Random Sequence

"Because why?" I murmured.

"I don't know why, exactly," he said. "It's... a weird place, a weird box. They ran away, and I followed them."

"Uh-huh." I didn't know what else I could say, other than to ask what brought this yarn on. He didn't take kindly to those kinds of questions, though.

"I've been thinking a lot about that box lately," he said, "and doing research."

"What do you think it was?" I asked, in what I hoped sounded like an interested tone. "A box of what?"

"Well, that's something I've been thinking about for many years," he said. "And I think I may have figured out the answer. What do you know about local history?"
--from "The Iron Box" (by me), originally published in 3 AM Magazine