The Old Blog in the Desert

I rolled in from the graveyard shift just as the sun was rising over the horizon. My bones ached, my eyes burned, and I wanted to collapse into bed and let the world spin on without me.

But there it was, sitting on my doorstep like it’d been waiting all night: a package. It was small, no bigger than a shoebox, wrapped in brown paper that looked older than it had any right to be, and the label faded to a smear of ink under the gray dawn light.

I squinted at it, half-dead on my feet, and saw the name wasn’t mine. The address wasn’t mine either—it belonged to someone three houses up. So I sighed, rubbed the sleep from my eyes, and shuffled up the street, the package tucked under my arm.

Knocking three times on the door, a woman answered. She looked at me, then at the package, and the color bled out of her face, leaving her gray.

“That should’ve been here ten years ago,” she said.

As her shaky hands reached out, the paper crinkled under her fingers, dry as dead leaves, and then—Christ Almighty—something inside moved–a slow, sliding lurch.

Her fingers tightened, knuckles white, as she yanked the package to her chest like she was afraid it’d get away. The door slammed shut before I could blink.