Special Delivery

Special delivery
by J.LHunter

Elise could hear the delivery truck pull to a stop outside and ran out the front door immediately. It was a rare occasion when you had a delivery from UPS or FedEx in the quiet little suburban village she lived in. There were about a hundred other homes and families in those houses, but hardly any of them ever had a delivery. So she bounced outside, running from the kitchen in the back of the house all the way across the living room as if she had been waiting for something to come, which of course she wasn’t.

The sun beamed down brilliantly making the colors of the leaves and grass stand out as if they were more real than everything else. It wasn’t a hot morning, a cool breeze settled in and blew occasionally, and when it wasn’t, the air just kind of lingered like the air in a large walk-in cooler.

She bounded the porch steps, leaping from the top to the bottom in one single step. It wasn’t a magnificent feat, but Elise staggered at the bottom and forced herself to maintain her balance.

There was no discernible reason as to why she was so excited to be receiving something from the UPS truck. She didn’t even know that it was hers completely, although a hunch was a hunch. Plus, there weren’t any other houses that would be receiving a package today, she would have heard about it last night, her cell phone buzzing non-stop with text messages concerning “omg, guess wht im getting 2morrow”. Elise could hardly ever understand these texts, most of them coming from her friend, Alyssa Colt who lived about two blocks down.

A man was getting out of the truck. He wore a light tan uniform, his shirt and pants matching so eloquently. She wished now that she had busted outside wearing something more presentable than a pair of sweat-pants and an overly large Dallas Cowboys T-shirt. It also didn’t help the fact that her dirty blond hair was an absolute mess and the only makeup she wore was what she had failed to wipe off before she went to bed last night.

She felt herself walking across the grass in her cow slippers (one of the cows was missing an eye and looked like it was winking at you). That was one thing she could have remembered to take off. Put something a little more alluring, like the sandals right beside the doorway. Oh well, she thought to herself, it was just a delivery. But it wasn’t just a delivery, the man in the tan uniform was stepping onto a metal riser on the back of the truck. He stepped into the opened trailer and Elise could hear some thumping and a sound like chains coming undone. He appeared out of the trailer with a very large box, toting it with a dolly, positioning it on the riser then pushed a button to his side and was let down.

Elise walked over to him, thinking the whole time how cute the man was, and how good-bad it was to be thinking about such things when her husband was out at work. She thought what he would do if she asked him to come inside for a little bit. It wasn’t something a happily married woman would say. However, on the surface, she seemed to be happy, presentable, picture-perfect. But her and Mark were having problems, the things that trouble married couples all the time when everything is perfect and the passion leaves, packs it’s bags and boards the next plane to Tahiti.

She smiled politely. The delivery man offered his own smile, more business, less flirtatious. Elise knew she was being stupid. She was beginning to sound like all those other vain house-wives, inviting anything with two legs and a penis inside their house.

The man held out a clipboard and a pen attached to it with a thin brown twine.

“Please sign and date here.”

She grabbed the clipboard away from his too-muscular hands and scribbled her nearly unintelligible signature on the line and only slightly more intelligible date right next to it.

“Alright, thank you ma’am.” He took the papers, ripped the white one that was on top and handed Elise the pink one, she pulled it toward her graciously. He isn’t even looking at me, she thought. Am I not at all good looking?

The delivery man turned around and pulled the dolly with the large brown box on it towards the driveway. He stopped, “Ma’am, you want me to take it to the porch?”

“Umm, can you just push it into the garage? Here I’ll open it” She hurried inside. There was a button on the garage wall and she pushed it. The big metal door lifted up noisily. They never used the garage for anything other than the trash they had accumulated over the years. Some things in there had been building up since the mid nineties. Elise herself was an avid as-seen-on-TV buyer, always watched them in the early hours with the remote and her credit card laying beside her on the arm of the couch as she watched and ate her cereal.

There was a small little spot in the back and Elise quickly scooted the boxes and exercise equipment out of the way to make a path towards it. The man entered and sat the package in the designated spot. They both walked outside. She had seen those big red stamps that read Urgent and handle with care on all sides of the box and wondered who might have sent it to her. Maybe she had a secret admirer, those things she thought were left in middle school, along with crushes and notes scribbled on the backs of homework assignments. But it could happen she thought, it could very well happen. But who could it be? Perhaps it was someone from the gym. That was the most likely case, since it was the only time she left the house without Mark right there beside her.

Today wasn’t the day for the gym. She went every day except Tuesdays. Most people would have looked toward those times being alone in the house, but she was alone so much now she longed for the day she actually had an excuse to go out.

There was the man who stood behind the counter, the buff-Armstrong fellow who had so many muscles she often wondered when she came in and saw him how he found shirts to fit around his body. She might be desperate, but she wasn’t that desperate.

She watched the delivery guy walk away, raising one hand up to his forehead in some weird salute. She waved back. There he goes, she found herself thinking, away from my life. The truck drove off and disappeared around the corner. Everything was all of a sudden quiet, the wind did not blow, the birds were silent as well as her frequently churning mind.

Elise turned around and stared at the box, nestled in between an old Stairmaster and some other smaller packages labeled Christmas. She walked up to it. The box stood almost up to her chest, big enough for herself to fit in there. Was it a refrigerator? It sure was big enough to be one. But why? Washer? Dryer?

She turned her thoughts over and over as to what the box could have inside it. Then, after about two minutes she saw the little envelope taped to the top. She pulled the envelope loose and ripped it open with her fingernails. There was a small folded piece of paper inside. Written on the inside of the fold were the words:

Special delivery, just for you. Hope you like it.

A simple enough statement, but didn’t help much in answering the question of who had sent it to her in the first place, or what it was. If anything it made her more curious. Then she turned it over again and saw there was more written on the other side:

Wait to open midnight.

She laid the piece of paper and the envelope back on the box. Wait to open midnight? Why the hell would she do that. Even if she wanted to wait that long, she didn’t think it would be possible. Mark was going to be home at seven o’clock and he would see it and want to open it himself, with her approval or not.

The curiosity was aching inside her already. Maybe it was an early Christmas present. Her grandmother who lived in upstate Michigan sometimes sent her packages on all the important holidays, even once she had sent her a card with a hundred dollars in it in the middle of march for no apparent reason. But that was back when she was thirteen years old. She was twenty six now and hadn’t received a gift from her elderly grandmother in almost seven years.

Then she thought about her mom and dad, who stayed now in Lakeland, Florida. That was where they had retired to, her father had been active military, Marine Corps, for nearly twenty some years and her mother had been a full time nurse for half that. It was actually possible that they had sent her this obscenely large package. She thought about her brother, who always liked to play pranks on people and wasn’t beyond sending someone a box like the one now sitting in front of her with another slightly smaller box inside it, with another box inside that one and so on until you finally open the last one, inside it being a spoon or thumbtack or soggy packing peanut.

Elise decided to obey the written words on the package, to wait and open it at midnight. She wouldn’t even let Mark know about it when he got home. He never ventured into the garage anyways. That was entirely uncharted territory. When he came home most nights he would simply go upstairs into their bedroom, turn the lights off without saying a word to Elise and fall asleep right there with his clothes still on. He would wake up early in the morning, change, shower and leave with just as much conversation between the two of them.

There was really no wondering why she felt alone all the time. She realized this, but never really wanted to face it. Elise knew she wasn’t doing anything with her life, but squandering it away with this useless man.

She felt the anger rise inside her. Felt that soft, warm, light pulsating inside her mind, glowing and beating.

Elise closed the garage door, locking it shut on both sides and left the room. She thought about locking the door that led into the house, but decided against it. There was no telling what frame of mind she was going to be in that night when she went to drag the package out and open it. If she locked the door, she might not be able to find the key to unlock it.

There was a simple solution, but she was tired, mentally exhausted and wanted to go to her room and lay down. She looked at the clock in the hallway as she passed. It was only twelve in the afternoon and far too early for her to be thinking about laying down. It was only the depression. Granted it would be good to close her eyes for a bit and snooze away the daylight, but she felt miserable when she thought about what it meant. People who killed themselves or killed others have often been known to sleep for long periods of time beforehand.

She was no doctor, nor was she a psychologist and was not in the mental state to diagnose anything that could and might be wrong with her. She crossed the living room and closed the door that she had forgotten when she left the house earlier.

Despite her supposed clinical depression, everything was going well for her. That was what she had to do, keep looking up. Her father had taught her to always see the road ahead, just tear out the rearview mirrors and keep going straight. No looking back, was her dad’s motto. Hers had been, look back every once in a while. And she detested herself for these things. She was faithful to her husband, but thought always that they weren’t happy together. Hell, she knew why he was tired all the time. It was because he traveled all the time, from one place to another making business deals and doing whatever it was that he does for a living.

They had been together for almost four years, had met in college and married a year later. She loved Mark, in the past tense. There was no love anymore, on either of their parts. Elise knew that he had cheated on her, and couldn’t blame him, she was a terrible lover, awful in bed (whenever they did do anything) and did absolutely nothing but go to the gym every day and clean the house, fixing dinner when necessary. She found that little fact out from looking at his phone while he was sleeping. Most women, she thought, would tell him, go off on him for what he had done to her. But she knew that things were over, they were only together because her financial situation was by no means enough to sustain herself. Also the term, lawful wedded wife, a mild enough term, but something that bound them whether they liked it or not.

She sat down on the couch. Never had the house seemed so quiet, so empty. It was as if she were a ghost, inhabiting an old abandoned place. She could see her home now, all grey from the accumulated dust, cobwebs draped from wall to wall like white tattered curtains.

These are the reasons she had been so excited to receive the package. Her world had gone from dull grey’s and browns to brightly exuberant colors of something brand new.

That afternoon her mind wandered to the box in the garage.

Elise knew it had to be her mother. The note was just a little trick they were playing, trying to be inconspicuous, perhaps trying to scare her or something. Dinner was the usual for Tuesday nights, spaghetti and garlic bread. She set a big pot almost to the brim full of water on the warming burner and turned the dial for the oven to preheat.

It was six thirty. Normally Mark got off around six, but it took an hour for the drive from the city to get home. That usually meant she could expect him at around ten or fifteen past seven. She actually found herself hoping that he wouldn’t go straight up to the bedroom tonight. She would set the kitchen table and they would eat dinner and talk about their days.

Then Elise would tell her husband about the box and they would wait until midnight when her mother and father would surprise them by showing up. They would let Elise and Mark open up the cumbersome package, revealing a brand new dishwasher or oven.

Only hopes and dreams, seemingly pitiful and minute compared to those dreams of athletes and movie stars, but it was all she had. She found herself smiling frequently while stirring the spaghetti noodles and frying up the hamburger meat. Elise thought that she would confess her feelings to her husband. Maybe that would be enough to set things straight and maybe they would have another chance for their relationship to work. Of course Elise had read too many bad romance novels in the past year or so, and these things never worked the way they did in those ten chapter books in real life.

When seven o’clock brushed by quickly enough, there was no sign of Mark. She waited for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, listening for the faint rumble of the BMW’s engine and the soft sound of tires sliding to a halt on the driveway. Nothing.

She had already pulled the garlic bread out of the oven, cut it in about ten even slices and set it down on the kitchen table with a towel covering it to keep the bread warm. She also put a glass top on the pot full of finished spaghetti.

Maybe he had to work late. Her thoughts were futile, powerless and weak. Elise sat down at the kitchen table and began to wonder as the hands of the clock slowly made their way between the seven and the eight what might have happened.

Her breath became shallow as if she were sipping scolding hot coffee instead of oxygen. The smell of the spaghetti sauce still hovered in the air, a cloud that after a small amount of time began to make Elise feel sick to her stomach.

Eight o’clock rolled around and there were still no signs of her husband. Something is wrong, a part of her tried to scream from some distant realm inside of her mind. Something had happened to him.

No, she retorted, having only a slightly different conversation with herself that she had been having for almost three years. Nothing is wrong. Like children she fought with these two contrasting thoughts. No it isn’t-yes it is-no it isn’t-yes it is!

The last one must have won the blue ribbon. She got up, knocking the chair backwards as she did; it landed on its side halfway under the kitchen table. Elise double checked to make sure the stove was off before she left into the living room. She opened the front door and stepped outside momentarily, looking in both directions down the street. No sign of anything, nevertheless her husband. The evening twilight was cool, quiet. A thought brushed past her like a wandering spirit, leaving gooseflesh along her arms and neck in the wake of it’s spidery elapse.

Dead.

Dead.

She walked back inside, closing the door behind her slowly. For some reason she felt the need to make as little noise as possible. The foyer led either straight into the living room or up the stairs to the two bedrooms and small half-bath that constituted a second floor. There was no reason to go up there, no reason even to step into the living room. She wanted to go into the garage. To open the box and see what was in it just for her. It had to be something good.

Then the thought struck her, like someone thrusting a bag rocks into her mid-section. She embraced the thought and brought it to the forefront of her mind. It must be something her husband had gotten her. She had forgotten all about their anniversary. Although it wasn’t for another week, maybe he had decided to go premature on her and get the something he had probably been planning on for months. Maybe it was just too special to wait.

He would come midnight, probably waiting with some of his friends at one of their houses or at the bar downtown. Showing up wearing that big ear to ear smile that he always wore when they first met, the smile she fell in love with then. She thought she could learn to love him again, after all the tribulations their marriage had gone through. All the ups and downs, but it wasn’t so far down that she didn’t think she couldn’t rebound from. It was perfect. Everything was perfect.

9:00

Elise found it hard to wait so long. Time seemed to stretch further like a rubber band that wouldn’t snap if you pulled too far, when you were waiting for something to happen.

She tried to lay down. It was impossible, she could barely close her eyes from the excitement. Even thinking about the box made her anxious and had almost once faltered and ran, probably screaming, to the garage. There she would rip it open like a child ripping open presents that had been sitting under the tree for two long weeks at Christmas time. But she found herself able to restrain this sudden impulsive idea.


10:00

She was tired. Exhausted was probably a better word for it. It had been a long day; the ups and downs she had felt other days felt insubstantial compared to this.

At one point she found herself sitting outside in the cool night air, watching the bushes and behind the houses across the street to see if she could spot the glint of a flashlight as Mark and his friends watched her. There was nothing of course. Mark was smarter than to let himself be seen that easily.

There was no moon. But the sky was filled up with stars. Tiny specks of white scattered randomly across the back-drop of night; fires that burned endlessly hanging from nothing at all, seemingly supported in the vacuum of space by their own immense gravity.

She wished she could be like that, to be able to support herself. She understood that it would probably never happen, not the way she wanted anyhow. Elise had her own ideas and thoughts, independent from pretty much everyone else in the world, secluded in her own mind with the option of whether or not to share them. But there was also something where she felt she couldn’t share those thoughts independently when she wanted to. She always had to have someone there to support her when it was time for her own opinions to come out.

The giant oaks swayed back and forth, their silhouettes like lurking shadows teasing and taunting her.

Everything was so quiet. It was as if she were the last person alive in the world. When she went inside, the house was even more so. The walls felt empty and scarce were feelings of home.

11:00

Elise was crazy with excitement. She waited, and waited. Listening, watching through the windows like she were spying on the neighbors. Her skin crawled with nervousness, the kind when you were anticipating something, like getting on a big, fast ride at the fair. Standing there in line, watching a roller coaster you were about to get on make gigantic loops and turns, hurling it’s screaming passengers upside down, flinging them every-which direction.

Time dragged, sloth-like. The hands of the clock above the fireplace mantle appearing not to move at all, the three hands stuck where they where. Even the second hand ticked with a copious amount of time between each tock.

Still, she waited.

The box, in her mind, waiting for her. Waiting for them.

Something had changed inside of Elise. Something drastic like an epiphany had occurred within herself. She had been living so long thinking that her husband did not care, that being tired was just an excuse, that he wanted to be at work and coming home was as loathsome as visiting the doctor’s office for a routine check-up.

That was how she felt. Now though, things were different. She knew now that he did love her, there was no explicable reason as to why and how she knew this, probably the same reason how she knew that the box in the garage was from him. It could have very well been from her parents, or a mistake that was meant for the next door neighbor. But she just knew.

Thirty minutes came around. Elise felt encouraged that she had made it this far, and would wait longer if she had to. It was like she were crawling through a thick entanglement of vines in an immense jungle with nothing but a thought of paradise to fill her mind.


11:45

Almost there. Elise slowly crept to the back bedroom, underneath the stairs, toward the door that led into the garage.

She felt her hand around the cool metal of the brass knob. Turned and the door popped open, a bit of cool air breathed out through the slight crack. She opened the door all the way. The room was dark, she hit her knee on one of the other boxes and fumbled for the light switch.

She flicked it on and a soft white light splayed throughout the garage, across the mess of stacked boxes and cassette tapes and numerous amounts of magazines and old newspapers. Elise thought momentarily that tomorrow she would clean the place out, have a big yard sale where the community would all gather around in awe at the result of years of accumulated crap.

That didn’t matter. She listened intently, trying to make as less noise as possible so that she would be able to hear any cars pull up anywhere in the vicinity of the yard. Nothing yet though.

But there was still time. Mark was always prompt. He would be here on time, always was, always will be.

12:00 Midnight

She timed it perfectly. There was a small battery powered alarm clock on a tool shed that had apparently never been turned off. It was a wonder that it stayed on for however long.

As soon as eleven fifty nine turned into a one a two followed by two zero’s she reached out and ripped the piece of tape that held one of the sides together. Only a corner of the box opened.

There was a faint smell that issued out. It was a sweet aroma that reminded her of a candle she had gotten once called ‘Holiday Cranberry’ mixed with the musk of body odor.

She placed her hands on both sides of the box and tried to lift the one side up, thinking maybe it could be lifted that way.

Her left hand felt something wet. It was where the box had opened when she peeled the tape off. Elise slowly lifted her hand off of the side of the box and saw that her entire palm was covered in red.

A bead of the thick red liquid coursed from the corner of the box. It was sticky, like the juice from a cherry, or a pomegranate first cracked open. Her eyes widened. Elise lifted her hand up to her nose and smelled, but there was nothing to smell.

She turned around and peeled more tape from the other side of the box.

One of the flaps burst open. She found another strip of tape and pulled it apart. Then the entire package came loose.

Something tumbled out on the other side. It was heavy, making a soft thud on the concrete floor as it fell. The contents were hidden in a sea of shredded newspaper clippings. She sifted through them as if it were confetti she were fishing through. The excitement turning into a foreboding curiosity.

Then she saw it. What was all over her hand ran out of the bottom of the box onto the floor. Blood, coursing a stream towards the still open door. She stepped around the box that was now nothing but a few pieces of cardboard linked together.

That was when she first noticed the hand sticking out of the blood stained newspaper clippings. And the gold ring she remembered picking out at the jewelers four years ago on one of the extended fingers.

She tripped over the box and the limp remains of her husband’s dead body fell out like a sack of marbles spilling out of it’s container. The gray hand fumbled onto the floor and waded in the quickly growing puddle of blood. The stiff finger with their wedding band on it pointed to the rest of the body as if to say, look here I am. On time and not a minute too soon. Just like you thought.

The body lay there, strewn about in a layer of tattered cloth that had once been the suit he was wearing when he set off that morning. His face was turned toward her, his eyes wide open and bulging tremendously out of their sockets. A bit of pink that vaguely resembled a tongue stuck out of his slack jaw.

She stumbled backward. Unable to breathe. The sick-sweet smell rose into the air, accumulating into a cloud around her. It was the smell of her husband’s deteriorating flesh. The rest of his body was twisted in an impossible angle, stiff but limp at the same time, like a skeleton held together by a string.

Her head hit the back of a storage cabinet as she fell back. A stack of books tumbled over on top of her. She tried to breathe but nothing happened, her chest heaved in and out as if there were something in her throat, stuck there, keeping air from getting to her lungs. Elise stared at the gleaming ring, fitted tightly around the slightly swollen hand.

Where she sat she could see a piece of paper, tucked neatly inside the gaping hole just above the body’s collarbone. Blackish liquid seeped from out of the unnatural orifice. She was sure he hadn’t had that when he left this morning, she thought crazily. A brittle laugh almost escaped her mouth, would have if she could breath at all.

On the piece of paper was scribbled:

Hope you liked your special delivery. See you soon.

She sat there, slowly regaining her breath, most of it coming out in a fit of coughing sobs.

Outside she heard a car door slam. The sound of footsteps on the pavement. Approaching the front door. Coming closer.

All she could see and think of was her husband’s dead body. Those dead eyes, wide, lifeless, staring at her. All she could smell was the sweet aroma of rotting flesh and spaghetti sauce.

All she could hear in the silence was the front door opening and slamming shut.

The End.