It had been awhile since an evening opened up for all six of them to get together. The Sterlings were homeschooling their two boys, both of the Smiths were coaching their daughter’s basketball team, and the Kensons, though childless, were busy with work.

When people wish for time to slow down, it seems to speed up, as if the wish makes time itself shorter. Thankfully these three couples were able to work something out. They all needed a night off. Each one of them had at least a glass of wine or whiskey in his or her hand as they sat in the Franks’ living room. Smoked salmon and garlic mashed potatoes still hung in the air even though dinner had been almost forty-five minutes ago. Empty dessert plates bore crumbs of a vanilla raspberry cake while buttercream frosting dried on forks.

The conversations went in and out from serious to light. Periodic cheers and taps of glasses kept the evening relatively light despite the stressors in everyone lives.

“That’s quite a collection of Legos you have there, Naomi and Jack,” Brenda Smith said with a grin.

Naomi Sterling blushed at the joke, while Jack giggled unashamedly. “Tristan is building the Millennium Falcon,” he said as he picked up a light grey Lego piece. “He’s actually barely needed our help at all so far.”

“How long has it been there?” Ben Kenson asked.

Jack tossed the Lego back with the large pile of others by the base of the growing Millennium Falcon. “You mean parked in the middle of our living room like this?” He glanced at Naomi for help. When she looked down at her wine glass, cheeks bright red, he answered, “I’d say it’s been about a month.”

This produced a round of giggles.

“Tristan turns into a tyrant every time we try moving it,” Naomi defended.

Brenda leaned toward her, the wine in her glass threatening to drip on the beige carpet. “We have to pick our battles with our children too.”

Glancing at her husband, Jenny Kenson said, “I totally understand.”

The giggles rose into hearty bellows from everyone, except for Ben, who took his turn to blush down at his glass of Merlot.

Aaron Smith nodded at a dark wooden box sitting on the cabinet below the TV. “Who’s is that? Justin’s quarter collection?”

Jack shook his head as he swallowed a sip of whiskey. “No, actually, that’s mine.”

“What’s in it?” Ben asked.

Naomi blushed down at her wine for the second time tonight.

Jack set his whiskey on a coaster and got up from his spot on the floor. “There’s nothing in it,” he said as he picked up the box with both hands. “Technically there’s nothing in it.”

“Is it a game?” Jenny asked. “Can we play it?”

Jack looked to her with dark eyes, his face devoid of tonight’s pleasantries. “This isn’t a game.”

Naomi cleared her throat. “Who wants another drink?”

Aaron and Brenda raised empty glasses. As Naomi got them refills in the kitchen, Jack went on: “Everyone has their thing. Kids have their toys, adults have their sports teams or books or fitness clubs.” He lowered his eyes to the box. “I have this.”

Ben shrugged. “But what is it?”

When Jack lifted his eyes to him, they were bright, excited. His lips seemed to vibrate, as though he was operating at too high of a frequency while he held the box. He said, “This box contains all of my dreams.”

The group chuckled behind their glasses. “And what might your dreams be, Jack?” Aaron asked.

“I’ve always wanted to build a cabin near a river where I can go fly fishing every summer. I did it once as a teenager with my dad before he died. It was one of the the best days of my life.”

Aaron shrugged, looking at everyone’s blank faces, then to Jack. “I had no idea you were into fly fishing––or nature, for that matter. Have you looked into any property? I’m sure it’s not the money that’s holding you back ever since the merger at your company.”

Jack smiled, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes, which had dimmed again. “No, not yet. I––” He looked down at the box. “I keep getting distracted.”

Naomi handed Aaron and Brenda their refills and plopped a wooden bowl down on the coffee table. The hollow clunk made everyone but Jack flinch.

“How about a game of charades?” She grabbed a scrap of paper from the bowl.

A shiver raced up everyone’s spine as they snapped back into the present. Everyone but Jack. He returned the box to the top of the cabinet and sat back on the floor looking into his glass of whiskey. As Naomi opened the folded scrap of paper, she glanced at her husband. When his eyes connected to hers, they were dim, the brightness snuffed out. Her eyes matched his for as long as the glance lasted, which wasn’t very long. When she read the phrase on the paper, she crumpled it in her hand and help up three fingers.

–––––

With nothing but the light over the stove to illuminate the kitchen and the dining room, Naomi sat at the dining room table with Jack’s box in front of her. She had to push lukewarm plates of cheese and cold casseroles out of her way to set the box down. The tuna casserole closest to her smelled sour. She wrinkled her nose, trying her best to ignore the stench. She set her half-empty glass of wine next to the box. The wine swirled like tides trapped in a circular pool. Lipstick from earlier this morning was still stuck to the rim of the glass. Naomi was able to ignore the stain easily, like how she ignored the two glasses of wine she drank before her children woke up this morning.

Finally her children were in bed. The clock on the stove read half past ten. Naomi looked past the box and into the living room, where a large picture of Jack sat in front of the TV. His wide smile was infectious even though the light barely reached the picture, really only lighting up his grey eyes and crooked teeth. He looked dead even in that picture, although it was taken two years ago at a friend’s wedding. Naomi’s shoulder couldn’t be cropped out from the picture, leaving a pink slope next to Jack’s shoulder. That was when they still touched. That was before the box.

Naomi looked down at it, tears falling from her eyes. Tears she learned to ignore a few days ago when she realized they wouldn’t be stopping anytime soon. She promised herself she wouldn’t cry in front of her children, she wouldn’t let them see her so miserable. But as soon as Jack’s eyes rolled into the back of his head where they would remain until decay took them, she fell to the floor and sobbed with her kids standing right beside her.

She let her fingers graze the box until her right hand was on the lid. A tingle raced down her arm and made her shoulder feel numb––the same shoulder cropped in Jack’s photo. She hesitated with her hand on the box’s lid, in spite of the rest of her body pleading with her to open it. The urge was so strong she thought some outside force was prodding her to do it.

Jack would be furious if he saw her touching his box. He would be delirious with rage if he saw her opening it.

“Jack’s dead,” she said aloud, though she didn’t hear the raspy sound of her voice. What she heard inside her head was a voice telling her to open the box, telling her she had been wanting to peak inside ever since Jack brought it home six months ago. When she had asked him what it was, he simply answered, “My dreams.” When she had asked him where he got it, he answered, “It was a gift.”

And that was that, save for the one time he caught her almost opening the box. It was during the summer, when the air conditioning barely did enough to help them get through a night’s sleep without sweating. She couldn’t sleep not because of the sweat, but because she couldn’t stop thinking about Jack’s box.

When he caught her, he screamed. He wrenched the box out of her hands and slapped her with the back of his hand. Naomi’s face went flying into the couch. A spot of blood remained on the cushion where her face landed, a stain that wouldn’t come out. That was the last time Jack touched her for the rest of his life.

Now she didn’t have to worry about Jack hitting her again, even though it was only the one time. Now she had the box, and he couldn’t take it away from her this time. She wished he was rolling in his grave as she pushed back the box’s lid. After a second she took the wish back, but deep down––in the part that felt like some outside force––she hoped he was convulsing in his grave as she opened his box.

Nothing came out of the box when she opened it. No odors, nothing he might have stored stored inside. Nothing. Naomi took one more sip from her wine before leaning over the box and looking inside.

She saw everything. From her first dance recital at age seven to her dance team in college. She saw them winning contest after contest, with her leading the pack. She saw herself meeting Jack at nineteen. She saw herself giving birth to Tristan, then Justin two years later. She saw her hair turning from mousy brown to grey, then to white. She saw wrinkles cut across her tired face. She saw Jack dead at his funeral. She saw Tristan and Justin growing up without a dad. She saw herself sitting at the very dinning table she sat at now, looking into the box.

Then everything stopped. Time rewound, but not back to the beginning.

She saw herself again, at the age she was at today, but now she was dancing. She hadn’t danced professionally since her and Jack had been married. In the box, however, she saw herself as a middle-aged woman dancing on Broadway. She saw a crowd of people holding up signs for her, cheering for her, crying for her. She saw herself choreographing a dance that involved lavish costumes and fire. She saw herself writing a musical. She saw herself doing everything she ever wanted to do. She saw herself achieving her dreams.

And she couldn’t look away.

_____

When Naomi died two months later of what doctors could only attribute to a bad heart (when in reality her heart had aged fifty years in those two months), the box went missing.

The night after Naomi first looked into the box, she fantasized taking up dancing again. She couldn’t get the images of herself performing on Broadway or writing her own musical out of her head. She even started a new word document to see if she could generate any ideas. It didn’t take long, however, until she was back staring into the box. She couldn’t look away. She couldn’t not watch herself achieve her dreams.

When she died, she hadn’t begin writing the musical she never thought she could write. She never got back into dancing. One might make an excuse that she didn’t have time, not with suddenly becoming a single mom. In reality, she never started because she couldn’t stop looking into the box, couldn’t stop watching her dreams.

The box went missing because someone collected it during Naomi’s wake. A tall, slender man in a long black suit coat and a maroon scarf that hung just below his sternum, confused Naomi’s friends and family at his arrival. No one recognized him, not even Naomi’s parents, but when he left, no one spoke of him, as if he was forgotten as soon as he stepped out the door with the box in his spindly hands. If anything, with that box out of the house, the wake seemed lighter, happier in spite of Jack and Naomi’s deaths.

The man walked for miles, for hours, for days until he reached the nearest city. During his travels he managed to stay perfectly clean. His leather loafers were shiny, like they were still brand new. Not a speck of dirt clung to his face. If one inspected his fingernails, he or she would find they were perfectly clipped and filed, without a trace of filth beneath them.

He walked until he found a woman taking her lunch outside on a park bench. Her platinum blonde hair was thrown up into a messy bun. Rolls of fat spilled over her hips and took up most of the bench. The man, with his narrow frame, sat comfortably on the empty side of the bench. She eyed him out of the corner of her blue eyes as she chewed a limp salad in small, slow bites. Despite the fresh, warm air, she wheezed in between each bite.

The man sat without speaking for several minutes, as if he was deep in thought. The woman boxed up her salad to get away from him, but before she could heft herself out of the low bench, he said, “I have a gift for you, Maria.”

She jerked her bulky frame to face him, her blue eyes wide. “How do you know my name?”

His smile was as clean and as straight as his fingernails. Tapping the box, he said, “Don’t you want to see your gift?”

She made to get up, but fell back on the bench, making the small screws groan. “Who are you? What do you want? How do you know––”

“Maria, it’s okay.”

She sucked in a deep breath, clinging as much as she could to the opposite side the bench as she faced him.

He smiled, revealing those perfect teeth again. “You know me,” he said.

Her blue eyes became blank. Her bottom lip hung open a quarter of an inch. She hiccuped. “I know…you?”

“Of course you do.” He tapped the box again. “Do you want your gift?”

Her blank eyes dropped to the box. “What’s in it?”

“Everything you’ve ever wanted.”

He slid open the top of the box and Maria couldn’t look away from what she saw. Inside, she saw everything. The man watched her vacant blue eyes widen, then bulge. He even noticed the corners of her mouth curling upward ever so slightly as she watched.

She gasped. “That’s––This is––”

“This is everything, and it’s all for you.” He handed her the box, stood up from his narrow spot on the bench, and left Maria to gaze at the most priceless gift she had ever received. He left her to dwell, and as she stared into the void, her heart picked up speed, beating rapidly as time became shorter the longer she gazed into the box.

---

Featured Download: CLICK HERE to unlock the methods for preparing your life for creative inspiration and visionary change.