The Trophy

Joshua trudged up the garden path to his house and cursed his luck. In his rush to leave this morning he’d missed the morning weather report and left his umbrella at home. By the time he’d got off the bus, he’d realised his mistake as storm clouds started to mass on the horizon, and his work colleague laughed at him when they realised he only had his suit for protection.

After a long and hard day in the office, he’d rushed to the bus stop, arriving just in time to see it vanishing in the distance as the rain started. The drops didn’t come one at a time though, that would have been too easy. What the storm decided to do was let all the rain go at the same time and drop everything in a single wall of water onto his head.

After twenty minutes of waiting for a bus that should come every five minutes, Joshua had decided to walk the ten minutes home, so now, he was soaked to the skin and his fingers looked wrinkly, like an old mans as they pushed open the gate to his garden, and he squelched up the garden path to his front door.

The parcel stood proudly on his mat, somehow having avoided the rain, and water dripped onto the brown paper wrapping from his nose as he bent down to pick it up and he angrily wiped them away.

Slipping his key into the lock he trudged inside, dropping the parcel onto the kitchen table before he sloshed upstairs to change into something dryer, and warmer. His toes looked pruned as he peeled his socks off, kicking them into the corner near his laundry basket. His head ached from the cold so much that he’d forgotten about the parcel completely until he returned to the kitchen an hour later to make his tea and he felt rather stupid for forgetting.

A quick investigation revealed no indication of what might be inside and it had been over a month now since he’d purchased anything from Ebay, and it certainly wasn’t his birthday. He grabbed a knife from the draw and carefully sliced the parcel tape before opened the lid. The parcel contained a large amount of packing material, and it took him a moment to actual find the item inside. It was a large trophy with the word `Suspense` written on it.

“What are you for?” He asked himself, a habit that due to living alone he had quickly cultivated. “Why have you been sent to me I wonder?” For twenty minutes Joshua sat looking at it, turning it over and over in his hands as he tried to fathom the reason behind such a strange gift.

With no further clue to be found from the item itself, he directed his attention back to the box. A further rummage revealed nothing else, so he carefully removed the packing material in the hope of it giving him a clue as to who the sender was, or the reason, said item had been dispatched to him in the first place.

Right down at the bottom of the box was a small card and as he pulled it free he tutted to himself as he realised he must have opened the box upside down, the note simply read, `To Joshua, my Son.`

Joshua scratched his head. It was certainly an odd gift for his father to send, and he sat there for some time pondering over the reason, after twenty minutes he reaslised there was obviously a simple way to find out why, he’d just call his Father and ask.

So, with that thought in mind he picked up the phone and pressed the numbers to call his father, smiling to himself as the phone beeped a pleasant tune as he dialled, before he waited for it to be answered. After twenty rings the answer machine picked up.

“Hi, I’m not in right now. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you.”