The Wish Box

She tried to sit at her desk and think, but she felt the box staring at her from behind. It was stupid. It had no eyes. It wasn't alive. It was just a mere object. But it felt like it had accusing eyes and was staring right through the back of her head and into her mind all the same.

She paced back and forth . . . It seemed to watch her. She walked around behind it and briefly, sat at the window . . . But it stared all the same. Tugging and seeming to will her eyes to see it at the edge of her vision.

She fought the urge, but it gnawed at her. Teased her and taunted her with it's presence and eerie sense of watching her, until she felt nearly compelled to snatch it up from the bed and hurl it out of the window. Out of her sight. Out of her life.

It was crazy. Totally nuts. There was no reason for her to think and feel like this. No rational cause or reason. A few coincidental wishes had come to pass. So what? They HAD to be just coincidences. She and Carrie had wished for that pin and had it turned up? No!

'Not yet, anyway.' The nagging doubt of her own mind teased.

'No. And it's not going to.' Nicey made herself think back at her own doubt.

'Are you sure, Denise?' It pressed the issue. 'How can you be sure?'

'Stop it.' She demanded the doubt to shut-up. 'Just stop it and leave me alone.'

'Maybe the pin you tested a wish on WAS there and you just didn't look in the right spot.' The voice of her doubt seemed to come from the area of her bed.'Maybe it appeared ju--st after you left, and it's laying there right now . . . Waiting . . . Waiting for you.'

Nicey turned more toward the window, hunching almost into a sitting fetal position in attempts to shut out the voice, her face scrunching into a sour expression of contempt.

'Waiting, Denise . . . Waiting . . . What else is waiting for you, Denise? ... If that pin is there, you know what that means, don't you?' She clamped her fisted hands over her ears, trying to shut out the voice.

'It means . . . they come true, Denise . . . The wishes . . . ' She pressed harder, but to no avail. 'Teddy's wish . . . Arty's wish . . . Carrie's wish . . . They ALL came true, Denise.'

'Stop it.' She demanded.

'Stop it! Shut up!'

'NO! STOP!' She stood upright, eyes clenched as tightly closed as her fists were against her ears.

'PLEASE, NO. STOP IT!' Tears began to drip from her eyes as she staggered haltingly toward the corner of her room seeking escape from the voice. It was like a molester's foul hands caressing her skin and she couldn't get away.

"Sue-Ann ... It came to be ...What price, Denise ...What price paid?"

'STOP!'

'NO MORE! NO MORE!' She called out plaintively as she twisted and spun about in the corner as if trapped by a raging inferno in the room with nowhere to escape. She could only spin, twist and turn in the corner.

Angrily she spun in the corner and glowered at the Wish Box, her small hands clenching into fists unconsciously. Teeth gnashed together in fear that had been forged into hatred, she charged around the bed intent on taking it up and turning into reality, that desire to pitch it from her sight. But when she extended her hands to do just that, they seemed to stop all by themselves mere inches from the box.

Her repugnance and fear flooded back into her ... She just couldn't bring herself to touch it. It would be like taking the wrists of the molester's hands and guiding those hands over her body.

Hands reaching but not touching, she began to tremble in indecision. Anger and fear and hatred driving her to take up the box and smash it, destroy it, cast it out of the window to splinter against the earth below.

Yet to touch it was of such vile revolt. Her stomach rolled within her with the threat to bring forth her revulsion in the form of the bitter bile in which it manifested itself. As two powerful like poles of some massive magnet, she was as repelled from touching the box as her anger was compelled to take it up and pitch it out the window . . . In the next instant her hands reached and grasped.