In the Box

In the traveling caravan, a thousand eyes there stood, a woman cuddled and kissed her lover, and another whimpered against his man, and another held the hand of a child, and another drove and drove across a desert, late at night, and with teeth so white, smiled insistently without breaking, without blinking. Across the wagon, in the middle of a room, a box, rectangular, black, and closed, and a swallowing with every turn.

From head to toe, most people shivered and continued to exist. Some ate, some slept, some talked, some laughed, some breathed, but every now and then, the box moved and seethed, and one thought remained in linger, that the box could open, and what was in the box could be and then, it couldn’t be.

Someone died and much crying commenced, and the vehicle moved and turned and flew and paraded across the endless night in the lonely road. The box did not open then and it became apparent that it was not a door to the undead or a key to a spirit, that it wasn’t a place of desires or the asylum of emotions, that it could not bring happiness, peace, or wonder. It just existed and hissed, and when it was kicked, pounded, or drummed in, a stillness occurred, and the beating of a heart increased, beat by beat.

A monster unleashed? A prisoner? A skull? A tormentor? Corpses attached, strung between each other as if they were a medallion? A head¡ What could there be in the jar?, the driver laughed asking, shouting to all the passengers without turning back, and since he did not know, nobody knew how to answer, so everyone moved around and stared uneasily, waiting for the inevitable.

The car drove on and it never needed and the people inside, who had not felt the freshness of the outside in centuries, began to get restless and, even worse, they began to feel themselves getting old, dying step by step, and then victorious for acknowledging it, strange for having thought of it, absolutely ridiculous for being alive still through everything, and the box lay still and nobody could open it, and nobody tried, and nobody cried.

The journey continued in a cycle of death and resurrection, with some dying sadly before others, and others not understanding their turn before others. Some were late and some were early, some existed in a blip and others simply nodded along for a lifetime, and then disappeared. The pile of corpses rose and rose and became a little hill, the same driver sped and sped through the desert, always awake, always asking, and in between heat seasons and cold, in between arguments and continuous existential drivel, in between conversations and families and generations upon generations of trauma and societal organization, the box opened, and nobody noticed, and nothing happened, at least, nothing anyone could have noticed. Everyone continued as if nothing had happened and, a few years later, the driver finally arrived at his destination, the end of the road, a cliff immense, and drove into the abyss, with everyone still inside wondering things.