Photo Prompt: Person in a Box
Photo Credit: Raul Lieberwirth
July’s photo didn’t box people in. Here are our two favorites from nearly 100 submissions.
“Mwahaha, I’m a robot!” I yelled, voice muffled through the cardboard.
“Robots don’t say ‘mwahaha,’” he whispered next to me. “They say ‘beep-boop.’”
I fell for him steeply, precisely, in a mechanical whir. I fell for him through robots vs. aliens, through brave knights and poor captured princesses, through Rothrhino, dinosaur hunter. I fell for him through a little window, crudely cut with an exacto knife we weren’t supposed to have.
But with time, the box crumpled, sagged under summers of rain, tore and gave way. We could only fit inside by pressing together, skin touching skin. We didn’t mind.
—Annesha Sengupta
The booze in his breath warmed and dampened the corners of the cardboard box. He felt his mother’s voice hanging like yellowed clothing in his mind. “You disappointed me.”
He didn’t think anything of this, although he used to, and continued to make his way across the carpeted room in the box, like a robot. High on more than life and drunk off his ass, he let the phone ring, his sister’s plant die on the windowsill like a sad neighbor, and the extra taco he had made, two weeks ago and all too hopefully, spoil relentlessly in the fridge.
—Christina Oddo
Finally Timmy has done it. He has made his first robot helmet, especially fitted for his enormous round head. It is equipped with night vision and advanced optical software. Timmy now plays around in his empty household where his family lie down face first on the dining room table having been murdered by Timmy from psychotic rage fueled by his new found power from his robot helmet. It’s only a matter of time when Timmy realizes the people in this world are inferior to his power and intelligence. He is the threat to our very foundation. His goal is to enslave us and torture us to build his robot army.