The following morning he slept late, forced himself to take a jog and eat a decent breakfast, and then, consulting his images and notes made over the past several days, began the arduous task of arranging the inlay pieces in the order he had discovered. He had never really liked the tile game as a child, and had never completed one. After several false starts he decided to visit a toy store and buy an easier puzzle to practice on before he felt comfortable attacking the box again.He sweated over the box all that day and most of the next, unsure of why he was now so obsessed with solving the puzzle. He couldn"t come up with a good reason, but was driven nonetheless.
Now, late in the evening of the second day of sliding little wooden pieces around this stupid box, sitting on the couch in just a comfortable pair of cutoff shorts with a half-drunk beer getting warm on the coffee table, he came to the final tile. He was so keyed up by this point that he could barely hold his hands still enough to move it into place. He eventually got a grip on himself, though, and, holding his breath, slid it home. He heard a soft click and expelled his breath in a whoosh. Now what?
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One of the first things he had done when he originally saw the box was to shake it, of course. As far as he could tell nothing was in it. At least that was what he had been a.s.suming. But now, with it apparently finally unlocked, all sorts of questions surfaced in his brain; "If nothing is in it, why make it so hard to open? Did someone open it before me and remove the contents? What"s up with the woman"s face? Maybe it contains some contract or other important piece of paper, a treasure map, perhaps?" He snorted at that one. "Wasn"t there some movie I saw part of awhile back about someone opening a puzzle box and releasing some evil guy with nails in his head?" He snorted again.
Still, the questions, ridiculous and not, buzzed around his brain as he tried to make his suddenly sweaty hands open the box. He had to know, though, and he finally reached out with one quick motion and popped open the lid. Immediately a glowing pink vapor escaped and enveloped his face. His last thought before losing consciousness could pretty much be summed up as: "Well, s.h.i.+t!"