#timed write

It was a box, or it least it looked like that from here. It certainly had all the aspects of a box - three dimensions, square sides, and it was brown in color.

Unfortunately, there was still another possibility. Sure, it was most likely a box. He was in a box store, after all, it would make sense that it was, indeed, just what it looked like. But there was a slim chance that it was not a box as it looked like, and instead, it was a shapeshifter.

With the day that he had been having, he wouldn't exactly be too surprised. he had come to the desert to write a scientific journal about wizzers, a magical type of bee known only to the desert that made honey from bees that only bloomed on a blue moon.

Somehow he had stumbled instead on a giant flying desert boar - and they were supposed to be extinct! Sure, it was a magnificent scientific discovery for a biologist such as himself, but the bruises covering his stomach did not quite agree.

There was also all of the normal having-a-bad-day things that had happened to him: his shoe laces kept mysteriously becoming untied no matter how many knots he put them into, his car ran out of gas and then the battery died, his phone decided to die, and his favorite pen for writing in his scientific journal had run out of ink.

So yes, it did look like a box. But he did not really trust that it was indeed a box on this very day because nothing else had gone right, so why would box shopping go right either?

Nevertheless, he approached the box. It was just the right dimensions for holding his specimens, and it was sealable to keep the sand out. It was also the last one on the clearance rack!

With every tick of the second hand, the screams got louder. She didn’t want to hear them anymore, the walls were so thick and yet they were still so clear.

These were the people she was leaving behind, the people that she couldn’t get out in time. They were the people she grew up with, her neighbors, kids she saw playing in the park next to her house every day. There were strangers in there too – she just couldn’t save them.

There wasn’t enough time.

Part of her wanted to run, get out from this cramped crate she had hidden herself in. But they would surely catch her if she did.

“Allie?” A timid voice whispered from another crate. “Is this going to work? …are the trucks going to leave soon? I-I don’t like this…”

“Don’t worry Mia, everything will be alright…” A stab of guilt flowed through her, but it was soon replaced by anger. Mia was only six, she didn’t deserve to be in a situation like this… No one did, really.

But that didn’t matter to them. Those who would not submit to tyranny were either killed or locked up and killed slowly.

But Allie had seen a chance between watches, had been able to run with Mia. She didn’t know if there was anyone else left that wouldn’t immediately shoot her on sight.

At the very least death by a bullet would be quicker than the poisonous fumes used to kill the prisoners.