“Play me?” I mutter, reading the note in the envelope.
Sighing, I rip open the smaller box, and sure enough, there’s a small voice recorder inside, along with another freaking box.
I hit play on the recorder. Silence, nothing plays. I shake it, but still nothing. I’m about to check the batteries when an auto-tuned voice comes through the tiny speaker.
Your lips have kissed what’s always been mine
You continue to refuse to fall in line
Tick tock goes your clock…you’re running out of time.
The hairs on my arms and at the nape of my neck rise like a domino effect. Thomas’s joking demeanor vanishes.
“Who sent this to you?” He demands, taking the recorder from me.
“I-I don’t know. There wasn’t any postage on it, just my name.”
“Who gave this to you?” he asks, his gaze sharp, surveying our surroundings as if he senses danger.
The voice loops the same creepy message, but it sounds louder, no longer whispery.
“I-it was, it cam-came from Mary. Sh-she said it was ou-outside when she arrived this morning,” I finally manage to get out.
I watch as he moves his focus to the smallest box. Reaching in his pocket, he pulls out a pair of gloves.
“Hand that to me, carefully.” Following his command, I place the box in his black-gloved hand.
I watch as he pulls out two masks, handing one to me. “Put this on. I don’t think anything in here is toxic. This is just a precaution.”
Once we’re both masked, he uses a box cutter to open the last box. Well, what I hope is the last box.
“Fuck!”
“What is it?” I ask, not sure I want to know.
Thomas peers into my worried gray eyes.
“You don’t need to see this, Emma,” he says and closes the box.
I know it must be horrible if he doesn’t want me to see it.
Biting the inside of my cheek, I shake my head, “No, let me see. I need to see what else this twisted fuck has sent me. First, it was a hand. I can’t imagine it could be worse than that.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you received a hand?” he asks.
Shit. I forgot I didn’t tell him that.
Fidgeting with my hands, I shrug and say sheepishly, “Well, I kinda, umm, got this package, umm earlier, this week, and it maybe sorta hadahandinit.”
“Okay, I still don’t think you need to see this,” his voice is calm, with no trace of anger at my omission.
Rising from the chair, my expression more confident than I feel, I say, “I’ll be fine, I promise. Just show me.”
He expels a breath, and I know he’s going to give in, “Fine, but we’re going to discuss you keeping pertinent information from me on the ride home. I can’t properly do my job if you don’t tell me things that happen when you’re in school.”
Feeling properly chastised, I nod, “Okay, I’m sorry.”
He lowers the box, and I steel my spine, fighting the roiling in my stomach.
A pair of stitched closed frosted pink lips with a rolled-up piece of paper protruding from them lay at the bottom of the small box. They look perfectly preserved. No blood, no decaying, or horrible smell.
“Who’s doing this, T?” I ask, feeling the lone tear escape and roll down my face.
Handing me a napkin, he says, “My team will figure this out.”
“Is there anything on the piece of paper?”
Thomas pulls out a pair of tweezers from a travel-size kit of tools he has holstered on his belt. Once he’s pulled the paper out, he unrolls it.
His teeth clench. Whatever it says makes the veins in his neck bulge and every muscle in his jaw visible.
Afraid that if I ask what it says, he won’t tell me, I shoot my hand out and snatch the note from his hand.
“No, you don’t want to see-,” he tries to get out, but it’s too late.
I should’ve listened. What I see makes all the blood leave my face, and my vision starts to black at the edges. I try to reach for him. Hoping to anchor me to reality, it’s too late. One minute I see blue skies, and the next? Nothingness.
AUGUST
When Thomas called to deliver his daily check-in on Emma, I expected a simple and uneventful report. Instead, I’m greeted with bullshit and a headache before I can even brush my goddamn teeth.
“What the fuck do you mean someone sent her a box with severed lips?”
Another package. Someone sent my Riri… Another. Fucking. Package.
“Yes, August. There was a recording and two notes. The first note instructed her to play the recording. The second note caused her to pass out.”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.