“What the fuck,” Arthur said out loud as he opened the box. All signs pointed to something gory being inside, but Arthur had truly been expecting something like an actual liver, or a kidney. The inside of the box was fan cooled and also full of ice, and on top of that ice was a severed hand. Arthur half expected it to start crawling, but it was excessively pale, practically gray, and a bit shriveled, like all the blood had been drained out of it. There was the beginnings, or maybe endings, of a tattoo near the wrist, where it had been severed. There outside of the palm and the fingers were covered in tattoos as well. But the strangest part was that the hand was still wearing expensive looking rings studded with small gems. That’s one way to launder money, Arthur thought, gingerly placing the box on the floor.

  He snatched the envelope that had come with the box, tearing it open with a little too much vigor, ripping the top of the letter inside. Arthur muttered to himself as he unfolded it, directing his confusion and disgust at the letter like it owed him an explanation.

  Greetings, Arthur

  The item contained in the box is of great value. However, it holds no significance to you or anyone you know. Therefore, it is in your interest to avoid opening the box, because it will neither hinder nor enhance your specific job.

  Arthur looked down at the open box. Woops. He kept reading.

  The item inside is a gift to an old friend of mine. It’s arrival will put his mind at ease, and will smooth out my situation with him. This is something that will benefit me greatly, and in turn, benefit you greatly. Half of your pay has already been wired to your specified account. As per our usual agreement, the other half will be wired upon completion.

  Arthur checked his bank statement. He swore out loud to himself, again. $10,000. And that was just half. To be fair, delivering body parts was a completely new assignment, but at the same time it made Arthur anxious. They were paying him almost half of what he made in a year at the police department, and it was his last job. A million ideas ran through his head of why they were paying him so much, and all he could conclude was that it was their way of telling him to not fuck up. It still didn’t make sense why they were forcing him out, but he kept reading.

  Should anyone else find this box, it will cause much discomfort among our community, and in the wrong hands might cause worse than discomfort. So, I entrust it to you, someone who has been deliberately kept on the outside for your own safety, and for ours. Nobody but myself and my assistant will know you have this item, or even know your identity, and so if you do not deliberately advertise this fact, you will not be targeted.

  Arthur read over that last sentence twice, staring at the final word. He couldn’t fathom why he would be ‘targeted’ over a hand, but all that did was cause his anxiety about this whole situation to rise even further. He could be targeted? What did that even mean? As in targeted to be killed? Arthur shook his head, trying to calm himself down enough to finish the letter.

  That being said, the recipient of this item is one Bartolome Strissa.

  Longley had a lot of different, varied people in it from different backgrounds, but even still that name sounded ridiculous. It sounded like a fake name from the eighteenth century.

  This person will arrive in Longley this Friday, at ten PM. From the airport, they will head directly to the St. Cecilia Catholic Communion Church. You will meet him there, after he arrives.

  Pay close attention, for this is the most important part; he will not be expecting you. However, present yourself as polite, with humility, and state the intention of your visit as a courier. Bartolome Strissa is a polite person of traditions, and will respect you for acting equally polite. And do not leave until he has seen it’s contents and given you a response in turn.

  Once finished, you may give me a call.

  I have utmost faith in you. And remember, be subtle. The only way to win these games is to think outside the box. Thank you.

  Arthur stared at the letter for some time, not reading any more of it, or absorbing anything else. Just pretending, hoping, that maybe there was some kind of hidden message or invisible ink that would reveal this whole thing was a bad joke. But the letter provided no such comfort, and was simply a piece of paper. He burned the letter, letting the ashes fall into the trashcan near where he was sitting. Arthur twisted the cap off a cheap bottle of dark liquor and poured a glass, sitting back down into his chair. His head was buzzing with anxiety, with the information he had just read, and with how absurd this entire situation seemed.

  Not absurd, he thought. Dangerous. He was supposed to meet a man who didn’t live in Longley, give him what could only be proof of someone’s recent death, and he knew nothing about the situation besides he was supposed to be polite. This had to be a bad joke. Arthur’s finger was tapping rapidly against his chair as he downed the drink. He stared at the box, finally pulling out his cell and dialing the number of the Assistant. Just before he hit call, he stopped. It was twenty thousand dollars, he thought to himself. Among the choir of anxiety and concern that had been roiling around in his head, that number seemed to stand out in big golden font. Arthur laughed to himself, disappointed in himself he was considering doing something this uncertain for such an amount. He dialed the number.

  The phone rang. And it rang. And it rang. And eventually it went to a voicemail that wasn’t set up. That was…strange. He gave it fifteen minutes and called again. It rang. And rang. And went to voicemail. Arthur stared at the phone. The Assistant never failed to pick up whenever he tried to get in contact, which was rare. And it’s not like the phone wasn’t working. Arthur scowled, and sent a text instead.

  ‘Need to talk about the job.’

  He poured another glass and stared at his phone anxiously for another ten minutes, but there was no response. Liquor now in him boosting his confidence, Arthur tossed the phone onto his table and shrugged. He just wouldn’t do the job. They couldn’t force him, not really. And if this really had to be done they could come get the box themselves.

  He looked down at it again, considering that maybe he should help keep it cool, and with a grimace put the box in his own fridge. It didn’t smell but the thought of keeping a body part right next to his frozen vegetables and ice cream seemed wrong. But he had nowhere better to put it.

  Arthur opened his laptop next and did what he did whenever he was waiting on someone to get back to him one something, usually about a case. He began to research. There were no accounts of someone named Bartolome Strissa anywhere he looked. Not on social media, no professional pages, no websites, no Wikipedia page. The only thing he found that seemed relevant was the surname Strissa, which was used by a family during the reign of the Habsburgs in Spain, which was around five hundred years ago. A quick search showed no relevant descendants past the seventeenth century. A descendant, or just stole the name, Arthur thought.

  Next he looked up the church he was supposed to be meeting Bartolome at. He was familiar with it. It was only about ten minutes from his apartment, in a nicer part of town. A small church, could probably only hold fifty people. The website simultaneously looked old and traditional, but also like it’d been designed by an amateur. They had regular mass times, catechism teachings, and lots of volunteer activity on their website that was mostly jumbled and hard to navigate through. Nothing about it seemed particularly strange.

  It’d been about thirty minutes. Arthur glanced at his phone again. Still nothing. He massaged his temples, trying to get his brain back into detective mode despite it being late at night already. The most obvious thing that came to mind was that for some, strange reason his employer was sending him to confirm a killing to some other mob boss. But he’d never gotten the impression he was working for organized crime, and the fact that this job was so strange, so different, and so final seemed to reinforce that. Something else was going on. And it didn’t help that they were, like usual, giving him the most bare minimum information to go off of. No matter what kind of reasoning or justification he tried to come up with, Arthur was drawing a blank.

  So instead of getting drunk on a Monday night, he decided to take a shower. Get a good night’s rest, wait for the Assistant to return his calls and texts, and give them the box back. Clean his hands of the whole thing, and that would be that.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  ---

  It was Wednesday now, and Arthur still had the box. The only thing that had changed was now there were multiple missed calls and ignored texts out to the Assistant. She was the only person Arthur had the contact information of, so he couldn’t even go directly to the ‘boss’, whoever that was. In fact, thinking about it now, Arthur had always sort of just ignored that he only ever worked through a single person and had never been allowed to meet the employer. Now more than ever it seemed strange.

  But that wasn’t the issue at hand. The issue was that it was Wednesday, and he still had the box. Two days until delivery. The people who’d asked him to do this were now ignoring him entirely. And it wasn’t like he could go to the police, because he’d have a hard time explaining why he had this in the first place and why he’d been selling police records illegally. He considered just dumping the box somewhere and ridding himself of the whole thing entirely, but somehow that seemed worse. He had a feeling that the Assistant and her boss wouldn’t take to that well. Maybe it would be his hand in the box next. The only logical reasoning for the radio silence was that for whatever reason this box was hot, and like had been said in the letter, Arthur was basically a nobody. They didn’t even want to risk talking about it.

  Once again, there were too many unknowns, but now it was two days closer to due date. So Arthur decided to take a proactive approach. As soon as he got off work, he left to go scout the church. If he was walking into something dangerous, at the very least he wanted to know what it looked like. The church, fittingly, was in a part of town named Cross Grove. It was an upper class neighborhood with million dollar houses and higher, where every street was nice and clean and every little strip mall with shops was even cleaner. Arthur never spent much time around here, because the fact of the matter was that not much crime often happened in this area. But it was a nice change of pace from his usual grungy locales.

  The outside of the church looked about how he expected. Dark brown brick, a big stained glass window over the front double doors. A large white steeple. It was located on a grassy lot surrounded by trees, with a big parking lot out back that had one entrance and one exit. For a neighborhood like this, the church seemed small, and mundane. Arthur had been sitting in his car a ways across the street for about an hour now. He’d seen one group of people leave the church, remembering that there’d been a mass around this time. Since then, nothing had changed. Nobody had came or went. No movement outside, just a few cars parked in the lot that must’ve belonged to the priests. Arthur opened his door and made his way inside, under the guise of an interested religious go-er who was trying to find his new house of salvation.

  Inside, as he’d expected, it was now mostly empty. There was a nun quietly lighting candles around the windows, and there was one priest who was cleaning off the pews as Arthur came in. There were only about fifteen pews total. Two stained glass windows, one at the front and one at the back. One large statue of the Virgin Mary just underneath the stained glass in the back. One image of Christ hanging above that. The floors were made from lacquered wood that made sound as Arthur walked over them. The walls were a combination of cut stone and wooden beams, stone pillars and stucco. Arthur noted three exits. One from the front, a less impressive metal door leading out the back, and a third that seemed to lead into the backrooms where the clergy stayed.

  All in all, the place was quiet, unassuming, and frankly quite boring. In fact, it even managed to ease some of Arthur’s underlying anxiety about the whole thing. Having to meet a strange, foreign person who might be a mobster in a place as calm and straightforward as this was the first sign that this job wasn’t as bad as Arthur thought it would be. As he was looking around, Arthur suddenly heard the door open behind him. There was a young man and a young woman, both looked to be in their twenties, who did not represent what Arthur figured would be the Catholic youth. They had dark clothing on, ripped jeans, combat boots, piercings, and wild hair. They looked as surprised to see Arthur as he was to see them, but they moved past him and went to greet the priest at the front. Soon after, more people began to filter in the church, although Arthur could’ve sworn that there was no more mass tonight, and didn’t remember seeing anything obvious on the website; hence why’d he’d decided to come at this time. He wasn’t really sure what he was trying to find here either, but as he was getting ready to leave the next group of people that entered stopped him. This time it was a group of four women, all wearing sleek dresses like they were ready to go out to a club. Again, as they entered, they all gave him a strange look as they moved to the front of the church to join the conversation with the others.

  Arthur wasn’t sure if he’d forgotten to wear deodorant. As he watched the second group entering, Arthur saw some of what he assumed were nuns bringing out…drinks. There were little glasses of wine being handed out on trays and being set out on tables. The combination of youth night mixer with alcohol alongside Christ on a cross and the incense candles was a strange combination indeed. Only by the time a third, completely different group of people wearing sweaters, slacks, and jackets come in, did the priest notice Arthur, making his way over to him.

  Very gently, a hand squeezed his elbow, and as Arthur turned the priest smiling at him.

  “Greetings newcomer. Welcome to La Iglesia de Santo Cecilia. My name is Padre Arlo.”

  The priest let go of Arthur as he turned towards him, and Arthur nodded. “Hey. I’m Arthur. I’m, uh, a detective,” Arthur said. For some reason he had felt an inclination to be honest with the man of the cloth, but internally grimaced knowing that introducing yourself as a detective when not needed came off as suspicious. Fortunately, the priest didn’t seem to mind.

  “Ah, I didn’t realize the church was under investigation,” he said with a smile.

  Some of the eyes of the other guests had now left Arthur, but a few still observed him stealthily, as more began to filter in. This strange amalgamation of people was one of the weirdest things Arthur had seen, and wondered if the Catholic faith was really the connecting line that made all these people alike. It didn’t seem like it.

  “No, I’m not here on official business. I was…recommended, this place and wanted to come by.”

  “You’re not Catholic, though, are you?”

  Arthur furrowed his eyebrows, “Uh, what?”

  The priest hadn’t dropped his smile yet. It was warming, yet practiced. “I’ve gotten good at being able to identify those who share our faith.”

  Arthur was surprised not only by the directness of the man, but by his apparently skilled perception. But it also was off-putting that, despite his friendly demeanor, the priest was probing. Arthur was silent for a few moments, letting his thoughts straighten themselves out and his shoulders relax, and remembered how to smile. He fell back into his own familiar demeanor of being cordial, and keeping information close to the chest while trying to pry it out of others. Why, he wasn’t quite sure. It just felt right.

  “Mm. No, I’m not. Good catch. Just happened to have some time after work, thought I might drop by. Tell me about this get together, is it ok if I’m here? This isn’t private, is it?”

  The priest never broke eye contact, and never dropped his smile. Arthur could see the cogs turning in his head, determining how to answer the question. He was being overly cautious, Arthur realized. He was choosing his answers carefully. Trying to not reveal too much. But about what?

  Arlo spoke, “It is perfectly fine if you are here, for a bit. But, you probably won’t like this company.”

  “Oh I have friends that are Catholic, we get along well.”

  From years of detective work, Arthur was able to read something in Arlo’s expression. His smile never changed, but there was the slightest hint of something there. It looked like pity. Arrogance, maybe, at Arthur’s ignorance. Arthur has guessed wrong.

  Arthur pushed harder. “No, no it’s all right, I’m easy to get along with. I didn’t realize it was Catholic’s only.”

  The priests eyebrow twitched ever so slightly. “No, it’s…not that. This is just a get together of friends in the diocese. Not all of us are Catholic.”

  “Oh! That’s fine too, I don’t judge people’s faiths.”

  An expression crossed Arlo’s face that Arthur read as annoyance. He felt bad poking the priest like this, but something was going on here and Arthur needed to know what. Unfortunately, he’d poked too hard.

  “Your faith is of no concern, but this party is quite private. I hate to be rude but I will have to ask you to leave. But, I more than welcome you to come to one of our masses during the scheduled times.”

  “Oh of course, I didn’t mean to intrude,” Arthur apologized with a big smile. “Before I leave, could I ask you something? On Friday, how late does the Church stay open?”

  Arlo’s smile faltered just slightly. “To twelve, like most days.”

  “Interesting,” was all Arthur said. Arlo’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t ask why that was interesting. Because he already knows why. Arthur figured the only way he was going to get anything out of the man was by being direct. “I’m supposed to be meeting somewhere here at twelve, on Friday.”

  “Is that so?” Arlo asked. It sounded like there was genuine surprise in his voice. “I’m not sure you have the right location, we’ll be closed by then.”

  “...oh,” Arthur said, awkwardly. “Are you sure?”

  Arlo laughed, “I’m quite sure I know our hours very well. Who are you supposed to be meeting?”

  At this point, Arthur wasn’t actually sure he wanted to reveal the name. Discretion and subtlety were key, according to his instructions. Involving anyone who didn’t need to be involved only seemed like a good way for Arthur to become a target. Whatever that meant. However, it did seem strange that this priest apparently had no knowledge of what was going on. Or at least, seemed that way. Arthur glanced past him towards the strange, mismatched group of around twenty people now having their little cocktail party. In a church.

  He glanced back at Arlo, who was smiling again. His gut told him not to trust the priest. So against his own desire to learn anything about this job, he just shook his head.

  “No, I think you’re right. I must have the wrong address. Sorry for bothering you.”

  “It is not problem at all,” Arlo said. “The invitation for mass is still open. Please visit again! And drive safe.”

  Arthur nodded, leaving the church. As he got back in his car, turned the key and got ready to drive back home, a raven sat on a light pole near the church, and cried out. But Arthur didn’t notice.