Delivery

The coffee was gone.  Freddie was still tired and now he was nursing a caffeine headache.  His heart was pounding but he couldn't tell if it was from the caffeine or his nerves.

He began to pace, stepping over crumpled papers that littered the floor.  Running his hands through his hair he began mumbling, “Why now?  Of all the times to be hit with writer's block.”  The doorbell rang.  He looked up at the clock, 4:30 pm.  “Who could that be?”

A delivery man stood on his front porch holding a large box.  It looked as though it had been kicked to his house instead of delivered in a truck.  He signed for it, walked in the kitchen and set it on the table.  He stared at it.  The box was stained, dented on one side, and covered in several different kinds of tape.  The label was brown and looked as though someone had spilled coffee on it.  His name was printed in thick black marker in block lettering that reminded him of a ransom note.  The return label showed it came from A. Fien but the full address was smudged and unreadable.

He laughed, A. Fien.  Someone was surely playing a joke on him.  He immediately thought of his friend Jim who loved practical jokes which made the contents of the box suddenly more interesting.  He tore at the tape which held fast.  He rummaged in a drawer for the scissors and cut off what was left causing the box to practically fall apart, spewing packing peanuts  all over the kitchen.  “Great.”  He pushed aside the peanuts to find out what was in the box although a box of packing peanuts from Jim would not be unheard of. 

At the bottom was a small box, square and nondescript.  He picked it up.  There was no latch, just two lids fit together tightly.  He pried the lid off to find a large silver coin, misshapen, dented, and dirty.  It felt heavy for its size and oddly warm.  On one side there was a head but it was so faded it was hard to tell if it was a man or a woman.  The other side had what appeared to be an animal of some kind but he couldn't decide if it was a bird or a cat with wings.  Around the outer edge were symbols but he didn't recognize any of them.  He flipped it off his thumb and caught it.  “Hmm, interesting.”  He put it in his pocket and walked back to his office to finish an article that was due three days ago.

Two hours later he emerged from his office pleased with himself and his overdue article.  He took a beer out of the fridge and went to sit on the back deck.  He pulled the coin out of his pocket and set it on the railing, for something so dirty it sparkled brightly in the sun.  He sipped his beer and wondered who sent it to him.  While Jim had been a good initial guess, this wasn't something he would send.  His jokes were more of the dried monkey hand variety, not old coins with strange marks, dents, and dirt.

He heard his wife's car pull into the driveway and he remembered the packing peanuts all over the kitchen.  He ran in and brushed every peanut he could find into what remained of the box and dropped it in the closet by the front door.  He ran down the front steps to meet her.

“Hey thanks,” said Emily as he took a bag of groceries from her.

He leaned down to kiss her on the cheek.  “How was your day?”

“Good, yours?”

“Finished the article in record time.  I have to admit I'm feeling a bit renewed today.  Maybe I just needed to get that off my plate.”

They walked into the kitchen making small talk.  Never once did he mention the coin which was safely tucked in his pocket.  He even secretly hid the box it came in under the packing peanuts and wasn't sure why he did it.

Later that night he sat on the couch toying with it.

“Freddie, I'm off to bed.  I've got an early day tomorrow.  What have you got there?”

He had been admiring the coin but quickly slipped it back in his pocket when Emily asked about it. “Just a quarter I found in the couch.”  He smiled.  “I'll be up soon.  Love you.”

“Love you too.”  She went up stairs and Freddie went back to staring at the coin.

The next few days passed quickly and without any note except that Freddie had somehow become incredibly prolific, something he was never before to his own chagrin.  He had written numerous articles and revived his book idea.  It was completely out of character for him which brought his thoughts to the coin.

He was fascinated by it.  He played with it constantly, rolling it over his knuckles, throwing it in the air.  The more he touched it the more inspired he felt.  He stopped wondering who had sent it to him and decided that he didn't care.

Freddie spent more time by himself, locked in his office not necessarily writing but staring at the coin as if in a trance.  It spoke to him in a way that he knew no one else would or could understand. 

“Hey hon.”  Emily walked in the room holding the phone.  “It's your brother.  What are you doing?  What is that?”

Freddie jumped up from his chair.  “Tell him I can't talk now.  I'm in the middle of working on a story.  Just tell him I can't talk.”

“What is that?”

“I need to be alone right now.”  He slowly maneuvered her out of the room and locked the door behind her.  She began knocking but soon gave up.

He began to polish the coin with his shirt.  It glowed.  “Yes, I know,” he said as he cradled it in his hand.  He slipped it into his pocket and furiously began typing.  He sat barely moving with the exception of his fingers which flew rapidly over the keys.  It was as if he was possessed.  He wrote until morning when the sun began to peek through the shades.

He stopped just as suddenly as he began.  He pulled the coin out of his pocket and set it on the desk.  It looked rather dull, dirty, and plain in the morning light.  He picked it up and inspected it closely then dropped it back on the desk.  It landed with a dull thud.  He rubbed his face and walked out of the room. 

He found Emily in the kitchen.  “Morning Em.”  She ignored him.  “What's wrong?”

“Wrong?  What was with you last night?  I get this whole writing persona thing.  And believe me, I know more than most that you can be moody, but really!”  She turned her back and loudly folded the paper.

“What?”  She didn't answer.  He sat down feeling very tired and realized for the first time he had been up the last few nights.  He reached for her hand which she quickly pulled away.  “I'm sorry.  I know I can be a real pain.  I didn't mean to kick you out, just, well, for the first time in a long time I've been wanting to write.  I really don't know what came over me.”

She put the paper down and stared into her coffee.  “It's not the writing.  I mean it is and it isn't.  I'm glad you're happy writing again because let's face it, you haven't been writing for a while.  It just feels like you're hiding something.  I came in last night and you were hunched over something that you wouldn't let me see.  I don't need to know everything but it just worried me.  You looked odd, kind of...  possessed.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes.  Freddie could hear Emily breathing heavily as if she was trying not to cry.  He was upset himself but for an entirely different reason and one he couldn't explain.  Emily slowly got up and walked out of the room.

Freddie went back to his office.  The coin was sitting on the desk.  He had no idea why he was drawn to it and wondered again who had sent it to him.  There was nothing about it that seemed out of the ordinary, at least not on the surface but something just wasn't right.  He slowly backed out of the room feeling very scared.  He closed the door and ran down the steps and out on the front porch to see Emily pulling out of the driveway.  He stood there and watched her drive away with a mixture of sadness and fear.

“I need some sleep.”  He went in and collapsed on the couch.  He awoke a few hours later and got right in the shower, hoping that was all he needed to feel like himself again.

As he was getting dressed the phone rang.  It was his editor telling him all the articles he sent last night were brilliant and he wanted to see more.

“How long have you been working on this series?  It's amazing.  When do you think you'll have the rest?”

He racked his brain trying to remember what he wrote let alone sent.  “Uh, well, you know it's a work in progress.”

“Send me whatever you can.  I want to see more.”

“Okay.”  He hung up the phone and began to panic.  He ran to his office, opened his email and checked what he sent last night.  He had indeed sent several pieces to his editor.  He printed them all, fell back into the chair and began to read.  He dropped the last page on the floor and sat in awe.  He barely remembered writing any of it and it was good, all of it.  Just then he noticed the coin sitting on the desk.  It was glowing again, almost pulsing with light.  He didn't want to touch it and began feeling scared.  He threw a book on it, gathered up the papers and walked out.

He sat at the kitchen table waiting patiently for Emily to come home from work, re-reading all of what he had written.  It was amazing.  The type of writing he always wanted to do.

“Hi.”

He looked up.  Emily was staring at him.  “Hi back.”  He smiled hoping to diffuse a bit of her anger, “Please sit down.  I need to talk to you about something.”

He showed her all the articles and told her he didn't remember doing it.

“What do you mean you don't remember?  You've been locked in your office the last week writing.  I could hear you typing.  You've barely slept or ate.  I've been worried but since this is the first time in months you've been writing, I let you go.  You scared me a bit last night.  Well, maybe scare is a strong word.  You just didn't look right.  You had a strange look in your eye, you know, like I said this morning, sort of possessed.”

He debated whether or not to tell her about the coin and before he really knew what he was doing, he said, “There's something else.  Wait here.”

He came back in the room, sat down and held out the coin to her.

“Yeah,” she said unimpressed.

“Someone sent this to me.  It came in an old box and I don't know who sent it and I know this next part will sound crazy, but I think this is what's doing the writing.”

Emily smiled at him.  “Honey, it's a coin.”  She picked it up.  “I doubt very much it caused you to do this or anything.  Really, you were just due.”

“No.  Please listen.  When I get going, it starts to glow and I feel, well, sort of possessed, like you said.  It takes over me somehow and I do all this writing.”  He got up and began to pace.  “I don't know how to describe it.  It just, it just...”

“Okay.  Say it's responsible for this recent spurt of genius.  What's the problem?  Maybe it's a good thing.  You haven't written this much in a long time and it's good.  Real good.”

“No.  I have to get rid of it and all this.  It just feels wrong.”  He gathering up the papers Emily had been looking through and tore them apart.

“Freddie stop!”  She grabbed his arm.  “What are you doing?  Don't do this.”

He stopped.  “Look at it.  Do you see it?”

Emily looked at the the table where Freddie was pointing.  The coin was glowing, a strange silvery glow.  It was so intense it looked as though it was vibrating.  “Do you hear that?  Is it humming?”  Emily leaned over to touch it.

“Don't!”  Freddie grabbed her wrist.

“So what do we do?  We can't just leave it there?”

“We have to send it back.  It's cursed,” he said.

Emily sat down at the table.  “All right, let's be sane about this.  I'm sitting here in our kitchen with a supposedly cursed coin that's causing you to write amazing stuff and you want to get rid of it?  I don't understand this but right now I'm going to do whatever you want if you promise me you'll stop acting like this.”

Freddie reached over and threw a dishtowel on the coin.  “I'm not sure there is a sane way to deal with this.  Do you realize what you just said?  We're sitting here in our kitchen with a glowing coin saying were going to deal with this in a sane manner.”

They both started to laugh.  “Well, we both can't be crazy, right?” said Freddie.  “I know I've been wanting to get out of the writing business but I felt so revitalized.  I've done more work in the last week than I've done in the last month but, I don't know.  Maybe I'm using it as an excuse to not believe that I'm actually still capable of writing like this.”

“Um, hon, I'm not saying this to ruin the whole theory you crafted about your writing because I'm with you there, but have you forgotten about this glowing coin?”  She lifted the dishtowel.  “Now, I'm not saying you should keep it or anything because obviously it's got you scared but we have to do something.”

Freddie ran to the hall closet.  He found the box right where he left it, hidden behind a few winter coats and ran back into the kitchen.  “We'll send it back.”

Emily watched him while he frantically searched for the tape and scissors.  He began to wind the tape around the box, giving it more of a squarish shape than it currently had.  It was slowly becoming more tape than cardboard.  He threw down the tape and ransacked through what was left of the peanuts to find a small box which he pried open.  He dropped the coin in and shoved it into the peanuts.  “Can you hold the top while I tape it?”

“Now what?” she asked.

“Well, I don't know who sent it to me.”

“So how do we send it back?”

They stood in the kitchen staring down at the box for a few minutes.  “I've got it,” said Emily.  She ran out of the room and returned with the phone book.  “We'll send it to someone we don't know.”

“Brilliant!”

“Wait, this won't work,” said Emily.  “We can't send it to someone in this town.  We need to get it away from us.  What if it comes back?”

“Let's google someone.”  The both ran up to his office and within a few minutes had the name and address of a woman neither of them knew located somewhere in the Midwest.  They printed out her address in large type and taped it to the front of the box.

“Who's A. Fein?” asked Emily examining what little was left of the original return address.

“I don't know but leave it there.”

The next morning they drove to the post office and mailed it, pleading with the postal worker to please mail it even though it didn't meet standards. 

“So, do you think it will come back?”

“Let's not talk of it ever again,” said Freddie grabbing her hand.  “Let's head home.  I need to look into a few new career options.”