"Fresh Human" Read online

flipped it around a couple of times while pushing a specific point on each of the six sides. «Now, pay attention.» She held the box up in her hand so they both could see it clearly.

  A sound resembling fsssssss!! squeezed out of it and a red, bright glow somehow was turned on. The light came from the indentations of all the carved symbols. It painted the whole room in a darkly lit red glow.

  «Wow,» Seth said, «that I didn't expect!»

  «Looks like a really advanced rubix cube,» Robin said and gaped at the alien thing.

  «Yes, at least,» Jill said, transfixed on the glowing red wonder cradled by her own fingers. It felt like holding a living heart. «It's something special about this, I just know it!» She held it tight in her hand.

  «We should take it down and look at it in daylight,» Seth said and immediately went for the door. The two others followed.

  Jill shielded the glowing box with both hands. She held it close to her chest.

  Seth grabbed the door knob .. and screamed.

  He instinctively withdrew his hand like he had just touched a burning hot plate, or maybe an electric fence. Clutched his hand with the other one and jumped up and down like a cartoon character bitten by a fierce snake. «Ah, shit, the fucking door knob burned me or something!» Seth shouted through gritted teeth.

  Robin walked passed him and took a closer look at the door. It was properly shut, and the door knob was glowing red. «It's shining red like the symbols on that box,» he said. He bent down, picked up what looked like an ancient newspaper, tore off a piece of it, threw the rest back on the floor. «Let's see now,» he mumbled and placed the piece of paper on the door knob.

  Seth had regained some of his self-control and was staring intently at what his brother was doing. So did Jill. Her eyes were as large as two full moons.

  «I'll be damned,» Robin said when the piece of paper suddenly caught on fire. He removed it, flipped it quickly back and forth in the air until the flames died, and let it drift back down to the floor, but this time as a crispy piece of roasted ashes. «Seems like you were right, Jill. The box has to be magical, because this is just too crazy.»

  Jill swallowed. An audible click erupted from her throat. She held the glowing box out in front of her like an ugly baby. «But I didn't want it to be that kind of magical.»

  «Wait a minute!» Seth interrupted their fantastic musings. «There must be a logical reason here somewhere. Right?»

  The two others stared at him like believers witnessing something unbelievable.

  Seth looked down at his hand. Red, burned marks were left where the knob had come in contact with his skin. His eyebrows lifted. He shrugged. «I don't know. Maybe there's nothing logical about this situation at all,» he said and looked at the steaming hot door knob. «Perhaps the fucking box is cursed.»

  The glowing box immediately intensified its red light.

  This time it was Jill who screamed, and she automatically dropped the box, which landed on the floor and rolled over a few times before stopping. She held both her hands – both of which had been holding the box – close, and letting a prolonged sound of agony slip out.

  Seth put his arms around her. «Did it burn you too?»

  «Yes,» she said through a tiny gap in her otherwise tightly closed lips.

  «Okay, fuck this shit,» Robin said and began kicking the door. «I'm getting the hell outta here!» He kicked it again. Then again. And again. He kicked it time after time again, but it wouldn't break. «Really?!» he shouted at the damned door and cursed its existence. Kicked again, with more intensity. He then backed up a meter or two, before running towards the door with his shoulder first. A split second later he impacted it and landed a massive force on the door, but it didn't even budge a smidgen. «Fuck!!» he screamed like a helpless man in a cage, and let himself slide down on the floor, leaning against the door, exhausted after the effort.

  «Looks like we're not going anywhere,» Seth said.

  «You think?!» Robin snapped.

  Seth laughed without emotion. «Calm down, little brother, no need for that.»

  «Right ..» he said, looking at the floor with ha hopeless expression tattooed on his face. «We're all just fucked anyway.»

  In the same instant those words were uttered the entire house began to shake and rumble. The alien, glowing box began shining even brighter, and the redness became denser and more bloodlike. Stacks of newspapers and books trembled and eventually crashed down like buildings being demolished. Dust got whirled up in the thick attic-air, and made breathing even more uncomfortable.

  The shaking grew stronger and stronger until it felt like the entire universe were about to explode. And then out of nothing it stopped.

  Everything became black. Pitch black.

  The box didn't glow anymore, neither did the door knob. The few specks of sunlight beaming in from cracks in the walls were also gone. It was completely black, like day had turned to night in a snap-second.

  All three gasped simultaneously. The gasping choir of an instantaneous experience of a this-can't-be-happening-situation.

  Maybe eight seconds passed in absolute stillness, before an omnipresent, deep voice presented itself: «Welcome, my new people. I bid you good day.» The voice sounded mechanical, yet oddly natural at the same time.

  «Who are you?» Seth asked. « .. the box?»

  A daunting laughter vibrated deeply through the whole house, still bathed in darkness. «I can assure you I am no puny box, my new people. I am the house you are now moving into, and I welcome you.» It was impossible to decipher the emotion in this voice.

  «Could you maybe turn the light back on?» asked Robin from somewhere in the blackness surrounding them.

  «Yes, of course I could do that,» the house said, «but I won't.»

  «Why not?» said Jill. «What have we done wrong?»

  «Oh, you have done nothing wrong, my new people. On the contrary, I am very pleased to have you here! But you do not exist to have lives, but simply for me to digest.» The daunting laughter again. «You see, my new people, I am a living being, not a dead construction as you view me.» A pause, then the house continued: «I need food like any other organism, almost like a tree – with the exception, of course, that I am impossibly more intelligent than a mere tree,» the house said, then added: «and a box.»

  Jill started weeping. «I don't understand! What do you want?» She stomped her foot on the floor and sobbed in Seth's arms, who himself understood nothing of this insane scenario that played out in pitch blackness right before his very own unseeing eyes.

  «Eeeasy, my new people!» the room chuckled – it actually chuckled – and said: «You are my most recent batch of Fresh Human, which quickly explained is a type of food I have constructed by combining different rudimentary nutrients into a functional mix that I need to sustain my life and optimize my functioning as a conscious, living being.»

  Images with accompanied audio flashed before their inner sight. Like an animated movie showing what the house described as it happened, like they somehow already knew this. Seth tried to turn the images off, but it wasn't possible.

  Jill screamed and cried. Couldn't, wouldn't and didn't know what the house was saying. It was all so totally, completely unreal. It was too much. She held on even tighter to Seth.

  The house kept on: «In other words, I created you through a synthesis of different organic pieces. This made you into a seed I planted in the garden outside of me. There you grew, like plants, your bodies developing while enveloped in a protective shielding we can call egg. Your first seconds of life began when Jill supposedly found the 'creepy old alien red glowing box', and Seth supposedly let his brother in to take a first time look at me .. supposedly. The entire memory storage in your minds of your lives up to this point is just a dream that developed in your growing body as you lay in the egg being constructed.»

  They all listened now. In complete throat choking silence, while this deep vibrating voice shared its impossible tale in words
and unbelievable mental imagery manipulation inside their own heads.

  «Then when you one day, which was today, were ready, the egg cracked and out you came, like chickens,» said the house, like it was funny. «As a matter of fact, you are actually vegetables that have been mesmerized by a way too complex dream about an illusory life you now think you experience yourself in. But that life isn't real. It is a dream from the pre-born state of your plant body. Only this is real,» the house said, «and this is you being my food. That's the only reason you exist. Enough talk, my new people.» The finality of the sentence seemed total.

  Only silence again. And Jill's weeping. Seth patting her back, not knowing what to do.

  «Is it gone?» Robin asked after a while.

  «I don't know,» Seth said. «It's still pitch black here, so I guess not.»

  «Maybe it's waiting for us to –

  Robin didn't get to say anything else before Jill jumped in: «Do you guys feel that?»

  The darkness became silent for a couple of seconds again.

  Then Seth noticed the temperature rise, quickly. He found Jill's hand. «Yes,» he said, «I feel it.»

  «Me too,» Robin whispered from the floor. «It's getting hotter.»

  It went from warm to burning hot in less than thirty seconds.

  «This can't be happening!» Jill said panicky.

  «Don't worry,» said the deep, omnipresent voice, and sounded almost sorry. «It won't last for a very long period of time. It is just the digestion process. It