InsaneJournal

But Don’t You See Danger
Who: Max and Lily
What: A suspicious package arrives in the mail.
Where: Apartment #605
When: Saturday Afternoon
Notes: Gdoc Holder Complete!


Between Max being busy with classes and Lily busy with work, the siblings had managed to forget the mail for nearly a week. It dawned on Lily that they needed to get the mail as she was coming in from a rare Saturday morning yoga class she offered. Tossing her yoga mat down on the floor in front of the mail boxes she took her key and retrieved the mail. Bills, magazines, random stuff pertaining to gaming and gardens, and a small package. Tipping her head slightly she flipped over the envelope and saw it had no return address. Maybe their aunt had sent something as a surprise.

Grabbing her yoga mat and tossing it over her shoulder Lily headed for the elevators as she flipped through the mail. By the time she entered her apartment she had the mail organized into three little sections. Her mail, Max’s mail, and the lone package that was addressed to the both of them. “The Castle Siblings” to be specific.

Tossing her mail onto the kitchen counter Lily kicked off her shoes and padded her way down the short hall to the two bedrooms. She dropped her mat into her room and pushed open Max’s bedroom door slightly. “You’ve got some mail and we have an envelope addressed to the both of us, Max,” she said quietly, not wanting to startle him.

He didn’t so much as glance up from the game, instead concentrating on a particularly frustrating boss that had whupped his white boy butt five times already. Just as he was attempting to strike a good blow, the boss swept him off of his feet and into a wall, where his character fell into a crevice that left behind a GAME OVER sign plastered on the screen. Max threw up his hands but managed to suppress the angry yell that was brewing within. Leaving the screen as was, he turned to glance at the mail offered in his sister’s hands.

“Oh, cool, my new issue of GamerPRO,” he replied, reaching out to take the mail from her hands without asking. His eyes strayed to the package in her other hand. “Mailed to both of us? Who’s it from?”

Max’s reaction was something Lily had grown used to and she didn’t even blink an eye from it. Leaning against the door frame she flipped the envelope over twice. “I don’t know. It’s addressed to the Castle Siblings but it doesn’t have a return address or anything. Kind of a funny shape too, and hard, I think it might be a picture CD or something. Maybe it’s from Aunt Jill.”

She gave a shrug and tossed the envelope to Max as well. With a cross of her arms over her chest she leaned into the room a little. “You want to open it? Or should I?” Max flipped through his magazine for a moment, more fanning himself with the pages than actually looking at the articles. He shrugged.

“You can have the honors,” he replied, truly curious about the package. It was late for Lily’s birthday, and early for his - with the idea of a ‘congrats on another year spinning around the sun’ gift out the window, he really had no idea what it could be. Any games he ordered were always addressed directly to him, but usually came in white envelopes proudly bearing the logo of whatever company he’d purchased from.

“Maybe it’s some kind of advertisement.”

She entered her brother’s room and pulled back some of Max’s sheets before taking a seat at the edge of his bed. Like the rest of his room, it was a mess - little more than a pile of sheets on a mattress, somewhat resembling a nesting animal’s sleeping area. Lifting the package in her hands she turned it slowly until she found a corner that was bent back a little. Sticking her nail underneath it she ripped at the envelope and opened it. Reaching inside a disc emerged with the same title as was on the package. The Castle Siblings. Raising a strawberry blond eyebrow, Lily handed the disc to Max. “I don’t know what it is. Can you try to play it?”

She looked back into the envelope and frowned. “There isn’t anything else in here aside from that.” He took the disc from Lily, turning it over in his hands and examining it. Aside from the label, there was nothing more to denote it as anything other than a regular CD. He bobbed his head to Lily’s question and then stood, moving over a few feet to his much cluttered desk and desktop PC. His hands pressed the eject button on the disk drive, and while that was in operation, he opened the casing for the CD. Carefully he placed the inscribed disk into the drive and closed it with a gentle push, taking a seat on the chair placed next to the desk.

“It’s easy enough to play it,” he mumbled, as though explaining to Lily. Winamp popped up automatically, his choice of player, with the video screen already prompted to open. “Let’s see what we’ve got.” He hit play.

The screen showed what looked like a child’s drawing. The background was lined notebook paper, the foreground a handful of scribbles done in black ink. Every few seconds, the screen would shiver, pixelate, and then turn back to it’s regular viewing image.

“What the heck?” Lily moved from the bed to behind Max seated in the chair, one hand curled around the top of the chairback.

She leaned back from the computer, her jaw dropping as the creepy imagery disappeared and a blocky white font against a black background appeared. “Did you see me?” Lily muttered, reading out loud what the screen displayed. The image warped back to the scribbles. Was it of a woods? Or was she only trying to make sense of the confusion?

The imagery twitched and went back to the black screen with the white font. Lily’s voice was soft as she read the final message, “I saw you. What the hell, Max. What is this?” Her voice held a nervous quiver in it that she didn’t notice she had but her eyes never turned away from the computer screen as the imagery changed once more.

A loud, jarring noise broke out from the speakers, coinciding with the sudden close up on what was presumably a figure standing amidst whatever the taller images around it were. Max clapped a hand to his ear before common sense set in and he hit the mute button on his keyboard. After another few moments, the screen went black.

“This has to be a prank. Maybe from one of my online friends.” He picked up the disk casing from where he’d set it on the desk, examining it again. There was nothing more to be had from that, and he stood in order to retrieve the packaging from its place on his bed. Like Lily had said, there was no return address, and their names along with the address had been neatly typed onto the envelope. “Maybe we can take this to the post office and they could trace it?”

“Oh,” Lily said, her mind completely distracted by what she had just seen. “Yeah, maybe they could. I mean... they’re the post office. They’re the ones who handled it in the first place.” She looked wearily at the computer screen and frowned. She leaned forward and hit the eject button, retrieving the CD and putting it back in its case.

“You really think that it could be your friends?” She looked at Max with a certain level of pleading in her eyes that she would never admit to. “If it is, it’s not cool. It’s... really creepy.”

“I really don’t know who else. And even then, this is kind of weird for them to do. Maybe somebody in the building with a weird sense of humor?” He turned the envelope over, then peered into the inside of it as though inspecting it thoroughly.

His mind was scrolling through a mental list of his online friends - few of which really even knew details of his personal life, much less about his sister or his address, though both could potentially be gleaned from the Internet with the right SEO - but none of them really seemed like the type to do something like this. Of course, he also knew as much about them as he assumed they knew of him, so all of that seemed more like a dead end. Turning to his sister, he took the CD case and put it back in the envelope.

“Anyway, it’s just a stupid prank. We don’t have to worry about anything.” He tried to sound reassuring, for some reason taking the protective sibling’s role for once. Thoughts of what Fee had said, about there not being something right about the building, combined with disappearing tenants and that weird room in the lobby were dancing through his mind, and he hoped that none of it showed on his face. Instead, he just smiled. “What’s for lunch?”

Lily studied Max’s face for a moment and decided that any concern in his expression was nothing worth worrying over. She got to her feet and glanced cautiously at the package again before trying to push it out of her mind. “I can make up some turkey burgers and some sweet potato fries. You want some?”

Max tossed the weird package and its contents onto the desk, trying to feel unconcerned about it. He’d find the closest postage office and take the envelope there tomorrow, see if anyone could tell him anything about its origins - until then, he was determined to act as normal as possible for his sister. A wide grin spread over his face and he patted his stomach. “Yes, my belly and I are in agreement. I’ll set the table.” With that, he followed Lily out of the room and toward the kitchen, the package presumably forgotten.