of paper out of her notebook and wrote- But you must be special. My mom calls my brother special all the time and he can’t even talk.
Wanda spent the entire next day in a state of peace. She didn’t fill her head with any silly ideas about boxes full of ice cream or limitless cotton candy. She focused on her work and rode the bus home thinking about how much she appreciated the box regardless of its abilities. And when it came time to open it up and behold what was in store for the day, she read- What’s wrong with your brother? Any old bloke can talk. Sounds to me like you come from a family of cretins. And with that Wanda threw the box into the river behind her house and watched it float away into the sunset. Sadly, Wanda was wrong. Some boxes are just mean.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I don’t completely understand the first sentence, and I think it takes away (or at least doesn’t add) to the rest of the story. It also doesn’t really pull me in. Starting two or three sentences in works much better, in my opinion; however, maybe I simply don’t understand the family tree thing.
I like the idea of something out of the ordinary, yet profoundly not special. I like the fact that you never explain how the box does what it does, I would keep this the same above all else, if you revise this story any further. There also seems to be an idea of the limitless of the imagination confined within a very small box, and how this affects a very imaginative child.
I enjoy the story, and the premise to the story, there are only a few sentences that I think need to be worked on. “Wanda’s mother put her fork down and gave her a concerned head tilt,” is a little awkward to me, primarily the description of the head tilt.
The only addition I could see to the story is the brother’s character being opened up more (which is hard seeing the speed in which the story is told and the succinctness that the events have) or maybe the build up before she writes something in the box being greater. For example, she could work on writing something for hours, days, months, or she could try to do things with the box before realizing that it is pretty useless. Maybe exploding one of the day dreams that Wanda has into an entirely new scenario could work. She could also write a final letter to the box, although I think this might just come off as needless words and I quite like the ending as it is.
Post a Comment