Hello again readers and welcome to my latest story! A Box of Tricks was meant to be a shorter submission than usual, but I enjoyed the characters so much that it quickly sprawled out into a full length ENF/CFNF tale. If you'd like to hear more about my upcoming projects then I've started a twitter account under the name @JerichoLit, which you can find through the webpage link in my bio. Let me know if you enjoyed this new supernatural theme in the comments, and please feel free to send in any other pieces of feedback or plot ideas you may have too. Enjoy!
*****
539 BC, Ashkelon, Israel.
In the early hours of the morning a young man hurried down to the coastline, panting breathlessly as he clutched a bundle of cloth to his bare chest and tried not to stumble on the hot, loose sand. With the sun beaming down onto the beach he reached the water's edge, furtively glanced behind him to ensure that he was still alone, and then began to carefully pull apart the ball of rags, wiping away beads of sweat from his brow as he tried to keep his hands from shaking.
The makeshift wrapping fell away to reveal a peculiar, small metal box, and the man held his breath as he gingerly extracted the unusual object and held it up to the light, allowing himself one final moment to marvel at its unique design.
"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world they didn't exist..."
The man whispered to himself in a trembling voice as he let the box fall back down to sit in his open palm, then he turned so that he stood side-on to the shore and launched it as far as he could, away into the Mediterranean Sea.
The box glinted under the sunlight as it arced across the sky, hanging in mid-air for a moment as if it was reluctant to fall, but then it splashed down into the water where in an instant it was gone, lost under the turquoise swell of the ocean. The man let out a strained gasp of relief, squeezed his eyes tightly shut as he recited a prayer, and then turned to trek back across the sand, satisfied that he'd done all he could.
Deep beneath the waves, just now sinking down to settle on the pitch-black seabed, something sighed quietly, made itself comfortable, and settled in for a long, long wait.
*****
Present Day, London, England.
Zoe Coulson, a twenty-year-old politics student who was home from university visiting her family for the weekend, finished off her shower and padded back across the landing to her room, wearing one towel loosely wrapped around her hair with another held against her chest. As her wet legs shed droplets of water onto the carpet she shut her door behind her, fished some clothes out from the wardrobe and threw them onto her bed, then turned to her bedside cabinet and picked up a bottle of lotion.
Zoe had been doing a lot of tanning in the backyard recently, and was really starting to see the results of her hours spent lazing around in the sun, so with that in mind she'd recently ramped up her moisturising regime to take care of her newly bronzed skin. After squirting some cream onto her hand Zoe began to moisturise her arms, then her shoulders, and as she moved onto her upper chest she casually let both towels unravel and fall away to the floor.
Now standing naked in front of her full-length mirror she continued to rub the scented lotion into her upper body, finishing off her torso and back before moving on to her thighs. She turned to the side to check out her butt as she massaged her glutes, which were particularly tight after a leg session that morning at the gym, and as she proudly admired her toned reflection there came a knock at the door.
"Zoe? Do you still need that light changed love? I've think I've found the right bulb."
Zoe's bedside lamp had unexpectedly switched itself off last night, and so earlier at breakfast her dad had offered to come up and swap out the blown bulb for a new one. Right now though Zoe's hands were still covered in moisturiser, so she quickly began to wipe the last streaks of cream onto her lower stomach and called out for her father to wait and give her a moment to get ready.
"Yeah Dad, just a min!" she shouted.
Unfortunately for Zoe her father slightly misheard her, and instead thought that she'd yelled 'yeah Dad, just come in'. Admittedly it was an easy mistake to make, but that didn't make it any less embarrassing when Zoe's door was unexpectedly pushed open and she received the shock of her life as her father walked straight in.
To be fair he was equally surprised to be greeted by the startling sight of his totally naked daughter as she stood there facing him head-on, with her completely exposed and freshly lubricated body glistening all over and her oiled-up hands suggestively hovering just above her groin.
Rather understandably Zoe screamed. "Fuck! Dad, get out!"
The mortified student instinctively drew both arms up and clamped them across her chest, then drew one thigh over to tightly squeeze against the other and collapsed down into a ball, as she desperately tried to hide everything that her father had unfortunately already seen. He in turn immediately realised his terrible mistake and brought a hand up to cover his eyes, then began to blindly back out of the room as he apologised profusely.
"Oh sorry, sorry! I thought you said to come in!" he winced.
"No Dad, I said to give me a minute! God!" Zoe scooped up one of the discarded towels, holding it against her chest as she stomped forwards and slammed the door in her father's face, then she threw her head back in exasperation and swore. "Shit..."
"Sorry again love!" her father called out from the corridor, but apologise as he might the damage had already been done.
Zoe spent the rest of the day moping around the house as she tried her best to forget about the painfully cringeworthy accident. It was no good though, as every time she bumped into her dad he would give her the same apologetic little smile, and just like that Zoe would be reminded about what he'd seen when he walked into her room unannounced.
She began to wish that she could mess with her father's brain, that she could delete the memory of her naked body from his mind, so that then they could both go back to acting like the unfortunate incident had never happened.
However, as Zoe would soon discover, you should always be careful what you wish for.
*****
"Achoo!"
The following afternoon Zoe's head flew back as she erupted into a loud sneeze. With a snivel she rubbed her eyes and tried to blink away some of the dust that was swirling around her head, but it didn't work and she immediately sneezed again.
Zoe had spent the day after she'd accidentally flashed her dad precariously wedged halfway up a ladder, blindly feeling around the recesses of a musty old loft and tugging out boxes of ancient clothes and long forgotten trinkets as she helped her parents to clean out her recently deceased grandmother's house.
"You alright love? Do you need a break?"
Zoe coughed as she cleared her throat to answer her mother's concerned call from down below. "No don't worry mum, I'm fine," she replied, "there's only a couple more left to go."
As Zoe reached back into the farthest corner of the attic, straining as she tried to pull forwards the penultimate box, she accidentally ripped off part of the faded cardboard and looked down in surprise as it came away in her hand. Through the tear she'd inadvertently created something small and shiny come loose, falling out and then clinking loudly as it first hit the exposed wooden floorboards, then rolled over a couple of times, and finally came to a stop.
Zoe leant over into the shadows to pick up whatever it was she'd dropped, and as she brought her hand back into the light she found herself staring down at a peculiar metal cube. It was a perfect five-by-five inch box, made out of solid copper or maybe bronze, she wasn't sure, and it felt heavy and strangely warm to the touch, as if there was something heating it up from within.
There were no markings or decorations on any of the smooth surfaces to give her a clue as to what the box's purpose was, but as Zoe rotated it around in her palm she found that embedded in one of the six sides there was a beautiful green Emerald, an Emerald which glinted and sparkled as she tilted it left and right.
When Zoe lightly traced along the surface of the precious Jewel it too felt as if there was some energy source beaming through it from below, which would account for its unnaturally brilliant and intense shine, and when the intrigued student held the cube up to her ear she was convinced that she could hear a very deep, albeit almost imperceptible, hum.
She wasn't sure what the mysterious box was, or how on earth her grandma had ended up with such a fascinating object tucked away in her attic, but out of sheer curiosity she decided to hold on to the cube and have a proper look at it when she was back home.
*****
It was early evening by the time Zoe and her parents had driven all the carboard boxes over to their house and dumped them all in the garage, and after all of that hard work she'd actually completely forgotten about the strange cube which was tucked away in her back pocket. That soon changed when she returned to her room and flopped down onto the bed, then immediately bounced up again as she felt a pointy metal edge dig painfully into her butt.
"Ow!" Zoe rolled over, pulled out the box, and then sat leaning against the wall as she used the tips of her fingers to slowly turn it around, enjoying the feeling of the warm metal as it gently vibrated against her skin. Once again her attention was drawn to the gorgeous Emerald, and she found herself wondering how much such a perfect rare stone would cost.
As she gently ran her thumb over the Jewel's crystal-clear surface she felt it budge slightly, almost as if it was slightly loose. Intrigued Zoe pressed down harder, and to her great surprise the Emerald slid effortlessly into the cube with a satisfying metallic click. Instantly a brilliant burst of white light shot out from the box, temporarily blinding the astonished student, and a wave of hot, turbulent air sent Zoe's hair flying wildly across her face.
"Shit!" For a moment Zoe genuinely thought she'd set off some kind of small bomb, so she instinctively chucked the box away from her across the room.
It ricocheted off the door with a bang, leaving a not-unnoticeable dent, and then came to rest in the middle of the carpet. Still perched up on her bed Zoe rubbed her eyes, got her vision back as the imprint of the dazzling whiteness began to fade, and then let her jaw fell open in complete disbelief.
"What the hell..?" she gasped.
Hovering there in front of her, floating a metre or so above the box, was a projection of what appeared to be a beautiful woman. They were suspended in mid-air, sitting there with their legs folded and their head bowed low as if they were asleep. The incomprehensible figure was constructed out of rays of golden light, meaning that their body was very slightly see-through, and their otherworldly form shone so warmly that it cast a rich orange glow onto the bedroom walls.
It was all so unbelievable that Zoe had to briefly consider the possibility that yes, she had actually detonated some kind of bomb and died, which would mean that this was heaven and the stunning woman hovering in front of her was actually an angel. The golden figure opened their eyes for the first time and calmly looked around, and after they'd taken in their surroundings their gaze finally settled on Zoe.
