Emmaline was already exhausted, and she hadn’t even started writing yet. People wrote novels! Bookstores were full of them. Yet, Em had tried so many times, and she usually always fizzled out within a few pages. Either her idea felt so insubstantial that the story broke apart in her hands like a spider web spun of ice crystals, or… she just lost interest.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like writing. Em loved writing! She even did it professionally. Unfortunately, she didn’t have enough writing work to live off of outright, but she was working on it. It was frustrating, though, and – as a result – she wasn’t as religious about her own writing as she felt she should be. She did have a blog though! She often went for long periods without crafting a post, but eventually she’d feel as though she just had to get everything that was pent up off of her chest. She would then return to her blog, revamping the appearance and hiding old posts that she felt no longer exuded her current “voice.”

Em’s writing was funny, sometimes poignant but always well done. So… why were her books – or her attempts at books – so uninteresting? Em got the feeling that people were often surprised at the books that were able to hold her interest. And Em knew it – not everything she’d ever read was a classical masterpiece. Don’t misunderstand, though! It isn’t as if Emmaline never picked up anything substantial.

She’d read many of the classics: Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights… she was no stranger to artistry in literature. But Em liked to read for fun too! Not that Jane Austen’s stories weren’t enjoyable. But Austen’s work was more a tonic… a nutritional supplement to fortify her soul while she gorged herself on werewolf erotica and sparky vampire romances and everywoman chicklit heroines (that typically features a story set in a bakery or a kitchen and includes recipes mentioned in the story in the back of the book – this is a super big score!).

Emmaline Antonia Jameson was – she admitted it – lazy. She wanted nothing more than to lie about, reading and sipping tea. What would be an even better thing was to be someone who was able to do all this in a more luxurious setting, a butler bringing her tea… and the mail… and messages from gentlemen callers.

Okay… perhaps Em wasn’t only living, in her estimation, poorly, but she was doing so in the wrong century. Even so, she knew there would be never be a circumstance in which her wish to be waited on would acquiesce to outdoor plumbing, a lack of air conditioning and the nonexistence of wi-fi. Even though Em’s girth was substantial, she was a delicate flower. She wilted in the heat, glistened in the sun and went absolutely nuclear when she became overheated.

So… if she had to work, there could be worse things than living as a writer. Deep down, Em knew that her inability to succeed in this endeavor stemmed from her feeling that she HAD to succeed in this endeavor. Emmaline rarely did anything that she HAD to do, and – if she did do it – she did it grudgingly and in such a way that as many people as possible knew she was bothered by the task (and that the task itself was SO beneath her.)

Entitlement in others really pissed her off, but Em knew that this was one of her qualities. She also knew there was irony in feeling entitled to her entitlement. It’s not that she necessarily felt as though she was better than most other people… okay, maybe she did. But she wasn’t malicious about it. Even as a child, Em’s attitude about being told what to do and when to do it wasn’t good. Thankfully, she was usually too afraid of authority figures – real or imagined – to say anything about her displeasure. This means she graduated from high school and college, but on the flip side, she’d also been fired from more jobs than she could recall. She’d never wanted any job she’d ever had. She wanted to do what she wanted to do. She wanted to do nothing when she felt the need to hibernate. She resented responsibility.

Unsurprisingly, Emmaline was a financial mess. She owed too much money on too many credit cards, meaning that her deepest wish to be a lady of leisure was an even bigger pipe dream than it might have been for most other people.

Em hated she felt anything resembling bitterness about having to write. Loving it so much made writing one of her few real pleasures. Em had a love of many things, but Em didn’t love to DO many things.

For instance, Em loved pillows. So many pillows. So much! She wasn’t sure if it was possible to have too many, and – so far – she had yet to amass more than she wanted. She also didn’t know what people did before Q-tips. They were not something she was willing to do without, and she was certain that the ear canal of the average Wild West pioneer was disgusting for this reason alone. The electric fan was one of her favorite inventions ever. The ringing in her ears drove her nuts, and she could never sleep at night without some soothing white noise going in the background. Currently, she slept with two fans – a small one by the bed and a larger one across the room and facing at an angle, so as to create some pleasant circulation that wouldn’t freeze her out before the night was over.

The fans came back to the air conditioning. The air conditioning really can’t be talked about too much. The air conditioning was vital! Being too cold is awful. Being stuck in a blizzard without heat is terrible.

Being forced to live without air conditioning was – for Em – pure unadulterated torture. There are few things she hated more than being hot. She doesn’t want to sweat, breathe heavily or – really – exert herself in any way.

Isn’t it lucky for her that she’s a writer?

Sure, I’m an entitled princess, but… I deserve it. I wear it well. Everyone else can eat me.

The bang from the front door stopped my stewing.

I looked at the time on my laptop. 12:06 a.m. That can’t be good. I don’t open my door in the middle of the day when the sun is blazing and I can hear an ice cream truck tinkling one block over. This can get awkward, too, when it’s a neighbor who knows my car or a salesman or a kid doing a fundraiser, and they catch a glimpse of me through the small beveled window in the door. Sorry, but this isn’t 1986. I don’t have a coffeecake in the pantry saved just for company. I don’t want to be bothered. I don’t want to talk to strangers. I barely want to talk to people I know. No, that’s wrong.

I don’t want to talk to them either.

But… the door.

Of course, the porch light is burned out. I wouldn’t have luck if it wasn’t bad.

I could go upstairs and get the bat that’s propped up beside the bed. My boyfriend has some guns stored in the closet, but they’re not loaded. I don’t know how to load them, and I’m more likely to have a gun wrestled from me than I am to successfully defend myself with a firearm.

My roommate is upstairs, so at least I’m not alone. She’s sleeping, thought, soundly. And if I open the door and I take a hatchet to the face there’s really not much she can do for me at that point.

I part the blinds a smidge on the window behind my desk. I can see the porch from this window, and I can’t see as far to the left as the front door, but I can get an idea of movement or occupancy.

I don’t see anything. I see a car’s taillights moving down the street, but that could mean nothing. This is a subdivision. I’m surrounded by thousands of people. Those taillights are far more likely to belong to someone who has nothing to do with the bang that just happened. So… the coast appears to be clear.

My boyfriend’s mongrel dog doesn’t have her hackles up. She’s an idiot, but animals are supposed to have a sixth sense about these things, right? If there was danger to be had, she’d sense it.

Right?!

I don’t see anything through the tiny beveled window. It’s dark, but there’s a moon, and – unless someone is crouching below the window – there’s certainly no one there.

Shit, someone could be crouching just out of my view.

Stop it! You’re being stupid. Just open the door!

I yank the door open before I can talk myself out of it. And, at that precise moment, the new thought roars to mind that a sniper may be waiting for me across the street. I’m in the middle of one movement and a completely opposite thought that hasn’t yet reached my receptors, so trying to get the door shut while I’m in the process of opening it proves surprisingly difficult. I almost end up on my ass. Providing anyone practicing black ops across the street to plug me a good one.

Thankfully, the NSA hasn’t assigned me an assassin tonight. Before I can get the door shut, though, I see the package sitting on the welcome mat.

Welcome mat! Ironic, right?!       

I half crouch behind the half-open, half-closed door and peer around at the smallish brown box. There is no mailing label or postage. This has to have been what created the bang. Did someone throw this at the door? Obviously, whatever is inside must be sturdy.

Should I bring it in? Ew. What if it’s a neighborhood kid who filled a box with dog poop? If I were a

Neighborhood kid living near me, I’d probably leave poop on my stoop as well. The idea both infuriates me and leaves me feeling a little guilty.

I lean forward and sniff. If it was poop, surely that would be detectable through the cardboard by now. I don’t smell anything. Maybe a bit of dust, but that’s more likely to be the house than the box.

It’s cold and I’m tired of letting in a draft. I swipe the box up quickly and slam the door shut, clicking the deadbolt behind me.

I’m standing there looking down at the box sitting on my desk. My laptop has timed out, and is currently sleeping. The screen is dark, but I can hear the hard drive fan whirring.

The hair on the back of my neck is standing up because of what’s written on top of the box. Now that I’m looking at it in the light, I can see my name scrawled across the box in black sharpie.

Emmaline

There is no clue as to who the box is from. But the person who left it certainly knows who it’s for.

I lean down again and sniff again. Now that I’m closer, I get a more distinct impression of mustiness. I can smell the dust and something slightly metallic. Something old that reminds me of an antique shop. I turn my head and move my ear closer, wondering if I’ll be able to hear something if the box’s intention is at all incendiary. No ticking. No shaking. No screaming.

I don’t think it’s a bomb. I don’t think it contains anything living. Or dead.

Grabbing a letter opener, I jab it into the packing tap along the top edge, and pop each end open. I pry the box apart, and stare down into the depths. There’s nothing there.

Leaning toward the blackness, I can see that the “nothing” is really a midnight colored silk scarf wrapped around something hard and pointy. I rather shakily life the contents out and set the box aside. Unwrapping the scarf slowly, the metallic smell becomes sharper. When I finish unwinding, I see that the chewy center in the middle of the tootsie pop is in fact a strange-looking copper… kettle? It reminds me of a genie’s lamp in a storybook, actually. The top comes off just like a teapot, and there’s a spout that would clearly allow water or oil or whatever to be poured out.

What the hell?!

The trinket is pretty tarnished – clearly old, but it’s something that could be pretty if it was taken care of.

I grab the silk scarf, and I almost start polishing bronze. Then I realize it’s a silk scarf. I love shiny things. I also love expensive things. This silk is clearly high end merchandise. I’m keeping that.

Grabbing a tissue from the box by my laptop, I give a smudge on the side of the pot a good scrub.

But that’s about all I do.

Because the pot is shaking in my hands.

And black smoke is pouring out of the spout.