Gifts nosleep

Roughly two weeks ago my wife, Catherine, began having...problems. She works as a secretary for a local law firm. One morning when she walked into her office she found a bouquet of a half-dozen white lilies, her favorite flower, with a card that read, “For my love...M.” She text me, “Love you too! They’re absolutely gorgeous,” with a picture of the flowers.

“Pretty, where did those come from?” I sent back.

“Lol don’t be coy.”

“Ok...but I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh right you just forgot that you sent me a bouquet of lilies. Why did you send them anyway, did you do something wrong? ;-)”

“I didn’t send them.”

“Ok hun, you can stop with the game. Its kinda killing the buzz now.”

“I seriously didn’t send you any flowers.”

“They’re signed M. So are you sure you didn’t send them Matt?”

“I didn’t send them. Honest. Whoever did is making me look bad though.”

“Hmm. We’ll talk about this later.”

We did. When she came home I looked at the card and compared it to another card I had written on her birthday. “The writing doesn't match, see?” The ink on the flowers card was thin and elegantly curved like a smooth cursive font. My own writing was thick, jagged, and looked juvenile in comparison. Her face slacked.

“Well I don’t know anyone else with an M name that would send me flowers. Oh, and who loves me too.” We both just stared at the flowers a moment trying to think of a plausible explanation.

“Is there anyone with the initial M at your office?”

“No, except Marcia, and I don’t get that kind of vibe from her.”

“Well maybe the girls are just trying to play a prank.”

“Maybe...” She stared a while longer, then went off to fix supper and the issue was dropped.

A few days went by and the flowers drifted out of both of our minds. That is, until Catherine walked into her office and a small box of chocolates was waiting on her desk. On top was another card with an identical message as the first. Again Catherine and I texted only to come to the same conclusion, we had no idea who M was.

She asked another secretary in the office who had put the chocolates there. She said a delivery man dropped them off that morning before Catherine came into work. Neither of us knew what to make of it at the time. It was a little unsettling, but still it didn’t ping on our radars quite yet. So again, we put it out of our minds and went on.

Three days after the chocolates there was another gift and card. This time it was a bracelet with four charms on it, a pink breast cancer ribbon, a white lily, a crimson eagle, and a tear drop shaped topaz stone.

My wife called me this time, her voice wavering, but not yet worried. “Matt, my mother had breast cancer and I love white lilies...”

I began to see why she was freaking out. "...my high school mascot was a crimson eagle, and I was born in November. This isn’t a coincidence Matt. Someone had to know these things about me. It’s freaking me out. If you’re trying to play some twisted joke it’s enough. Are you sending me this stuff?”

“Catherine, I promise you I am not. This is freaking me out too. But it could be someone in your office playing a joke. All that stuff is on your Facebook page. Ask your officemate who the courier service that delivered the package was and call them to see who M is.”

She did. Everyone in her office swears they had nothing to do with it. The courier service wasn’t helpful either. We sat at home that night and I tried to calm her down.

“There’s a pattern,” she said. “The first package was six flowers. Three days later, a box with five chocolates. Three days after that was a bracelet with four charms. The gifts are counting down.” It sounded crazy but she was right.

Catherine went into work early the next three days. The third morning a tall, lanky, twenty something boy in khakis and a blue polo walked in and delivered an envelope. The front read “for my love...M.” I got a call almost immediately.

“Matt we need to go down to the police station right now.”

“Wh...”

“Because the next gift came today.” Her voice was shaking. “There were three pictures in there. All were pictures of me. I was walking the dog in one, I was walking into work in another and... and in the last.” She let out a sigh then breathed deeply. “It was a picture of me, in the bathtub. It was shot outside of our window Matt.”

I immediately left work and sped to the police station to meet Catherine. We spent the next hour explaining the gifts and the countdown to the officer. They agreed that someone was potentially stalking my wife. We stayed home for the next three days.

During that time marked and unmarked police cars drove around the neighborhood and sat outside our house almost all the time. They investigated the courier service but didn’t get any more details out of them than we had. They took all the gifts as evidence.

On the morning the next gift was scheduled, an officer waited at the courier office as well as Catharine’s office. No gift came that morning. Catherine and I were both a little relieved.Our nerves were still on edge though. We both paced our living room over and over just waiting expecting something to happen.

I walked over to our refrigerator and pulled out the last two beers. Popping both tops, I sat down on the couch. “Let’s try and calm our nerves a little bit.” We both sat quietly drinking and looked off out the window. When I was a little more than halfway done I started feeling dizzy.

“Huh, all this excitement must be messing with me. I’m already feeling buzzed.”

Catherine yawned and said “I’m not. Do we have any more?”

“No, these were the last two. We need to add them to the grocery list.”

Catherine got up as I finished my last swigs of beer. She walked over to the list we keep stuck on the refrigerator. “hm.” She said. My head was swimming at this point but I asked what. “it’s already on the list.”

I tried to get up off the couch but my muscles weren’t responding. My brain began to fog over as my eye lids fell heavily closed. The next thing I remember was the acrid taste of smoke in my lungs. My eyes lulled open to an inferno raging around me.

My house was on fire. In the seconds it took to register that it wasn’t a dream I had managed to stand up. The fire hadn’t reached me yet but the kitchen was blazing. I screamed for my wife and ran into the flame and smoke to find her. The heat was too much and I dropped to my stomach to search for her.

Cracks and pops flooded my ears as my eyes blurred. I looked around desperately. Finally I saw her. She was being hoisted onto the back of a fireman in a black coat and yellow helmet. I screamed her name. The fireman looked back for a moment, turned around, and took my wife out of the house. I passed out again.

The next few hours were blurred memories. I came to in the hospital sometime later. Officers came in to check on me and ask me some questions. Before they had a chance though, I asked “Where’s Catherine?”

The officers glanced at each other then back at me, but were silent. I said, “I saw her being pulled from the house. She was rescued by a fireman.”

Almost condescendingly an officer said “Matt, the firemen who pulled you out couldn't find Catherine.”

“Because she was saved first. The fireman in the black coat and yellow helmet put her on his back and got her out. Then I feinted.”

The officers glanced at each other again. “Matt,” the officer began sympathetically this time. “The fire department didn’t arrive until right before they went in and pulled you out. None of them were wearing a black coat or yellow helmet either.”

I argued with them until a nurse came in and said it was time for me to rest. I couldn't rest. I haven’t rested since I woke up after the fire. That was three days ago. I don’t think I will ever rest again either.

This morning, as I was being discharged from the hospital, I was pulling on a pair of pants from the Salvation Army. Inside one of the pockets was an envelope. My hands trembled when I read the note on the front. “For my love...M. Now we can be together.” Bile rose in my throat while I opened the flap. Inside was a single picture of Catherine.

Submitted May 18, 2015 at 12:01PM by The_User92 http://ift.tt/1PQ204Z nosleep