[WP] There's a box. Inside the box shows you what your life would have been had you never looked.

Ornate and small. It’s the only way to describe it. Perhaps it was mom’s, a long forgotten antique from her family. Or perhaps it was my father’s. Either way, I’ve never seen it before.

Between the funeral arrangements and the cleaning, I really should spend this time looking for things we can salvage. Mom’s cancer took a turn for the worse and she was gone before we knew it. She wasn’t a sentimental type, so I have no idea why she kept this box, or why she took it out of storage before she was hospitalized.

I lift the rusted and delicate latch that keeps it shut and it crumbles in its age. The hinges in its back do the same as the lid opens with a crack.

I can smell earth and dust, the smell of wood that’s been aged in the dark. The box is lined with velvet, delicate and smooth. In the threads of old fabric, I see something.

It’s me. I put the box away, unopened, and tossed in a pile of things I mean to save for later. I move on. The funeral passes by, and it’s a hurricane of tears and laughter, remembrance and sorrow, all blended perfectly into a calm storm. The flowers wilt, the dirt settles, and I’m home. A blur. I see a woman with bright orange hair and deep green eyes. I’ve never seen her before, but she kisses me like she’s known me for ages. And then I’m chasing a little boy. His eyes are the same as the woman, but he has my nose and ears. A blur. A teenager is standing over me, his young face etched with harsh lines that only stress could draw. He has those same green eyes, that woman, my wife, him, my son. I see her next to him, her hair still bright but dulled with delicate wisps of grey streaked through them. I see my hands, sallow and pale. I hear the machines chirping, the IV drip. I can smell the cleaning fluid and the low, sickly scent it tries to hide. I look at the window, but it’s night time and I see myself reflected in the glass. Sunken eyes, my head bald. I’m dying. Cancer. A sick reflection of my mom’s last days. But then I’m not. I get better, I leave the hospital, and I live a life far more full than it was before. Trips across the world, time with my wife, watching my son grow into a strong and respectable man. When I do pass, it’s with grandchildren around me, my son an older man, my wife frail but beautiful. I smile, and then I leave. And then nothing but old velvet in an old box.

I drop the box in my shock. It was a daydream, stress related, of course.

But there's something on the bottom, my mom's hand writing, the ink fairly new.

"Don't open."

An uneasy coolness spreads in my core.

Mom’s cancer took a turn for the worse and she was gone before we knew it.


This is a great prompt, and I don't think I did it justice, but boy did I try.

/r/WritingPrompts Thread