Enfoldment Excerpt: Package Content

We’re sharing the opening of “Package Content”, one of the short fictions in Enfoldment by E. B. Clarke. A parcel arrives exactly as ordered: completely empty.

Package Content

By E. B. Clarke

The small box arrived wrapped in eco-friendly recycled brown paper and completely empty of content. It was exactly what he ordered and everything he could imagine, and the complete emptiness of it brought him a sense of joy he could not remember experiencing.

Immediately he began to excitedly fill the box with every thought he could get his hands on. All day he filled the small empty box with everything he had. He filled it, for example, with all the colors he could think of. He filled it with a purple beyond purple that could only be seen with special chakra glasses. He filled it with what could be described as an infinitely divine Nuit blue that rivaled the deep color of the night sky. He filled the box with stones of precious water. He filled it with all his lapis lazuli. He filled it with turquoise, jade and a few amber-hued items that happened to be lying about.

From the moment that small box arrived that morning, he filled it with a vigor of enthusiasm that bordered at times upon desperation. Long into the late afternoon he continued to fill the box without success. And as the sun began to finally set below the horizon, he at last surrendered to an emptiness that can never be filled. He finally realized that he now had everything he needed and that what he needed was worth keeping.

The story continues in Enfoldment.

Enfoldment brings together poetry and short fiction by E. B. Clarke, with a foreword by André Consciência. Available in paperback and Kindle editions from Star Lore Publishing.

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