The Box
Danny couldn’t sit still. The anxiety trapped in his chest like a bird that had found its way into a closed room.
He could barely breathe through it. It was now exactly three days without any word from Ciaran, the longest they had ever been out of communication since they decided to re-join forces back in London.
And now he was staring at the box. Neatly wrapped in old fashion brown paper, the folds held down with packing tape, not even so much as wrinkle or edge in their application.
The waybill was the most chilling factor. The name was right. The address was right. But how the fuck did anyone know where he was? But that wasn’t the scariest bit. At the bottom of the paper manifold, in the box marked sender, the one name Danny did not want to ever see or hear again was written clearly in neat cursive script: Harkness.
When he had taken the box off the courier, the heft of it made Danny feel instantly sick. Gingerly he picked it up again, as if he doubted his own memory of it. But he hadn’t imagined it. It felt about the right weight. His stomach took a flip.
He bent and retrieved the flick knife that he always had strapped to his ankle. He took three sharp breathes before sliding the blade under one of the oh-so-neat folds. Another few slices and he could hook a finger under the lid of the cardboard box inside.
There was brown paper stuffed around whatever was in the box. Danny pinched a fold of it and whipped it out. And was then able to let out a sigh of huge relief. It wasn’t a head in the box. It’s wasn’t Ciaran’s as he had feared. It was a dense, heavy white cabbage.
Danny hoisted it out of the cardboard. On one side of it a little gift envelope was attached.
He opened it up and in the same, neat cursive script a note read:
Made you Look!
And beneath that Harkness’s signature.
More Snackable Danny
