For years, Lily’s parrot, Jasper, had been her cheerful companion. Bright green feathers, a sharp beak, and a habit of repeating whatever he heard — from silly phrases to phone ringtones. He made her laugh, kept her company in the quiet evenings, and filled the house with chatter.
One evening, as she prepared dinner, Jasper suddenly squawked something new.
“Don’t open the box.”
Lily froze, the knife clattering onto the cutting board. She turned to the cage. Jasper blinked innocently, ruffling his feathers.
“Don’t open the box,” he repeated, this time more clearly.
Her heart raced. She had never said those words, nor had anyone else in the house. She lived alone.
Trying to brush it off, she muttered, “Just nonsense. He probably picked it up from the TV.”
But Jasper kept repeating it over the next few days. Always in the same voice. Not her own. Not anyone she recognized. And always when she was alone in the house.
Finally, curiosity gnawed at her. In the attic sat an old trunk that had belonged to her late grandmother — a trunk her family had always told her not to touch. It was locked, heavy, and tucked behind boxes of dusty books. She had never questioned why.
That night, as rain lashed against the windows, Jasper screeched louder than ever: “Don’t open the box!”
With trembling hands, Lily dragged the trunk into the center of the room. The lock was rusted, easy to snap with a hammer. Inside, she found a stack of yellowed letters, photographs, and a diary.
Her eyes scanned the pages — and the truth sank in like ice.
Her grandmother hadn’t been the gentle, loving woman everyone remembered. The diary described terrible things — betrayals, lies, a double life that no one in the family had ever spoken of. One letter even suggested that Lily’s “father” wasn’t who she thought he was.
She sat in silence, her mind spinning, the diary trembling in her hands.
From across the room, Jasper tilted his head and, in the same eerie tone, whispered again: “Don’t open the box.”
Lily’s blood ran cold. Whoever had said those words originally — whoever Jasper had mimicked — must have known the truth long before she did.
And now that the secret was out, she realized, maybe it wasn’t just Jasper repeating the past. Maybe it was a warning.
