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 haircuts and synth music.
But no, of course, here Tom would come, shattering all of my morning aspirations as he strolled into the Post Office with a dead man in a space suit.
So, what happened was: My postage partner and another tall, lanky fellow with wiry salt-and-peppered hair awkwardly carried this body by the wrists and ankles into our establishment at eight AM. Tom could only manage one wrist as he fumbled it onto a nearby desk (probably because he was missing one himself).
“Heaviest body I’ve carried.” The tall man said. “Hard with the, you know, astronaut suit and all that.” He rasped abruptly, like spouting a gag from a sitcom. His voice sounded like it was sifted through coarse stones; he reminded me of Kramer from a comedy show I watched when I was younger.
Yeah, tell me again that I’m not in an 80’s kid’s dream. Nightmare, maybe.
“Tom… Explain?” I muttered.
“Sorry Cole,” He wiped his brow. “I know you like your mornings.”
And so, we all crowded around the table and stared down at the dead guy in the suit. It wasn’t quite space gear, but it looked like it covered his body in a complete seal. Almost. Great jagged scrapes were carved out of his lower side, leaving red blotches upon the matted iridescent fabric that was lathered over his skin.
“Name’s Miles.” The tall guy said, and we shook hands.
“I’m Cole.” I said. “What the hell happened?”
“Ah, a wolf probably got him.” Miles was nodding erratically; he was sniffing the air like a cokehead. “Found him on the mountain. Yep, yep, a wolf or a big bear, maybe a-“
“No, I meant who is he and why is he on the table, bleeding out in our post office? Tom?”
Tom threw one palm and one stump to face up at the ceiling. “I mean, I couldn’t just take him to the hospital, man. They’d make me pay for the arm treatment.”
“Oh, God,” I pushed my hair back. “Are we criminals now?”
Miles interjected. “What, think the police is gonna’ come knocking? Mister slimeballs-for-eyes and detective goo-face?” He sniffed.
My eyes bulged open even wider. “Tom?! You told him about the police station?”
The lanky guy’s long fingers dug around the neck of the spacesuit’s helmet. “Hope his head doesn’t pop off with this thing.” He tugged.
I swung my arms wide in a cross shape. “Okay, time out.”
Miles let go of the body and slinked back. He pulled out a long purple taffy and began chewing into it, disregarding the blood encrusted fingernails of his that were close to his lips.
“Suit yourself man. Suit yourself.” He nodded an uncomfortable number of nods. “Got a bathroom round’ here?”
“Doors jammed at the moment. Could try the building next door.” I lied to him, grasping the cold metal toilet key in my coat pocket.
The lanky man sniffled and made his way out the front door.
“Alright Tom, explain, quickly.”
He opened the canvas of his open hand and began drawing with one finger as he mapped out his morning.
“We started here, the top of my route.” His pointing-finger touched the base of his pinky. “And here I see this guy, Miles, screaming bloody murder.” He tapped his thumb before drawing to the tip. “So, I climb up the hill with him, and there’s this dead guy.” Tom looked down to table. “We get to talking, and he kinda’ looks like one of the spacesuit-wearing gents – the ones from those rumors spreading around town. They apparently patrol the hills with lights when the sun’s gone, not letting anyone out of Lyttle.”
“Why did you bring him here?”
“Miles told me he wanted to sell the suit off to Macey’s Pawn Shop. But I objected. He’s worth more to us, Cole. I think this body might be the first clue into getting out of this damn town.”
I was shaking my head. “There’s no way this lunatic gives up this goldmine and helps you carry him all the way down to the bay. What’d you pay him, Tom?”
He screwed up his face in a painful grimace, like he just got a hefty bill at a restaurant. “I promised I’d go with him to visit the edge, that’s what he wanted in return.”
“The edge of...?”
Tom was staring at the ground, almost ashamed.
“The edge of…” He said quietly, words trickling out.
A long, winded sigh came out of him. “The flat earth.” He mumbled.
I was almost speechless. “What’d you just say?”
“Okay, he may not be all there, but he’s a good guy, man.”
There was a loud crashing of things toppling over onto linoleum from behind the door.
I started. “Did he jump through the bathroom window?”
Before I could scold Tom, he had already wrapped his fingers around the man’s helmet and pulled it away as a distraction.
It came away easily.
The mask and wires slid from the iridescent turtleneck that once connected the neck of the suit to the helm; the man’s lifeless pale skin looked like freshly laid concrete, frozen still. His golden hair flowed onto the table, onto the envelopes below. And his eyes, oh God his eyes, they were still wide open and cloudy with an unseeing void only exclusive to the dead, the dying, and the blind. Looking up at us and our lightbulbs, he was frozen with a terrified expression on his mug, like we were a couple dentists of death.
“There has gotta’ be something,” Tom muttered, frustrated. He peeled the Velcro from one of the gloves and took it, turning it, inspecting every inch of the fabric. “Some sort of identifier, a code, a phone number.”
After a while, I pried off a boot, too. Perhaps a company would be on the tongue, a NASA label, anything.
I nodded to Tom. “We find anything about this guy, then we find out why he was goose-guarding the hilltop. You know what, it was a good decision bringing him back here, Tom. Sorry I yelled.”
Before long, the bathroom door flung open and hit the brick wall of the hall, and the wiry-haired guy that reeked of tobacco soon emerged triumphantly.
“Woo!” He shouted. “Your toilet is friggin’ amazing, man. Thank God it flushes clockwise.”
Don’t bite. I chanted in my head. Don’t bite.
“Why clockwise?” I finally gave in.
“That’s none of your fucking business.” He snapped.
Tom and I ended up resuming our examination of the suit, while the cokehead stood and watched us, chewing his taffy.
“I’ve seen one of these before. The suits.” Miles was smacking his lips as he spoke. “We had similar outfits in the army.”
Tom and I turned our heads to him.
“Check inside the helmet, below the visor.” He nodded forward.
I wrestled with the headpiece for a while and peered inside the cushioning just below the glass.
In tiny text, barely legible, it was embroidered: PROPERTY OF THE WATCHERS.
Turns out Miles was resourceful after all.
“Just who are you, guy?”
He crumpled up his candy wrapper and tucked it into his pocket. He licked a couple sticky fingers before nonchalantly replying. “Mayor.” He sniffed.
▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁
I’m definitely aware of the moral wrongdoings of burying a body in a dumpster. For the record, the idea was Tom’s, and it was an action born out of necessity.
Doing wrong because you have no choice is one thing. To see Miles dance like a robot in the guy’s spacesuit minutes after we threw him in a pile of trash is a moral war crime.
Did I believe this caricature cokehead was Lyttle’s mayor? No, probably not, it was likely one of his own delusions.
But the question remained: Did we keep him around? He was certainly odd, but he had proved practical. And besides, Tomothy had already blabbered on to Miles about the things we had seen.
Despite the strange morning, we still had to retire our tinfoil hats and don our postmen outfits by the afternoon.
Things were changing in our small town. Old pastimes and traditions were slowly being replaced by new and upgraded editions, stranger variations, almost as if inspired by an LSD trip.
I have noted an example. Frozebee. ‘What the hell is that?’ One may wonder.
There were a few kids playing a game of in the park during my route. It was a pretty simple concept to get and begin playing, but I don’t think their mothers would have approved. Since our taps have been spitting frozen water into our sinks over the last few months, they’ve also been dripping bees. Lovely, right?
Why not let the near-freezing water collect in a deep plate until you have a frozen circle of bees. Pop the plate, let it break. Then throw the ice frisbee back and forth until one of the kids drops a catch or try give it to someone else before it begins to melt in the summer afternoon. Bam, out go the bees, out go the screams. Ha-ha, I got you! Now you’re covered in extremely painful and swelling stings. Yeah, that’s how it goes - Frozebee.
They might have been wasps, actually.
Anyway, hopefully that was a good note to convey my point. A scary game that combines frisbee with hot potato. When things are so new and outlandish, the old is no longer fun, at least in the kid’s eyes. This town was changing, and I’m no longer sure if it was for the better.
Tom, Miles, and I met up for pizza when our mailbags were empty.
I turned to Miles before he placed the order at our table. “Let me guess, Hawaiian pizza?”
He scrunched up his face. “No? I’m not some sort of freak, Mr. Cole.”
We spoke over food for a while until we were done chewing; Tom was leaning back on his chair with a round belly of carbs.
“So, what’s the plan?” He said.
“I asked a few people around my route. No-one has even heard of ‘The Watchers’. You might have to go asking at the top of Lyttle tomorrow morning, Tom.”
Miles was shaking his head. “No, no. I have a plan.”
He leaned in; one eyebrow raised up.
“One of us wears that suit, play patrol for a couple hours then make a run for it down the back of the mountain. If they kill people trying to leave town, like everybody has been saying, would they shoot one of their own?”
Tom’s eyes lit up. “This sounds like it might work. But I’m not sure that it’s getting shot we should we worried about – remember the big, jagged rips on the body? Something got him out there in the hills.”
I paused and thought for a while.
“Say, Miles, I’ve been meaning to ask,” I said.
He looked up at me.
“Are you really the mayor?”
He also thought for a while. Maybe thinking if he should let the joke go on, play it off deadpan, who knows.
“Yup.”
We all snort-laughed, even Miles.
One of the waitresses made her way through the empty restaurant, never unlocking her gaze from mine until she was standing next to my shoulder.
“Excuse me, Cole, is it?” She asked.
Tom winked and nudged me; I shook my head at him. Idiot.
“Yes?”
“Somebody is on the phone for you, says it’s urgent.”
I followed the lady to the back of the kitchen, while the guys at the table looked at me like I was getting dragged to detention.
One of my hands held the curled old-school cord, with the other I held the phone to my ear.
“Hello, Cole speaking.”
“Cole?” A woman’s voice was distant, crackling in the speaker.
“Yes? Who is this?”
“Cole. Please listen to me. We haven’t spoken before, but I need to you to pay attention. Follow what I’m saying. This information is going to save your life.”
I gave a side-eye to the waitress. “Save my life? What are you talking about, I’m in a pizza place at the moment, am I going to choke on something?”
“No, Cole. It’s about Dayle.”
“Dayle?”
“The man you threw in the dumpster.”
I swallowed my stomach.
I could picture it in my mind’s eye then like a hot, glowing iron. Postman: Falsely tried for murder at court or interfering with a corpse. My face plastered on the newspapers, with no-one left to deliver them.
“I’m listening.” I muttered, ushering the lady beside me for some privacy.
“Before sundown, you need to go back to the body and get it as far away from you and anything connected to you. That means the body and the suit. To be safe, I would wheel away the entire bin.”
I scoffed. “I don’t know you, madam, but you know a lot about what went on this morning, so I’ll keep an open mind. But why do we need to do all of this?”
“They’re coming.” She quietly muttered.
“Who?”
“The watchers. They’re going to come looking for him at dark. Get going.”
The phone clicked off, and I hung it up. I stood there for a longer while than I should have, watching Tom and Miles chat through the doorway, oblivious.
The pizza shop worker approached me in a rush when she saw I was done with the call.
“By the way,” The waitress said, curling one of her locks of blonde hair. “It’s an honor you guys are having lunch here. Did he pick this place for lunch himself?”
I tilted my head to see what she was looking at inside the pizza joint.
“Honor? Did who pick this place? Who are you talking about?”
She gave a nod to our table.
“The mayor, silly.”
▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁
So yeah, there I was, stuck with a tough choice to make, all thanks to the mystery lady on the phone.
The further the sun disappeared below the horizon, the faster my heart began to race.
We had reconvened at the post office not long after seven PM in the evening when the sun had just gone away. Tom was still lugging around his pizza-belly, trying to fasten one of the guns we had found at the police station to his side. Miles on the other hand was chewing more of that same purple taffy. The guys were here with high spirits, ready to climb the hill with one of us wearing the suit to finally escape this twisted town.
I didn’t know how to tell them we had to throw the spacesuit away, or if that was even that right choice to make.
But if I knew anything at all, it was that if they were really coming, they would have already started their descent into Lyttle. The watchers.
I wished I could have stopped shaking my leg.
Tom came to my side. “Everything alright Cole?”
“Yep. Just nervous.” I uttered; my mind twisting and turning.
“Me too.” He nodded, before settling for just resting the pistol in his mailbag instead of trying to attach it to his leg like some sort of secret agent.
What was I do to?
Wear the suit, climb the mountain, slip past the people bordering the town. We’d be free, I’d be able to fetch help – someone to unblock the highway tunnel. But what if they were already cascading down towards us, looking for their missing comrade? We’d be dead meat.
Destroy the suit, pedal all evidence far from here. Our hands would be clean. But what if this is the only chance we ever got, and I tossed it all away because a stranger told me not to do it.
Why wouldn’t my leg stop jiggling?
There was a loud skidding from outside the post office that pulled our gaze like a magnet. Tom and I turned to spot Miles, who had dragged a huge dumpster a few meters from its resting place, grating ear-screaming metal against concrete. He was attempting to drag it to the doors out front, revolting goop consisting of fish and rubbish and dead-spaceman spilling out, coating the ground in a multi-colored viscous slime. We would never financially recover from the amount of people that the stench engrained in the ground was going to deter. Why the front door, man? Why the front door?
Last entry, I noted in my journal that there had been talk about a gum from Mr. Jones’s convenience store that made customers see into the future.
I was beginning to put the pieces together. It hadn’t been taffy that Miles had been munching all day after all, it was some grape-flavored chewing gum. Not just any gum, Mr. Jones’s brain bursting bubble gum.
I wouldn’t have been surprised if Miles had foreseen what was going to happen to us if we didn’t get Dayle, his cursed suit and the damn rubbish bin all the hell out of here.
The side effect of seeing into the future? Growing eyes where they shouldn’t be. More than two. But from what I could see, there was none on Mile-
No-Nope, there it was.
Popping out of the back of his head. As big as an apple, staring at me, darting from left to right, peeking from underneath the baseball cap strap that partially held it place like a seatbelt. Absolutely revolting.
I think Tom saw it too. His globes looked like they were going to pop out of his skull. “What the-“
“I’ve seen some shit, my boys.” Miles hawked as he turned around. “Seen some shiiit!”.
I could see by his face that Tom didn’t know what was going on. Miles made the choice for me.
“Tom, we gotta’ roll this bin into the bay.”
“What? Why?” He muttered.
“Bad people are coming looking for this dead guy, and we’ll be next. Now help push!”
Tom tossed the nylon bag of spacesuit gear into the dumpster. It unsettled something rancid, and the smell of rotten vegetables with a sprinkle of Dayle’s corpse stung at my nostrils.
We huffed and puffed – all three of us – rolling the wheels of the dumpster at an awkward angle down the streets of Lyttle towards the bay. Only illuminated by the weak streetlights, the night felt claustrophobic, we could feel them closing in.
“Somebody watch our six.” I said under a labored breath.
“Already on it, mate.” Said Miles.
I gave a side-eye to the pimple-pupil on his head.
Oh, right.
We kept going, pushing forward. A fear brewed in the back of my mind that we might struggle to keep it in our hands when going down the sloped highway.
“Hey… Uh, do you guys see that?” Tom asked.
Up ahead, a bright white light began to paint and scan the concrete. A flashlight.
From an alley, a gun-wielding astronaut freak stirred, aiming down sights.
“Get behind the dumpster!” I yelled.
We ducked; a bullet bit a chunk of the edge of the bin out as metal sparks cascaded onto the concrete.
Tom was struggling to hold the momentum of our cover, the wheels were going too fast, it was slipping from his hand. Miles had a good grip with both, but not for long.
Another shot cut the silent street in two. This time, the bullet lodged itself in one of the wheels, and it began spinning.
I took the pistol from Tom’s mailbag, aimed around the corner and shot.
That was the first time I had fired a gun.
I had shot a lamppost.
Miles sighed.
Soon enough, the bin was going to roll by the alley, and the watcher would have a free angle to shoot us in our side. I had to think quickly.
Sweat was beading on my forehead, and I could feel my blood pulsing in the back of my neck.
Flipping the safety on and tucking it away, I bolted from the bin.
“Where are you going?” Miles screamed.
Close to the ground, I scurried to the lamppost. It was pitch underneath; the bullet had smashed the light to shards of glass.
I could still see the watcher in the alley, tunnel-visioned on the speeding bin, readying his next shot.
Giving chase, I managed to slip behind him. His helmet turned to me, blue lights flickering in his visor.
But it was already too late. I had gripped him, he was wrapped by my elbow around his throat.
“Stop it!” I screamed, and they managed to pull the dumpster to a halt. I tugged the suited man to the bin once his lights had faded and limbs turned limp. Tom and Miles helped me hoist him into the bin.
We pushed for a while, a long while, until the reek of sweat was more pungent than what was in the bin.
At the end of Crescent Street, Tom finally let it leave his grip, and the dumpster rolled down the hill. It span out of control, hit a wheel against the curb, flipped into air, before lastly bouncing into the water of the bay in a giant waterfall.
Clouds of seagulls flew into the horizon in a cloud over the sparkling moon upon the water.
Something told me that was not the last time that we were going to be visited by the watchers - whoever they were.
At that moment, I guess I figured Mayor Miles wasn’t so bad. Perhaps he could stick around a little longer, help us figure out this 80’s kid’s nightmare.
Until next time,
---
Credits
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