Open On Christmas Morning

It appeared on his front porch with no warning. No sign of any postal worker, no delivery truck trundling away down the road, no evidence of a courier of any kind. Just a brown cardboard box, his address written in black marker on the top. The handwriting was neat and inconspicuous. He cut the box open, and found nothing inside save for a smaller parcel, this one covered in red and green wrapping paper, and a note: Open on Christmas morning, and you will understand.

He somehow knew that there had been no mistake. The package was for him. There was a certain foreboding about it. A warning, in the back of his mind, that maybe he should just close the door right now, forget the box on his doorstep, and maybe if he opened the door again it would be gone and his life would continue, undisturbed. But there was something about the handwriting of the note. Something about the cleanly folded edges of the red-green paper. Something about the strange simplicity of its arrival. He picked up the package and took it inside.

He was 70 years old. Retired, with no family to speak of, and no real friends. There was no reason why he couldn’t open it right then, as soon as he received it, on the 18th of December. What reprisal could possibly await him for the crime of opening a Christmas gift too early? And yet, he waited. Something compelled him. A voice deep inside himself told him to wait, and wait he did. But it wasn’t easy. The box seemed to have a mind of its own. It taunted him from its place on his nightstand. It whispered over and over to him in the small hours of the morning: Open me. Open me. Open me. The red-green patterns on the paper seemed to swirl and slide around suggestively, forming strange shapes that made him deeply uncomfortable. He pulled the covers up over his head and shivered underneath them until the morning sun peeked through the window.

Just throw it away and be done with it, he thought to himself more than once over the next few days. He attempted to do it on the 22nd, throwing the box in the trash can in the kitchen. By evening he had fished it out and put it back on the nightstand. On the 23rd he threw it in the fireplace, but as the logs began to catch flame, he reached in and retrieved it with the poker.

He went to bed at seven on Christmas Eve, but he could not sleep. He had placed the box under the bed, in an effort to escape the nighttime dread it brought him, but somehow having it out of sight, hidden away several feet beneath him, was much worse. He could hear it, could hear the horrible red-green wrapping paper, swirling around, crinkling and creasing in the darkness, speaking its strange papery language. Then, just before midnight, he heard it speak his name. He sat up straight in bed, his body shrieking in protest and fear. His room was pitch dark, save for the menacing red glow of the digital clock, but he knew where to kneel on the side of the bed. Knew exactly where to reach his arms underneath, searching, searching for the awful thing. Open on Christmas morning, and you will understand. The clock glared at him from the nightstand: 12:00 A.M.

He found the box, and pulled it out from underneath the bed with a breath of relief and anticipation. The wrapping paper was still whispering to him, ever so softly, but it came off easily with a single desperate tear, as if it was waiting for this exact moment, then fell silent. He threw it aside onto the floor, where it lay unmoving. The secret it concealed: Another box, this one black and wooden. A pristine and perfect cube, lidded, so small it fit into the palm of his frail hand, as if it had been meant only for him. He breathed in, and his breath seemed to echo through the dark bedroom. The lid lifted off easily. Then, regret.


The woman felt it when it happened. A tingling shudder of relief, anger, pain, and pleasure, all at once. Her bedroom floor was littered with old books, with titles in various languages. One, a thick black tome with yellowed pages, lay before her. She turned a few pages, and arrived at the chapter entitled Rituum pro Vindicta. The page was bisected into two columns: one for the Latin, the other for English.

The “Black Box” configuration (pictured below) may be used for temporary containment until the time of summoning.
The summoning must take place on the anniversary of the day upon which the original offense took place.
The summoning must be conducted by the offending party.

She took a sip of her coffee, and with the warmth came flashes of memories from many Christmases ago. A tall, handsome man, approaching her at the height of her career with an unpleasant offer, which was politely declined. A dark car pulling up beside her in a parking garage. Darkness, hands grabbing at her, hot breath on her neck. She had kicked and screamed and fought, but to no avail. Humiliation. Several days afterwards, when she had tried to tell the higher-ups, she had been let go, her claims refuted with nothing more than a few patronizing words. She was summarily blacklisted. Her dreams, her towering ambitions, her dignity, her life, destroyed in a single night. A single Christmas. Because of him.

She drove to his house later that day. Blood spattered the walls of the bedroom. The sheets were coated in viscera, and entrails hung from the ceiling fan. The black box sat on the floor, perfect and pristine. Before leaving, she picked it up and pocketed it, along with the note: Open on Christmas morning, and you will understand.