WB Monkeys

I received a package in the mail with a note: 'Don't open this until 4:00 PM.' At 3:59 PM, the police broke down my door, demanding I hand it over.

The package sat on my kitchen table like a coiled viper. It was a nondescript, cardboard box, roughly the size of a shoebox, wrapped in excessive amounts of brown packing tape. There was no return address. The only thing on the label was my name and a neatly typed note taped to the top: “Do not open until 4:00 PM.”
I had found it on my porch at 8:00 AM. It was now 3:45 PM.
For eight hours, I had stared at it. I hadn't gone to work. I hadn't answered my phone. I had simply paced the length of my apartment, my coffee growing cold in the mug, my mind churning with every worst-case scenario. Was it a bomb? A joke? A confession? My life was perfectly ordinary—I was a junior actuary for a mid-sized insurance firm—which made the package feel like a glitch in my reality.
At 3:55 PM, the silence of the apartment became unbearable. I walked to the kitchen, my breath hitching in my chest. I picked up a steak knife, my hands trembling. I didn't want to open it, but the mystery was a physical weight, a magnetic pull I couldn't resist.
3:58 PM.
I hovered the knife over the tape. My heart sounded like a drum in my ears. I thought about calling the police, but some primal instinct told me to wait. If there was a specific time, it was a test of patience. The air in the apartment felt thin, static-charged. I leaned in, the blade touching the cardboard—….Continued in Comments