The Novella Life of Illuscia Nester Himawari

    Hi there, Postman Cole again. It has been a month since my last entry, and I’m beginning to feel that I’m in some sort of dream. Not a dream of my own of course, but maybe that of a kid’s. An American kid daydreaming in the 80’s in the backseat of a corolla, with his fingers leaving greasy marks upon the partially rolled down windows as he watches farms fly by his periphery. ‘Yeah, two postmen, Postman Cole and Postman Tom.’ The kid thinks, as he takes a lick of his ice cream, splashing a bit of vanilla on the cracked fake-leather interior. ‘A supernatural-fighting duo. Oh! I just saw a sheep. Yeah, they fight a sheep. A sheep that is a man-monster, and he bites off Tom’s arm! Oh, that’s so gnarly dude!’ Is that what they said in the 80’s? Gnarly? Life sure would be easier if I was just a figment swirling around with the rest of the figments in an 80’s kid’s mind-bubble, alongside daydreams of pinball machines, mullet h

    Hi there, Postman Cole again. I am responsible for delivering mail to the lower half of our strange bayside town of Lyttle. Mind you, there’s quite a lot of mail for a place where the only way in and out of the town has collapsed (the highway tunnel). This happened a few years ago, trapping all residents inside the bay. Did I mention that there probably are a few beasts living around here which have elected to communicate by archaic scribbles? So yeah, I’m quite busy as a postman. But apparently, according to Mrs. Landry, I am also the police. The old lady came barging into my post office at around quarter-past eight carrying her arms in a cradle. “What’s the matter, Mrs. Landry?” “Oh, it’s about my cat. I want to find out what’s wrong with her.” Her wiry eyebrows danced as she spoke. She was one of those eyebrow dancers. The pile of letters that I pushed to the side looked like a sad, flattened snowman. “Where is she?” “She’s

    I live in a small town on an island off the coast of New Zealand, and I don’t think anybody except our own townspeople know we exist. Yes, New Zealand - the place our brother-country Australia says is full of sheepfuckers, the place America thinks is Australia, and the place the world thinks is next to Atlantis and opposite Narnia. All of that is nonsense, of course, save for the fact we do actually have sheep fuckers. Not sheep fuckers as in sheep shaggers, I’m talking sheep fuckers as in sheep-looking fuckers. Okay, I’ll cut the expletives out from now on, because what I am about to divulge is a serious life-or-death situation involving Maurice, the curly man-sheep that ate my friend’s arm. More importantly, I will cut the language because the Aussies started the swearing business first, for the record, and we’re better than that. I currently reside in a harbor town in the South Island home to fewer than a thousand people, and I have spent mos

    Chapter 1: Where the Mantis Flies A while past the woods at the edge of town is a demon made of marble and stone. She has no tongue; she has no face. That was because the demon of the little town of Wilkins was a museum, and in the Summer of 1987, she was calling to me. During my stay as a teacher at River Valley Elementary, a time that the place beyond the woods was yet to be named, I was oblivious to the shadow she cast over our small town. And back then, the museum was only spoken of quietly, if at all, cast only into the wind by wet lips carrying playground rumors, never to be heard of again until months later when the mantises would take flight around town, or when somebody went missing. I didn’t believe in the living, breathing flavor of demons, at least I didn’t back then. I believed in the demons inside of my father’s whiskey bottle, the demons that poured out and burned at his throat, those that swelled into his fist and bloo

    My wife’s smile was the feeling of running through a cold sprinkler on a hot day in the suburbs. It was the first sip from a lemonade stand; it was dipping your feet at the beach under glistening, warm waves. Her name was Summer, I loved her, and this was all before the typewriter. I had bought the machine at the local thrift store the week prior. Nothing was amiss, I asked the cashier a few questions, paid and made a small donation. Before long, someone’s trash was my treasure. The scrawny kid behind the counter looked at me puzzled from under his greasy mop. “What do you need this thing for anyway, sir?” He blew a cloud of dust from the keys before sliding it into a cardboard box for me. “Oh, it’s for my wife.” I handed him some notes. “She’s a busy mom at home, getting a bit stir-crazy, you know how it is.” “We have some nice laptops if you want to check around the corner over there.” “No, that’s quite alright. It’s her