Do Not Open

He looked down at the chipped gym-locker combination lock. He looked at the box. The box looked back.

Ben Graham dropped the lock back in the drawer of junk where he’d exhumed it. There was no latch—nothing, nowhere on the box to even put a lock.

Maybe Justin can weld something for me…

His eyes slid back to the box, pulled by gravity. Barely the size of a shoebox, wood darkened by the oil of hundreds of hands.

If he got close, Ben could almost make out something on the lid. But when he got close to it and got looking at the thing, he found his hand resting on its corner absently, pressure building until the seal of metal was ready to creak apart.

He couldn’t seem to approach the box without the threat of opening it. And he must never, ever open it.

Ben swallowed the dustball in his throat and looked away from the box again.

I heard you’re writing a book.

Are you from Polk Writer’s Association? How did you get my address?

That’s about the be the least important thing on your mind.

Ben ran a hand over his face. Something about the box made him feel… paralyzed with exhilaration, and with fear. Like standing at the door of a plane before a skydive.

It’s simple. Take this. Never open it. Cash the checks.

Best-selling author before the end of the year? Why had he even agreed to let that kook in his door? Ben couldn’t believe he’d let some grey-whiskered, snake-oil salesman into his apartment. He could have been a murderer, or a thief.

But then, who would profile a part-time author, part-time rideshare driver who lived in a side-leaning thirty-year old apartment complex by himself? Even his 2004 Honda wasn’t worth stealing.

Ben yanked his hand away. It had strayed to the lid of the box again. His first reaction had been sarcasm.

Right. How does it work? Do I say a little chant over it? Should I just change my name to Pandora now and have it done with?

No, none of that. Just take it. And for the first year, you’ll pay me a 10% cut off your income.

10%? Should I send it by owl?

Of course not. By the time you’re convinced, I’ll send you my direct deposit.

How convenient.

It’s the twenty-first century. Even a sorcerer has to make a living.

His thick sweater could stop a shiver. There was no good reason Ben shouldn’t toss it in the complex trash compactor. No reason not to open it.

He took a step back from the box. Looked around the bare white walls, glaring yellow in the harsh light from his secondhand lamps. His single easy chair in the living room and the floor mattress, all he had for furniture since splitting from Tracy.

At his laptop—the only thing he owned that had any value. His work was on that thing, two hundred pages of a manuscript that he’d picked and grilled and yelled at. He sat down in his ratty recliner to work.

Ben didn’t throw out the box. And he didn’t open it.

---

Ben couldn’t slow his eyes down. This couldn’t be right. He’d submitted his proposal to Silverwing over a year ago—their submission form stated that if over a year elapsed, presume the answer was negative. We regrettably don’t have time to respond to each query…

But here it was.

…would be an excellent fit for our publishing house. In your reply, please include the remainder of your manuscript…

Oh, it was complete. He’d flashed through it last night, typing lines like lightning strikes, seized by a strange confidence. Fiery inspiration. Breathless and consuming.

Without thinking, Ben glanced over at the open door of his bedroom. He couldn’t see it, not from here, not where it was tucked into the corner of his closet and heaped with worn clothes (which he couldn’t afford a dresser for).

But he knew the box was looking back, smiling with its precarious metal mouth.

---

“Hey, Justin, hey I was wondering if you could weld something for me. I need, like… I need to attach a lock to an old box. Screws—oh, no, you can’t screw anything into it. It’s—it’s an antique. I know, this is weird. I was thinking you could rig up a—like a metal band around the outside… Cost of the metal? Oh—yeah, yeah, of course.”

---

He sat there in his grimy recliner with his phone to his ear, speechless.

Ben managed to keep himself from asking the rep on the other end to repeat that number.

“Y-yes, thank you. That’s… That sounds great.” The pressure in his chest puffed out in a laugh, airy and buoyant. And relieved. There were a few more questions which Ben could hardly hear over the sound of dollars dropping into his emaciated bank account.

“Thank you. Really. I can’t wait to meet in person. Thank you.”

The call disconnected and Ben dropped his hands in his lap, smiling, dizzy. He wanted to jump but was afraid if he tried to stand up right now, his legs wouldn’t hold him. He should call his parents. He should call the news. He should call Tracy—no, not that last one…

But at the radiant edge of his euphoria, Ben felt the tug. He looked to his open bedroom door, awash in harsh sunlight.

It was all because of the ancient wooden box sitting by the unmade and frameless mattress. For a startled moment, Ben couldn’t remember how it had gotten out of the closet. He must have taken it out.

The lid was still shut, but it felt like a close thing. As if even in the safety of these mostly-solid walls, the slightest gust of air could knock it open. Like its closure was fragile and temporary.

---

Ben ripped the masking tape off the back of the combination lock and twisted it between his fingers without looking at it. He hadn’t dialed the combo in years. He’d forgotten the code, and now, as he threw the last record of it in the trash, there was no way for him to open the box.

Justin had come through, and Ben—for the first time in his life—had been able to force an extra fifty after material cost. It felt good. It felt great. He had more money to his name than his last two years’ income combined, and that was only the advance.

He looked down at the metal harness. It was a solid cage of scrap metal; all Ben had to do was click this combination lock shut.

All he had to do was click it shut.

The metal had been welded in an ugly but solid restraint, and once he secured this lock, he didn’t have to worry about it falling open or…

He swallowed. It felt strange. Not strange… inhumane. Like locking a muzzle on an animal.

Ben slapped the combo lock shut. There. It was closed for good.

---

One month after he’d accepted the box, an envelope appeared in his locked apartment mailbox. Inside was a routing and account number.

Ben didn’t hesitate. He’d agreed to 10%. If he refused, he’d probably turn into a pumpkin at midnight.

He tried to find that funny.

His agent at Silverwing was a little bemused, but agreed to divert 10% of his contracted share (“All future royalties? Is this a savings account?”). Ben even transferred 10% of his advance. Thorough.

Now, all he had to do was forget about the box. The box, which in its metal cage was even now sitting on his kitchen counter, watching him work.

---

Four months in, and Tracy called.

Ben had dreamed of this moment when she broke things off. In desperate, shaking nights on his mattress on the floor, he’d fantasized about the phone call. The one he received from her after he made it big. Asking how he was. How he was doing.

His response wobbled wildly between smug and contrite. Sometimes he dreamed, in a glow, about finally earning her trust. No more missed bills, no more borrowing from her parents. Sometimes he was less charitable in his fantasies.

Never did he imagine that he’d answer her call in an anxious sweat, looking at a box on his counter with the combo lock splayed, metal cage spread obscenely, leaving the closed lid exposed.

He’d dialed the combo—he couldn’t remember the code, even now, but somehow, he had dialed it. Just like he kept taking the box out of the closet.

“It’s been great hearing from you, but I’ve got to get going, Trace.”

---

An hour and one wide-eyed run through the grocery store later, Ben was sitting on the floor looking at the shiny mess of duct tape between his knees. He’d called Justin, but he was busy with another project until Monday.

His clothes were new, his glasses fresh from the optician. Ben had finally bought a frame for his bed and a couch—not that he used it for anything except tossing mail. Next, the perfect desk for his freshly-cleaned apartment. Something with dark wood, fancy drawer handles. Maybe a corner desk. Maybe one that would fit in the sunlight beneath the window.

But not an antique. Ben could still see a sliver of the old, smooth wood of the box beneath the duct tape. He ripped another piece to cover it, trying to blind the box’s unblinking stare. No, not an antique.

---

“These have been awesome questions—I can’t thank you all enough. It’s been… I just want to tell you that I’ve dreamt of this.” Ben looked out at the small audience. He stood at the head of a small cleared-out space at the back of a bookstore, and everything was perfect.

It wasn’t a lie. He’d dreamed of this. Rows of fans sat, gazing raptly, smiling, snapping photos with their phones. To his left was an A-frame display with the image of his book—his book—in its final, polished form. Code Crack. It was a high-energy, snappy name.

It had been released half a year after he accepted…it…and in a flurry Silverwing had turned and pressed him for a sequel. And Ben had one already brewing. He already knew the name. Jail Break. He was about to drop the surprise on his audience, at the tail end of his Q and A.

“You have all made this dream come true for me,” Ben told them honestly. Or, in partial honesty. “And I have a… oh, yes? One last question—in the back.”

And college-age girl in the back perked up over the faces, glasses catching the light. “Thank you! I’m sorry to interrupt—I know you were trying to wind down…”

“No! You’re the reason I’m here.” Ben smiled. It was true. He had fans. People read his work. They loved his work. This girl, one of the thousands of people he’d touched with his writing… “What’dya got?”

She grinned. “Your book is so… so visceral, you know, it really jumps off the page. I couldn’t put it down! Garren is caught up trying to gain information for the Syndicate, but it really struck me that searching for answers is a big part of Garren’s—you know—his journey. He has so many questions about his past, and the military… It really struck me because it just feels like the need for answers is a big driving force…”

Ben started to feel dizzy again. The lights were hot. His hands… when had they gotten so sweaty?

“Would you say that’s been a big part of your life, too? Needing answers?” she asked, still smiling.

The room felt like a carousel, turning a big lazy circle. His heart was ballooning up his throat.

“Y-yes, I’d say that. Aren’t we all curious?”

“But it’s more than that, isn’t it?” Still smiling.

Ben was smiling too, a tight, rigor-grin. “What?” Did anyone else find this strange? Anyone? No one else responded, so Ben was left in his crisp new suit jacket under the bright lights, feeling like he was under a searchlight. “What do you mean?”

“You can’t stand not knowing, right?”

Ben stood there, trembling. In the aisle between the audience chairs, it was there. Sitting on the floor. The duct tape was gone. The lid, for now, was closed.

“Ben?”

He shook his head. The box was gone, the lights were normal. The girl was waiting for his answer. He was losing his mind.

“I have to apologize. I… What was your question?”

---

The duct tape was gone.

Peeling and limp, withering off as if the adhesive were bad.

Justin would help tomorrow, but tonight Ben wasn’t taking any chances. Holding the lid desperately shut, leaning one elbow on it while he drove, he careened to the nearest Extra Space Storage.

The attendant—waiting for Ben to get out so that she could lock up the office and leave—tried to look like she wasn’t staring. He set the box in the middle of the floor and stepped back.

The lid still seemed too precarious. Too light. It was going to float open.

Ben closed the rattling metal door until it slammed into the concrete. He yanked on the handle, just to be certain, but it didn’t budge.

---

“You want me to what, now?”

“Look, I know that’s weirder than the last one.”

“There’s a real risk that I’ll damage the box, dude. I can try, but I may singe it, or break it...”

“As long as the lid doesn’t come off.”

---

Ben was in the parking lot of the storage units half an hour before the office opened.

He was just unlocking the door when he was gripped by the blood-churning fear and exhilaration that the box might be inside, standing open.

Ben snatched the door open with a deafening metal roar.

The box was not open. It was sitting exactly where he’d left it. He picked it up, trying to be casual in the way he clutched the lid shut, and closed up his storage unit behind himself.

---

Ben watched from across Justin’s cluttered garage workshop. He was peering through the dimmed eye slot of the metal safety mask Justin had forced on him. You are not going to stare at the welder and go blind, dude. Put this on, or get out and let me work.

No hinge this time. No lock. No latch. The metal would sit tight against the ancient wood, and Ben dared it to try and peel it away like the duct tape.

No one, not even himself, would be able to open it.

When the metal had cooled from terror-red to gray, Justin handed it over. Ben’s mania had cooled, too. He sighed and handed Justin the cash for the materials and the bizarre work.

Justin took it and sighed. “Maybe you need a break, Ben. You don’t look so hot.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” More right than he knew. He held the metal-bound box in a hug to his chest; his weary heart beat against it through his sternum. “I’ll take a break soon. Just been working a lot, you know?”

---

Ben was working on Jail Break. It would be better than the first, he could feel it. His fingers raced over the keys, still too slow to keep up with the ideas. It was eleven at night, and he’d been zipping through like a bullet for days. His eyes burned, his fingertips bruised, but he was about to finish. Needed to finish.

His first year had been a rush, an endless spin from one unbelievable boon to the next. He knew the provenance of his luck, but it had been all he’d hoped for and more. Nineteen-year-old Ben Graham had barely had the imagination to grasp the reality that twenty-nine-year-old Ben Graham was living.

He was sweating. Why? Ben sat back in his desk chair and looked around. He was moving next week. Upgrading to a luxury apartment complex across town. He only had a few nights left in this old pit, but something about it felt…

Ben shot to his feet. In his bedroom doorway. Sitting on the floor.

He shook. “No.”

The box smiled with its metal-lipped mouth, grinning a secret grin. The scrap iron—it was rotten orange with rust, disintegrating in blood-red flakes.

“No.” Ben repeated. He threw himself flat back in his chair and turned away from the box. “No.”

He kept typing, desperate now, throat sandy. It was the finale. Everything was coming to the wire. He knew exactly how it ended, and there was nothing to do except let it play out. Let the inevitable have its due.

He ignored the sounds, the gentle scraping. The whine of metal.

Finished! Finished! With hands that shook so badly he could hardly use the mouse, Ben attached the manuscript to an email. He sent it to Rylie, days ahead of schedule. She’d be so excited. She’d call him as soon as she got the email.

Ben looked down at the floor.

The box was waiting by his feet. Patient, with a metal sneer. The welded cage was gone, left in a rusting trail across the floor. The box itself was untouched, unblemished. Unlocked.

Ben picked it up. Set it on his knees.

Here it was. The answer.

He opened the lid.

---

In the empty apartment, an officer took one last sweep. Well fare checks were run-of-the-mill, but not usually on young men. A young man gone radio silent? There was usually a grim sight waiting.

Not today. The apartment was empty. Three days he’d been out of contact. Well, he wasn’t here.

Absently, the officer crouched in front of the desk chair. There was an old box sitting on it, some sort of vintage piece. It was heavy, like there was something dense inside. He pulled at the lid, curious, but it was sealed somehow. Wouldn’t budge.

The officer let it be. Some things were just meant to stay shut.