A brisk breeze swept through Eleanor’s unkempt apartment, magazine pages fluttering in the winter wind. No door was open throughout the apartment complex, yet winter snuck into the building; there was a heating system that whirred throughout the day, yet could not banish the winter. But Eleanor did not complain, the cold wind was a sweet disruption in the monotonous order Eleanor had imposed upon herself. She denied herself vice and addiction for an austere sense of order.  Eleanor, however, did not see this denial as sacrifice, but the only just course of action that would spearhead her productivity and change her life for the better, or so she read in the “How to Improve Productivity for Dummies” handbook she ordered online. Eleanor sat on her floral couch in front of her glass coffee table reading and making holiday cards for her co-workers and family members.  She spent day and night performing this menial task. Her hands would grow numb, but she would ignore them. Her eyes would grow weary from the heavy wave of torpid night, but she would ignore them and continue. She would breathe with full control over her lungs, allow her heart to beat evenly timed beats. She spent her winter holiday in this manner until the wind disrupted the order. Dear god! How the order left! She may not notice, but now the pages of her magazine are now slightly frayed, the cold coffee on the table has rippled slightly! This disorder, oh dear, this disorder was unacceptable! But, alas, she carried on with her monotonous task.
         On the thirtieth day of December, there was a further disruption. Three knocks struck the door softly, the sound did not disturb but the implications did; they caused only one foot to rise, and one mouth to exclaim, that mouth, Eleanor’s, that foot, Eleanor’s.  She rose with a perturbed groan.
         “Just as my four hundredth card was being made! Just my luck!” She angrily exclaimed.
Eleanor opened the door and there stood an old woman, her body hunched over, covered in a brown tattered cloak. She held in her hands a cardboard box, which she abruptly dropped before running off back into the winter night. Eleanor had no time to exclaim her dismay to this stout old woman, nor did the woman attempt to make any exclamation; she left only the box, and a matrix for Eleanor’s curiosity to infinitely expand. Eleanor brought the quaint little box into her home to examine it further.
After hours of examination, Eleanor had come to realize three facts about this box. The first, this box was certainly made of cardboard, a discovery only made after Eleanor received multiple cuts across her hands from rubbing its edges. The second, there was a heavy adhesive impermeable to her state sanctioned scissors and her black market knife. The third, there was something certainly alive in this box. It shook and screeched on occasion, and a grating sound rung out every ten minutes. The creature, if creature it may be, was dying inside of that box. Or at least Eleanor assumed. The creature could easily be the box, as the extermination of the barbaric anthropomorphic antiques had not ended in a clear success. These antiques were rumored to take the form of old objects, so, an odd little cardboard box could certainly live its life of barbarism inconspicuously. Later, Eleanor proposed that she would visit her local adhesive specialist.
Eleanor visited her local adhesive specialist, but to no avail.
“This is some sort of glue,” he told her, rubbing his fingers on the crease where the adhesive held the box together, “certainly some sort of glue.”
“Can it be removed?” Eleanor asked.
“Lemme see,” the man took his knife and ran it through the crease, a test Eleanor had already performed. “Well, that doesn’t work. This is probably some extra-terrestrial substance. You should turn it into city hall. The inspectors will handle it.” He dismissed Eleanor.
Eleanor did not follow his instructions. Eleanor lugged the box back home and examined it for the entire day until she slept through its grating groans and obnoxious shaking.
The next morning, she lugged the box back onto her kitchen counter to examine it even further. Surprisingly, she did not grow tired of the monotonous, foolish endeavor of opening this clearly impermeable box. She looked back upon the box and sighed.
“There is no action I may take that will break the seal of this box.” She groaned, finally conceding.
“But,” what else could she say now? This box was impermeable, please, let there be no more hope left in this foolish girl. “I could try a fire torch.” She gasped in exclamation, “Yes! If this material is truly cardboard, it will burn!” She danced around for a moment, and shouted with a sing-song tone, “It will burn! It will burn! It will burn!”
Eleanor called her “uncle,” although clearly she held no avuncular relationship with this man, shown by her harsh tone and cold demeanor, she still called him uncle in asking for a fire torch and welding mask to use. After a short, sharp, conversation, Eleanor seemed pleased with the answer she received and hung up the phone, without sparing a moment to say goodbye to her “uncle.”
Later that day, the “uncle” arrived at Eleanor’s home. He left a small box with a torch and a few wires hanging out right at her doorstep, the same place the curious box was left. She did not take a moment to look at the man whom she called uncle when he stopped by her home, and neither did he. He left abruptly after leaving the box, spending only a moment to assess his gruff face in the reflection of the glass door. Eleanor took the box in from her doorstep and unpacked the materials. She counted off, one flame torch, a liter of oil, and a welding mask. She grinned with empty delight at the fulfillment of her request. She plugged the torch into her nearest outlet and placed the welding mask upon her face. She turned it on and out came a bursting blue flame, tearing into the adhesive, and burning the cardboard. Looking down upon the product of her toils, she put on gloves and creaked open the charred cardboard box. What was revealed repelled her, Eleanor recoiled immediately. Inside the box lay hundreds of eyes with a glaring gaze, piercing through Eleanor's previous veneer of excitement. She screamed and shut the box and began shuffling through her junk drawers searching for duct tape to seal away the horror she had revealed. She took a large wooden board and placed it over the charred box, wrapping it in duct tape, a sloppy arrangement but it did not matter, it was meant only to conceal. Eleanor rushed to the City Hall and slid the box into the "Strange Findings" slot.
Weeks later, Eleanor found a letter in her mailbox coated with a green saliva, she opened it. It read; "Thank you, Eleanor Griswold, for returning one of our own. - The City Hall Watchers”
The letter was written in a scrawling hand writing, the handwriting of a watcher, the handwriting, no other than my own.