The Morning I Met the Apocalypse Box



By Sebastian Daark, Investigator of the Mildly Unwise


Listen.

The day began, as most regrettable ones do, with hubris and a Scotch egg.

I was attempting the impossible: swallowing half a Scotch egg while inhaling tea at the same time. For a brief, operatic moment, I achieved it then immediately began dying in several directions at once. The human windpipe, it turns out, was never designed for multi-tasking.

The record player had just begun crooning an old jazz number when I choked. My life flashed before my eyes—not the whole thing, just the disappointing parts. The wallpaper. The tax return. The haunted cheese grater.

When the fit passed, I sat gasping at the table, the egg victorious, the tea vengeful, and the record skipping on a single phrase that sounded alarmingly like, “again, again, again.”

That was when the knock came.

A single rap at the door quiet, deliberate, and at least one octave too polite for the hour. On the step sat a box. No label. No postmark. Just a small metal plaque engraved with two words: “Apocalypse Box.”

Now, if you’ve never encountered one, consider yourself blessed.

An Apocalypse Box is part oracle, part curse, part cosmic practical joke. It doesn’t predict the future—it shows it, as if time were a theatre and you’d bribed the usher for a seat you weren’t meant to have. But the price is steep: it takes something in return. Sometimes a memory. Sometimes a year. Sometimes, if it’s feeling whimsical, your dog’s ability to look you in the eye.

I should have ignored it.

Instead, I brought it inside. Because curiosity, as ever, is the most efficient form of self-destruction.

The box was small, black, and humming faintly, like a cat dreaming of murder. Runes or perhaps badly written Latin circled its edge. When I brushed away the dust, a faint voice whispered from within:

“One glimpse. One cost.”

Naturally, I opened it.

The room darkened. The record player stopped mid-note. In the polished lid, a reflection appeared—not of me, but of my kitchen months from now. Same table. Same kettle. But everything around it was burnt. The walls were ash. The air shimmered with heat. And in the centre, the record player turned slowly, playing something that sounded suspiciously like my own voice saying, “I told you not to look.”

Then the vision ended.

The box snapped shut, as if embarrassed.

I checked the clock—seven minutes had vanished. The tea was cold. My reflection in the kettle blinked a half-second late.

That’s the cost, you see. The box doesn’t just show your future. It starts it. Every look pushes the story forward, one dreadful frame at a time.

I wrapped the Apocalypse Box in a towel, slid it under the bed, and made a solemn promise to never open it again.

Of course, it was gone by morning.

Filed under:

 Objects of Questionable Prophecy, Category X—Breakfast Omens.

More later assuming there’s a later.

S.Daark

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