Quote:
At some point, you notice a present nestled somewhere in your house that you've never seen before. Maybe it's somewhere obvious, maybe it's sitting on a window sill or hidden in the back of your closet. It's decorated very festively, with a cursive script letting you know that the present's owner is none other than yourself but there's no sender listed on the tag. Who in the world could have put it there?

Opening the present reveals an item that you've sorely wanted for some time now but haven't been able to afford or haven't allowed yourself the pleasure of buying. The trouble is that you've never told a soul about wanting it.

Who could have known? And how did it get there?


He’d no idea where it came from. Much less how it could have gotten where it was. He’d move into the studio flat alone, and he rarely, (as in, never did have) hosted any gatherings, (as that would require guests which he also never had). So the sudden arrival of a box, wrapped, had Tobias reeling for several reasons and not a single one of them had to do with Christmas cheer or joy or really any positive emotion. It looked nice. Someone had obviously put some form of effort into the wrapping. Not to mention that it had his name on it. Not creepy at all. In the slightest. Totally not something out of a twisted serial killer’s handbook. Nope. Never. Couldn’t possibly be.

Okay sure, he wasn’t sure why he of all people would be targeted by a serial killer other than he was fairly alone and had like, zero friends and only work associates and really would go unnoticed as missing for several days and so it was easy to kill him and hide the evidence and get away with it buying time to get out of town and all that but really now.
Who would target him?

Okay maybe he did like, steal a drink at the ******** counter like once but to be fair no one had grabbed it for the better part of all of five minutes at therefor it was fair game and it was busy no one was going to notice it missing. And hey, it was only a hot chocolate! Not a big deal. But then- people did get super ******** intense about their ******** orders. He’d seen people go ape s**t over that kind of thing. But okay serial killers and their temptation to ‘whack’ him aside, and his also drastic lack of human companionship also buried in a dark box and buried under six feet of bullshit, Tobias had no idea where this ******** gift came from. For all he knew, it was a bad prank. But even then- inside his flat? A gift? How corny could you get? How insane did you have to be to go this far for a gift- hell even for a prank? He was not laughing. Twitching as he stared at it from across the room, he sucked in a breath. There were a few options he considered. He could just… not open it. Turn it into the police, call them citing a break in. Lord knows that would go over well. And with his folks practically stalking him from overseas, he could see them going so far to google police reports.
They did it often enough to remind him of the city’s less than friendly status.

Lips twitching, Tobias chose to ******** it. Powering up, he went over unwrapping the object like he intended to save the wrapping paper, (he did not). What he found, much to his chagrin was a box of cookie. Not just any cookies- the ones that were baked at the café down the road from where he’d gone to school as a kid.

He didn’t think of it too hard, enjoying the taste of shortbread for a time.