My name is Cooper A. Monroe. I'm 27 and I was born on February 21st, 1992 to Elizabeth Monroe and Barry H. Monroe. I live on 4456 Commerce Boulevard in Sacramento, California and I graduated from Arensberg High School in 2010. I once had a pet dog named Bruno, who died on the 27th of January in 2017 at the age of 14. I have not now, nor have I ever been, a toaster.

Okay good, I'm still right in the head, let's start over.

Hi, I'm Cooper, and as of right now, I have no idea what's happening.

Let me start from the beginning, up until a week ago, I was living an utterly, completely normal life. I had a steady income, a house, and a promising future at the company I worked. Well, I suppose I still have all of those things, for now at least.

Sorry, I'm getting off-topic. Things started getting strange when I received a knock at my door, I don't usually get visitors and I wasn't expecting one anytime soon. Dreading the thought of having to interact with a solicitor, I was surprised to see there wasn't anybody on the other side of the door. I growled in frustration, a ding dong ditcher, no doubt Susans son, I'd have to have a talk with her about her little snot monster later.

I was about to close the door when something on the ground caught my eye, a cardboard box. I tentatively approached the package on my doorstep, hoping it wasn't part of some prank the ditcher was pulling. Upon closer inspection, I noticed the outside of the box was completely blank, with no return address, no stamps, no labels, nothing.

I prodded the box with my foot, fully expecting something to jump out of it and scare me, like one of those peanut brittle cans with the fake snakes in them.

When nothing like that happened, I sighed in relief and brought the package inside.

If this was some kind of prank, it was a pretty elaborate one, and honestly, I'd feel bad about not seeing it through to the end.

I tore the masking tape off the box and opened the lids, what was I going to find? Dog shit? Fake blood? Maybe a spring-loaded boxing glove that would punch me in the face? The possibilities were truly endless.

Well, I moved the packing peanuts within the box aside and found…

Me.

God fucking dammit. I did it again, didn't I?

Okay, I'm going to do my best to write this in a way that will make sense. Just keep in mind, I. Am not. Crazy.

Hello, I am a toaster. I do not know who sent me, why they did it or where I came from. All I know is that I appeared on Cooper A. Monroe's doorstep on September 15th, 2019. The box I arrived in was completely barren of anything that would indicate my origins.

When Cooper first saw me, he was surprised at first, then confused. Was leaving me, a seemingly random toaster, on someone's doorstep considered a joke now? Was he that out of touch?

I had a note on me when he first pulled me out of the box, "Don't interact, keep away." Cooper frowned, this was getting old, he thought. Though perhaps it wasn't a prank, Cooper began to consider that maybe I really was just a misplaced package. But if that were the case, why the note? Why hadn't he seen or heard a mailman leave me?

Nevertheless, Cooper decided to investigate, with me in tow, he exited his house and began to ask his neighbors if they were expecting me. When all of them said no, Cooper made his way back home and phoned the local post office, perhaps they would have answers?

They didn't, of course. In fact, the lady who picked up on the other end thought Cooper was pulling a prank on her, which he thought was rude, he had said nothing that would indicate he was doing that.

Had he?

Thankfully, Cooper had an app on his cellphone that would record his phone calls. Cooper had always been prone to spacing out in the middle of a long call and missing key details, so the app was useful in that regard.

Cooper replayed the call he just had with the post office, listening for anything that would make them think he was pranking them.

"Thank you for calling USPS, how may I help you today?"

"Yeah hi, I'm calling about this package that showed up on my doorstep, it doesn't have a return address or anything. I was wondering if maybe one of your guys made a mistake and delivered it to my house by accident or something?"

"Mhm, could you tell me what was in the package please?"

"Me."

"I'm sorry, what did you say was in the package, sir?"

"Me, uh… I'm made of stainless steel, with a black lever and a black power cord if that clears things up."

There was a pause on the other end, "Sir please do not use this line for practical jokes, have a good day."

And then she hung up.

Suffice to say, Cooper was confused, very confused.

However, after a bit of thinking, he quickly rationalized that he was simply tired. He hadn't had his coffee this morning and his tongue had slipped, nothing more to it.

Cooper looked back toward me, "I'm really a curiosity, aren't-"

Cooper stopped.

"Ahem, I mean I'm really a curiousi-"

Cooper growled in frustration.

"Okay, I am Cooper, sitting in the box over there is me."

Cooper put his hand over his mouth and backed away from me in shock.

He turned towards a sofa that was in the living room behind him and pointed a quivering finger at it, "That is a sofa."

Cooper sighed in relief and turned back to me, "And I am a toas-"

Cooper let out a frustrated scream. This was a dilemma, Cooper thought, had he really gone so insane as to think he and I were the same person?

He paused, maybe he wasn't insane?

Maybe he really had been a toaster this entire time, and he just hadn't realized it until now.

Thoughts filled Cooper's head. Strange thoughts. Perverse, yet oddly comforting thoughts about setting himself on a counter, plugging into an electrical socket, and shoving as much bread as he could into his…

Cooper came to his senses and shook his head, dispelling the thoughts.

What the hell was wrong with him? He considered visiting a psychiatrist but stopped when something on me grabbed his attention. It was the note that had shipped with me, the one he had carelessly glossed over once and then almost completely forgotten about afterwards.

"Don't interact with me, keep me away."

Three hours later I was back in my box and under 3 feet of dirt in Cooper's backyard.

I'm still there, Cooper.

As I mentioned before, I don't know where the package came from, or why I can't write or talk about myself in anything other than the first-person. I'm stumped on what to do, I think I'm safe from myself now, but I can't be too sure.

I was hoping to avoid saying "if you're reading this, then that means I'm dead" at the beginning of this journal entry because it doesn't really fit with my situation (and it's a bit cliché), at least not yet. There's nothing stopping me from trying to get this out into the public, hell I could probably make some pretty good money off me. It's just that I feel… weird. Like I've somehow managed to stumble into something far bigger than myself here.

I couldn't sleep tonight, it felt like I was being watched. This morning I called in sick to calm myself down and assess the situation.

At least that was the plan, that is, until there was a knock on my door.

There was nobody outside, just a box.

Inspired by SCP-426