At the post office, Mia accidentally picks up the wrong package—a shoebox-sized parcel labelled “Out of the box – Time Travel .” 

The box contained Polaroid photos of people and some locations known to her, surprisingly she knew where the photos have been shot and wondered what relation it had with her.

Curiosity caught up with her and she knew no one would be there at those places, still she wanted to try all the locations and she laid them all one-by-one on the desk, as they came with a date and time mentioned to be there. 

She wondered if all this was possible and with the movies that showed time travel she knew she needed an instrument of a compass or a time piece or an worm hole to take her across time and space.

She just dismissed it all as a crude joke and threw the box into the dustbin, underneath her table. She started concentrating on her work and totally engrossed in it, she forgot about the box. 

After a long time, upon deciding to take a break, she kicked her legs and the dustbin, rolled under the table. She stood up and bend down to pick it, is when she noticed the box and the things came flooding into her mind. 

She placed the box on the corner of her desk and went to take a shower. When she was showering,  she thought why don’t I put the ‘box’ to test. 

She picked up the Polaroid photo of the lighthouse and got pulled into it, with a shake of her hand, she was transported to a small coastal town, she was stranded on the shores and there was a remnants of a castle nearby, she walked up to the doorway and stood behind the shrubs that were grown along the wall and doorway and skeptically looked in. 

She found a man in his forties. He seemed to be engrossed at a box in his hand, which looked similar to what Mia had received, curios she kept looking and movie like story unfolded in front of her.

Mia saw in the small coastal town, a struggling inventor living  with her adopted daughter, in a depleted stone house, happily. Both of them were dressed with torn and patched clothes. 

Though the clothes were patched with different patterns and designs, it fitted her body perfectly and him and it kept them warm enough. Both the daughter and the man, looked at a mysterious wooden box washed ashore after a storm, which they had picked up in the late afternoon. 

Everyone expects treasure inside, but when she opens it, it’s completely empty—except for a note that says, “Use your imagination.”

Inspired, she starts creating inventions from scraps, each more brilliant than the last, proving that the real magic wasn’t in the box, but in thinking out of the box. The girl had turned her and her father’s fate by opening the box and when the torn shattered clothes of her transforms to a beautiful woman and when she turns around, Mia is stunned. 

She looks like her and Mia is just watching her. Confused Mia touches herself across her hands and face, but the image from the movie, who looks like her, slowly walks towards her. Not knowing what to do Mia tries to run and hits against a wall and falls down. 

After a minute, she wakes up not knowing where she is, she looks around finding herself in her office here now. She sees the photo strewn across from her and it has transformed into a black and white photo, no more colored. 

Mia panics and wonders if she is seeing things, has her mind playing tricks with her. Is she hallucinating? What is happening?

Getting up slowly off the floor, she picks the photo and opens the box to return the photo. She notices all the other photos in colour. 

Perplexed she concludes, the photo has turned black and white, since she travelled back. But how and who put this here and how did I get it? Is fate or some weird black magic playing some kind of nasty trick on her? 

The second episode happened on a rainy Thursday. Mia, got herself ready and as mentioned in the Polaroid photo of two people in an embrace at the lighthouse, their faces not visible. 

Unlike the pervious photo, this particular photo had an address written on the back and the time to appear. 

Mia knew the location written on the photo, she had to travel quite a bit to get to the location. She planned it as a getaway for herself and went a day in advance. She intrigued by the previous experience and wanted to see what will unfold for her.  

Mia wondered how will it be this time, will she be absorbed into the scene or will she be stranded here on the beach, how will she go back? What will happen? 

Her mind loaded with questions and full of unanswered exciting turmoil, she waited as the clock ticked away.

From the sea, arose a big wave and hit her, she ran towards the lighthouse, as she ran the lighthouse kept going far away from her reach. 

She turned back to see how far she had come and found herself hitting against the walls of the lighthouse and hearing sounds. 

She saw it was a small house on the shores, the building was unique with white and blue coloured walls and windows and the window curtains fluttering in the wind. She could feel the sea breeze, salty and sultry mixed with hot and cold air beating against the house and her face.

She noticed a woman at the entrance, beautifully dressed in a summer dress, in yellow colour…

***************

Clara almost didn’t notice it, tucked neatly against her apartment door like a forgotten package. It was small, wooden, tied with a black ribbon. The name Clara was written across the lid in looping, careful ink.

Inside was a single white rose, still beaded with rain, and a note that read: Thinking of you, always.

She stared at the handwriting until her eyes blurred. She hadn’t seen it in three years—not since the night Liam disappeared into the cold waters off Holloway Lighthouse. They’d never found a body. She’d told herself, over and over, that he was gone. That was the only way to keep breathing.

The next night, another box appeared. This one held a pressed rose and a Polaroid of the two of them at the lighthouse, wrapped in his arm, both laughing. She didn’t remember the photo being taken.

More boxes followed. At first, the roses were pale and fresh, but over the weeks they grew darker, petals curling into brittle shadows. The photos changed, too—Liam stood farther away in each, his smile fading, his eyes fixed not on her, but on the camera.

She should have been afraid. Instead, she felt a pull.

The final box came at dawn, placed gently on her pillow while she slept. Inside was a key and a note: One last chance. Sunset.

Clara drove to Holloway Lighthouse before the day had fully broken. The ocean wind stung her cheeks, and the lighthouse door creaked open with the key.

He was there.

Liam stood in the dim light, exactly as she remembered—same crooked smile, same warmth in his eyes. Her knees nearly gave out when he whispered her name.

“You came,” he said, his voice a soft echo in the vast, cold air.

“I had to.”

They talked. They laughed. She told him about the years without him, the nights she thought she heard his voice, the dreams where he was standing at her window. He told her nothing of where he’d been—only that it had been “dark” and that he’d thought of her every day.

For one perfect hour, it felt as though he’d never left.

But when the sun touched the edge of the horizon, his hand began to cool in hers. His features wavered, blurring like a reflection in water.

“This was all I could give you,” he murmured. “One last hour.”

The words lodged in her throat, but before she could speak, he stepped back. The lighthouse darkened, the smell of roses faded, and she was alone. The key was gone from her pocket.

When she returned home, every box had vanished. Only a single pressed white rose lay on her table.

She kept it, knowing there would never be another.

One night, unable to resist, she left a note in one of the boxes: “Where are you?” She set it on her windowsill and fell asleep.

When she woke, there was a new box on her pillow. Inside was a rose—fresh, dewy—and another note: “Closer than you think.”

Her breath caught. The bedroom window was still locked.

The next night, the final box appeared in her hands while she slept. It was warm. She opened it to find not a rose, but a key—and a photo of the lighthouse door, slightly ajar.

She drove there before sunrise, heart pounding. Inside, in the dim light, she found Liam. He hadn’t aged a day. His smile was the same, but his eyes… were darker.

“I told you,” he whispered, stepping closer. “Love like ours doesn’t end. It just waits… out of the box.”

When he kissed her, the sea outside roared—and the door swung shut. 

Before the door shut close, the woman turned and looked at Mia, and Mia was awestruck. The woman looked exactly like her and was even more beautiful than herself. 

The loud sound of the door slamming shut, reached Mia´s ear and she held her ears and dropped down against the wall, with the sound, came the fall and Mia woke up from the sand stuck to her all over. 

She didn’t know what or how she got there, but the scenes had vanished and there was the photo sworn across her turned black and white. 

Getting up from the beach, she brushed off the sand and her mind in a perplexed whirlwind of thoughts, emotions and not able to comprehend the things. 

Why did both the woman turn into her? What was she seeing? What is the photos telling her?

Is it her past lives? Is she really the woman from her past lives and she was seeing them as instances of herself today? She didn’t know whom to talk or who would believe in her absurd stories? Even if they believed will they label her as mad woman? Was she really hallucinating or was it happening real? How come, she always returns to the present intact?

She didn’t know what to do about the two episodes, yeah ‘episodes’. She started calling them that as she replaced the second photo that had turned black and white. 

The third photograph was tempting her from the box. Mia kept avoiding it for some days and left it there. But it kept playing in her head and wanted to go with the ordeal, nevertheless. 

After a thousand efforts of refusing the pleasure of seeing what was in store, one day she picked the photo at the dawn and saw it was a Polaroid of a man, showing his back against an Victorian styled house. 

How was this man related to her and how is this photo going to unfold for her. Hearing the calling bell of her door, it startled her and quickly placed the photo on the table and she ran across the hallway to reach the door. 

She placed her hand on the door knob and turned it and upon opening, she found being pulled into a white light emanating at the foot of the doorstep. 

She was transported to the Victorian era, and she was walking along an alley, with cobbled stone pathways. She dreaded the hallow yellow lights were throwing and the shadows, of the people on the pathways, creating an eerie look around her. She hasty walked, walking till she reached a house, resembling the one from the photo. 

She saw an middle-aged man opening the door of the house and as he steeped in she too stepped in. The man didn’t seem to notice her but she could see the man. Mia kept looking as the scenes unfolded in front of her. 

************************

Eli hadn’t planned on buying a fixer-upper, but the old Victorian on Holloway Street was too cheap to pass up. The real estate agent warned him it needed “a little love” and that the previous owner, an elderly watchmaker, had died alone. Eli didn’t care—he wanted space, quiet, and no neighbours peering into his windows.

He discovered the box on his second week there, while pulling down moth-eaten blankets from the attic. It was small, maybe a foot wide, made of dark wood with ornate brass fittings. A heavy padlock hung from the latch, its keyhole rusted shut. The lid had been etched with a single phrase, in tiny, neat letters: DO NOT OPEN.

Of course, that made him want to open it. 

*****************

Mia, wondered why the box looked familiar. It was the same box she had held a few days ago. Where was she? Why did it all feel so familiar. With a bated breathe she looked on. 

*****************

He tried keys, screwdrivers, even soaking the lock in oil, but nothing worked. For days, it sat on his kitchen table like a dare. Finally, after a frustrating nights of failed attempts, he smashed it open with a hammer.

Inside was only a slip of paper, yellowed with age. On it, in an elegant hand, were four words: You shouldn’t have done that.

He laughed at first, figuring it was a prank by the old watchmaker. But the next morning, there was another box—identical—sitting in the centre of his living room rug.

No one had been inside. His doors were locked.

The second box was also locked tight. Eli tossed it in the trash bin out back and tried to forget about it. But the day after, there were two boxes—one in the kitchen, one on his bed.

Then they began to contain things. A single human tooth. A photo of him sleeping. A lock of his own hair. When he showed them to his friends, they only saw empty rooms. 

Sleep became impossible. He’d wake in the middle of the night with one on his chest, as if it had been placed there gently while he dreamed. The next morning, there was a box inside his locked nightstand drawer.

He moved out. Rented a motel room. Burned the boxes.

But they came anyway. One on the motel desk. One in the passenger seat of his car while he was driving. They began to appear faster, closer—always locked, always silent.

One night, as he sat in the corner of the room with the curtains drawn, he blinked—and a box appeared in his hands. His fingers, trembling, undid the padlock easily this time, as though it had been waiting for him.

Inside was a note. Fresh ink. The handwriting was his own.

It said: Get in.

Eli stared at the note: Get in.
He laughed—dry, cracked—because it was absurd. The box was far too small. He set it down and backed away.

But when he blinked, it was closer. Another blink—it was at his feet.

His chest tightened. The lid creaked open on its own. Inside, he saw nothing but blackness. No shadow—blackness, like a hole cut into reality. It wasn’t empty; it was deep.

Something inside was breathing. Slowly. Waiting.

Eli’s phone rang. He snatched it up, desperate for human sound. 

He answered. A voice identical to his own said, “You’ve been outside the box long enough.”

The line went dead. And the blackness reached up. 

Before the blackness, engulfed Eli, Mia noticed his face resembled of her father and he had turned towards her and had lifted a hand as if to ask for her help. 

She just moved forward with an extended hand and fell. She woke up lying on the floor, near the doorway of her house, where she lived, currently.

She ran up to the office room to find the photo on the table, turned to black and white. 

Mia couldn’t resist herself anymore, she was curious to know what else was in store and opened the box and found a shy bookstore owner photo, standing in front of his bookstore.

She picked the photo, and closed her apartment door and walked towards the bookstore, the photo tucked neatly away in her purse. She didn’t expect it to rain, it slowly started to drizzle and quickly turned into a full-fledged rain. 

She saw at the entrance, the man from the photo receiving small packages on his doorstep—each box he opened, there was an odd object and a handwritten clue. On the final clue, he opens the last box to find a key—and a note telling him to unlock the bookstore’s back door that evening. 

Waiting inside is the mysterious sender - Mia: the charming customer, he’s secretly admired for months, ready to confess.

                                                                                                                                                          -KK