Writer’s Challenge
Hello, your past is calling …
Do you accept the call?
It’s Tuesday. You’re inside your home or apartment. Reclining on a couch that has seen better days; remote in hand as you surf through Netflix, trying to decide whether to binge on episodes of Chopped or cast farther afield and watch the limited series on Cosmetic Surgery Gone Horribly Bad.
Then suddenly a knock at the door takes you out of your reverie. Your legs swing off the couch as you pause the reveal of the first basket of food and look toward the door. Then out the curtain — no one’s there. You open. There’s a package next to the mailbox. A bright red box. Not too big, not too small. Definitely not a pizza or the new treadmill you ordered.
What is it?
You bring it inside and drop it on the table and resume your position on the couch. The remote pointed at the TV, you look back at the box.
Shit!
It’s a nice box. Nice paper neatly wrapped. Not in duct tape of anything gauche but Christ, you can’t tear it with your hands and out comes the scissors. Two minutes later, a phone is lying on the coffee table. Not an iPhone. Not a Samsung or anything later than 1998. It’s old. Clunky and gray and looking like someone dropped it out of a bus window. WTF?