Postman Cole (Part 3 - Mister Miles, Caricature Cokehead)

  

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,

Postman Cole. 

---

Credits

 

Postman Cole (Part 2 - Mister Rodney, Mucus Man)

  

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 here, honey.”

Her eyebrows were jumping, they were waltzing.

No cat. Of course, there was no cat.

“Oh,” I put my hand over the back of hers. “I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Landry.”

Her eyebrows: Flattened to a frown.

“Is she…” I looked around the room, pretending to see spirits. “Is she with us, here in this room?”

The woman’s expression looked as if I had just torn up her winning bingo card.

Thin red lines blossomed over her forearms as she wrestled with the air for a while. Scratches, all etched into wrinkled skin. Some time ago, such a thing might have given me a jump. But as it stands, in a peculiar town that often has rainy spells with a chance of bees, this was the least surprising thing I had seen all week.

“Will you quiet down?” She snapped. “You’re scaring Cleo!”

I spent a while leaning over my desk staring at her hugged arms until I began to make out something. A shape: it was a heart of sorts. A tiny, beating heart suspended by nothingness, enveloped by a glasslike veil I could just barely make out clutching onto the front of her flowery blouse.

Her eyebrows waved as if to say, ‘I told you’. She absent-mindedly stroked the invisible feline.

Alright, so I guess I’m Cole: Postman, beast slayer, translucent pet-vet extraordinaire.

“Listen, I’m sorry, Mrs. Landry, but I’m not the authorities. I’m just a mailman. Have you tried taking it up with them?”

“Oh, dear,” She shook her head. “How I’ve tried. I can’t make it to upper town, not on these old legs. So, I sent my granddaughter. She said the place is closed shut, that they’re undergoing some sort of maintenance at the station.”

Again, I began sorting the envelopes by address. “Okay, I’ll go check out the station after my deliveries are done, Mrs. Landry. Just for you.”

She nodded and made to leave before stopping at the door as the bells chimed against the glass. “Be careful, honey. Especially careful around all the bodies and the goo.”

“What? Hey-“ I yelled for her, but she was already gone. My eyes could only follow her sunflower-spotted top wriggle in the wind as she crossed the street.

I sat there for a while until I had finished sorting my papers with a screwed-up face. Goo? What on earth was she talking about?

The letters slipped into my mailbag with ease; I fastened my blue and white postal hat on as I did every morning before setting off to work.

And then it hit me: I had no clue where the police station actually was.

I mean, that’s probably something I should have known. Lyttle is a tiny place, and there’s only one building, a handful of officers.

On the other hand, there wasn’t any maps of the roads here. We were just expected to know where everything was.

Had it been because I only worked the bottom half of the city close to the bay? Those streets I knew like the back of my hand.

Nevertheless, with a face that was still stuck sour, I fastened my bag around my waist and stepped out onto the hot, summer street. I didn’t know where the police station was, but I knew exactly who would.

On my jog uphill to the hospital, between my odd delivery, I had seen the usual weird things that had begun to sprout all across town.

For one, outside Sleepy Bear Daycare a few streets down around the block, I was stopped by a cacophony of giggling. Which was nothing new, of course. But what was new was the splashing. Loud, fun splashing. I turned my head to find that the kids had spilled out of the center with leashes in their hands, taking toads that were as big as my hat out for a swim in the nearby fountain.

I thought more people would stop and look. Was I the only person seeing this? I suppose I did get a snort from an elderly man as he made his way past me.

“Eh, children these days.” He said, before proceeding to walk into the horizon that faced the sparking sapphire water of the bay in the distance, using only his cane as an aid (which for the record, was an onyx-black cobra). It slithered on the small space below his feet as it met the ground, propelling him forward or not, I am still not sure.

The strangest thing of all might have been the balding man I spotted on Western Ave. He was in his forties - the sun beaming down and shining off the space between his thin strands of blonde hair. He had begun to gather a crowd around a large red fire hydrant he had spray painted an off-white bone. According to his yelping voice, along with his preaching grand gestures with his hands: The end was nigh, the water that once flowed free from our taps had turned to ice, fish had begun to migrate upstream into our toilets. And for just two dollars, we could be blessed by drinking from the pure, untainted non-apocalyptic water of the Western Ave fire hydrant.

But no, of course, that was just Jim. Yeah, he had been doing that sort of thing for a while, longer than the tunnel had been collapsed. We sort of just moved around him on the sidewalk, as you would a toppled tree or a spot of bird droppings. People were getting really tired of Jim.

When I had finally reached the hospital, it was around quarter to eleven. Tom was sitting up against his hospital bed, his face even more pale than usual, with skin feverish and darted with beads of sweat. Below him: What remained of his arm bandaged in a white sling.

“Took you long enough to come visit.” He croaked.

I sat on the chair beside him. “Glad you’re good, Tom. Listen, I need your help with something, man.”

His frown was even more furrowed than Mrs. Landry’s.

“Cole? The hell, man? I’m missing a goddamn arm over here.”

“Yeah, yeah right… No, I get that.” I sighed. “But it could be worse. We could be missing our jobs.”

We sat and talked for a while. He was understandably angry, but I told Tom that there was something going on at the police station. I explained that we needed to check it out before Lyttle’s society inevitably collapsed into lawless chaos. And chaos was no good for postage deliveries. No postage deliveries meant no work, and no work meant we’ll be shelling out the big bucks just to drink some fire hydrant water by the sidewalk.

“You’re insane, Cole.” He began slipping on his shoes. “No really, you’re insane. I’ll show you where the police station is, and that’s it.”

I gave him a thankful I-owe-you-one nod, and before long we were off.

The few blocks before the police building were deserted. Seeing oddities was one thing, seeing absolutely none in Lyttle after this long was something entirely different. It was harrowing.

Before us at the end of Clyve Street was the building. It was grand and towering (I suppose in Lyttle, grand means it was two stories high with a garage). Most windows were boarded up, save for a few of the windows on the second floor which were outlandishly dark for such a stunningly blue-skied morning.

The door of the building rattled with a metallic clang as I knocked. No answer. I called out for a while, but no-one opened up. Just like the old lady had told me.

I turned to my partner. “Alright, lift me up onto the balcony.”

“No! Screw that, Cole.”

“Stop being such a baby, Tom – I’m the one who has to deliver your bloody letters, man.”

He was mumbling curses as he bent a shoulder for me. This was definitely not a favor he was going to forget anytime soon. Hell, at this rate, he’d make me pay off my debt by watching that sci-fi movie about living in a computer simulation, the one with the green numbers. I mean, watch it again. Probably stoned this time. God dammit.

I crunched the smashed glass under my sneakers as I made away across the balcony and in through the window. The first thing that hit me was the stench of rotten vegetables. Not human decomposition, like Mrs. Landry had said. But it was foul. Secondly was the slime. It covered the walls, the floor, the ceiling. Big glops of sage goo that cascaded slowly with a viscous drip.

My legs gave way as I began to climb down the stairs through the hallway, there was too much of the stuff. It was beneath my feet everywhere I looked. I almost came tumbling down through a window that had been luckily boarded with wood.

I reached the front door from the inside and opened the handful of locks with a clack. The sun outside was blinding; when my eyes adjusted, I saw Tom staring at the green gunk on me, shaking his head with a pout, disapprovingly like I was a toddler that had just crayoned the walls.

He knew what I was going to say.

“No way, Cole.”

“But you need to help me loo-“

“Seriously, no way.”

“Fine, big baby.” I headed back inside.

If I could find something, anything at all, that would tell me if there was still some law enforcement alive and working in Lyttle, I would be satisfied. I had to know, I had to know if I needed to prepare for the worst: The fire hydrant water.

Better start making friends with Jim early and get the discounts, you newly homeless bum.

“Hello?” I called.

There might have been an echo if the police station wasn’t so inundated and insulated with green rubber. I went to turn the door handle to the armory; my hands came away sticky and coated, webbed.

Inside the armory was a man slumped forward from his office chair in front of the security camera setup and beside the case full of guns. Below his neck was a tilted nametag: RODNEY.

“Hey, sir, everything alright in here?”

Nothing. My chest began to draw tight.

“Your, uh, civilian clientele, have been spilling over to the post office for detective work.”

His face was sickly white, lips stuck shut. Body probably cold, and his voice: Not even a zip.

“Probably fell asleep, huh. That’s uh, not static, on the camera’s sir, that’s… just goo.”

Nada.

Without warning, the back of his blue uniform began to peel free from the thickly coated seat. He turned his head to me, his eyes revoltingly stripping free. Lime fingers slipped out his sockets like that of a snail, and if he saw me, I couldn’t know, he was only groaning with a liquid-filled throat, one overdue for a cough.

“Tom!” I shouted.

My ankle caught the leg of a body I hadn’t seen lying there in the mushy green carpet. I went falling onto my back, crawling then not at all. Lying flat.

I tried to scream for Tom from where I was, but my shoulders wouldn’t unstick, my shirt wouldn’t come loose. It was sage quicksand, swallowing me, eating me. And with each breath, it felt like my heart was giving out. I wasn’t a postman anymore, I was becoming something different, perhaps a paranormal investigator. And to be frank, as I stared up at the officer’s hands which hung loose as growing, swerving lime-green anacondas, I kind of hated my job.

I heard Tom’s steps running. Bless him, as bad as I had treated him up until that point, he was actually running.

The arms of the officer had wrapped around my legs as thick unkept grapevines. I could feel my muscles beginning to squish; my bones had begun to creak. They were about to crack.

“Fuck sakes, Cole. Not this again.” He sighed.

“The gun case, in the armory!”

Tom elbowed the thing in the head as he pushed past into the room, the eyes of the beast went swinging like long lime pendulums.

My postage partner wrestled with the cage for a while, and before long he turned around aiming down sight as if out of a western cowboy flick.

Click, click, bang.

Wet chunks of green coated my tongue, my throat.

Click, click, bang.

It wouldn’t die. Why would it? But Tom’s great shooting bought me enough time to clamber to my feet.

We stood there shaking for a while, watching the officer contort and grow.

I took one of the long, unworldly pool-noodle arms by its side and wrapped it around its head like a scarf. Pulling, pulling until the thing’s head dropped loose and rolled.

“Pass me your lighter!” I shouted.

“Why?”

“Tom, just give me it.”

He tossed the tiny hunk of metal from his pocket. I missed the catch, but it stuck to my shoulder like Velcro.

I flicked it open - the flame came alive, so did the room. The fire blossomed green then blue as it burned the flesh of the reanimating monstrosity.

For a while, and for a while after that, we stood outside and watched the building engulf itself in flames before collapsing.

That night, Tom and I decided to sit by the fireplace of the post-office, where we were safe from the molding goo upon our clothes. We drank bourbon that warmed our bellies, and thought of what was coming, and who we were turning into.

But I’m going to be honest here; the whole ordeal was far from the strangest thing that has happened to me.

There’s so much more to see.

I can only hope that my small bayside town holds up with no-one to enforce law and order, and that Tom doesn’t make me watch that movie with him to pay off my debt.

While people are still scrambling to sell the rare, orange-colored oranges at the market that they find amongst the invasive, purple-colored breed that is taking over town, I’ll still have more stories to tell. While there is still talk of Mr. Jones’s convenience store selling gum that makes customers grow eyes or see into the future, I’ll definitely have more stories to tell.

For now, I need to take a shower to wipe the green muck away. After that, maybe deliver some mail. Perhaps investigate the paranormal, it seems.

Sincerely,

Postman Cole. 

---

Credits

 

Postman Cole (Part 1 - Mister Jenkins, Jumbuck)

  

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 most of my life here. It’s a small town that you have to reach by taking the highway from the central city through a dingy tunnel in a mountain. Once you’re out the other side, the fresh air that rolls off the bay is breathtaking.

Most of the houses here face the small bay in the middle; the buildings sit staggered in height from the mountainous ranges down to the seagull-squawking body of water beneath. I hope that I am not painting a picture of Greece at the moment, because it certainly isn’t that. A lot of the houses are severely weathered, and some are still wearing scars from the earthquake that shook them a decade earlier, something that wasn’t kind on cliffside homes. But despite this, Lyttle is where I call home. When you finally come out the mouth of the tunnel and stare into the crystalline blue below, when you finally take in that fresh air, when you finally witness her charm, it puts you in a trance. That’s why I’ve stayed.

A few years ago, though, the only tunnel in and out of the town collapsed.

To this day, it’s still closed. Everybody that once lived here still remains here. Everybody that had owned a boat by the port has taken off and never returned.

Some have tried to simply climb over the mountain and cascade down the back to the main city. Police had found their bodies scattered in the scorching afternoon sun between flower beds and daisies. Something is stopping people from leaving the town that way, too.

I’ve had a handful of people arrive at my doorstep asking me to deliver letters for them to the outside world. They told me they had tried to throw a message-in-a-bottle into the water, but something enormous always managed to swallow it up before it disappeared into the horizon.

In summary: We’re stuck, and everyone’s growing tired of one another. Especially tired of Jim. No-one really likes Jim.

Coincidentally, the date of the collapse of our tunnel was around the same time Maurice, the man-sheep, started being spotted around town. Oh, and Mrs. Landry’s cats turned translucent. Cool in theory, horrifying in person.

I’m beginning to think something locked down Lyttle on purpose.

Everyone knew me as Calfy Cole during the time after the tunnel collapsed, but before the strange occurrences began.

When the golden sun was still hanging low over the misty bay, my morning as the Lyttle postman began. Zigzagging around the houses that met the water was the easiest stage before I had to climb the roads to reach the letterboxes that were darted up the mountainside. That’s how the nickname came in – the job was tough on the legs, that’s for sure. But damn – were they toned, Calfy Cole.

Thomas (real name Tomothy, but let’s not get into that), is my scraggly black-haired and gawky postage-partner. I always start my route at the bottom of the town by the harbor with my bundle of letters and work up; he starts at the top of the hill and works the roads downward toward the bay. We usually meet around the halfway point outside Fritz’s pizza joint. However, that mid-morning, the same morning that I had seen the pant-wearing pig walking on two legs by the pier, Thomas was a no show.

I was of course already winded from my route, and hot-red with a clenched fist having to climb up the rest of the way to try find the lanky son-of-a-bitch.

“G’day Cole!” My stick for a partner was yelling at me from upon the grassy hilltop overlooking the city.

“Tom? The fuck?” I called back.

“Sunshine sure is lovely up top, man.” His figure was a thin silhouette against the backdrop of the lamp in the sky.

“What happens,” He threw a thumb over the back of his shoulder. “If I just hike down the track back to the city. Leave Lyttle.”

“Haven’t you heard? People don’t come back.”

“Ain’t that the point?” I couldn’t see his shadowed face, but knew he was smirking.

The wind blustered up my coat and took away some of the heat that the summer daylight had left on my skin.

“Just come down, it isn’t safe.”

He was shaking his head. “You know, maybe it isn’t. But it sure as shit beats living here, Cole. Something weird is going on, why hasn’t anybody come for us?”

Clouds began to roll over the sun, and I briefly caught a look of his gaunt face. “Melissa from the pizza place tells me every time she turns the TV on, static or no static, the room begins to feel heavy. Like a magnet is in the ground, pulling everything down two-fold. She told me it hurts to even walk when it’s on.” He lit a cigarette. “Oh, oh, and the letters Cole, the damn letters. If you haven’t noticed, the tunnel fucking collapsed! So, tell me, friend, where are all the goddamn letters coming from?”

I wanted to say something, in fact my lips may have moved to begin to form words, but deep down I knew he was right. How was there so much mail, anyway?

Tom tucked his smoke between his lips before he swiveled his side-bag to his hip. “Let’s find out, shall we?” He pulled out a singular, card-sized envelope from one pocket.

“Don’t, Tom. We’ll lose our work.”

“Ah,” he tore the paper sleeve open. “Listen to yourself, man.”

The contents were in his hands then; his eyes scanning the words on the paper within. He was mumbling quick, unformed words as he read.

“Thick muscle meat… Yep, yep.. Bones… Grind.. Yep.”

“What does it say?” I asked.

Tom slowly folded the letter back into the torn sleeve and deposited it back inside his mailbag.

He threw away his cigarette butt onto the unkept grass before he came cascading down the hill in a jog back to the road. “Yep,” he said, mid stride.

“Tom?” I asked to his back as he was already walking back down the hill without saying a word. All the spirit he had for leaving Lyttle had escaped him with whatever he read.

He turned around and clasped his hands together in a clap like a father about to give a Birds and the Bees talk. “Yep.” He shot me two finger guns. “You’re fucked.”

I leaned over to him and pulled the letter out from his mailbag. It slid easily out of the torn jacket.

The handwriting inside was messy and hard to make out; broken and misspelled words littered the page.

As it turns out, the letter was addressed to one MAURICE JENKINS, from an unreadable name. The sender’s address was 39 Aberfeldy Lane, which was near the bay. Whoever this envelope was from was sending a letter from the beginning of my route to the beginning of Tom’s route.

The content’s made my stomach swirl. Something from deep in my throat lurched acid with every waver of my eyes against the text.

To bluntly summarize the letter, Mister Jenkins here wants to eat me and grind my bones for soup. Our old friend the sender, let's call him Mister Scribblename, overheard people around town calling me Calfy Cole and thought I’d make a tender meal. They both mistakenly thought that I would hand-deliver the letter, and right now I’m probably supposed to be sliced into cubes in a boiling pot of beef stock.

Luckily for me, Tom is responsible for delivering the upper town mail. And luckily for him, he was suddenly inspired to run away from Lyttle.

I swallowed the ball in my throat and broke the silence. “This is bull, Tom.”

“You think, Cole?” He smiled. “You think? After everything we’ve seen?” He shook his head. “If you wanna’ find out, go ask him then!” His finger drifted to the farmhouse on the mound behind us.

The first letter on his list to deliver would be the highest property in the town. Maurice’s house.

“Come with me,” I said, my voice quiet and distant. I coughed. “Come with me.” More sternly, that time.

Tom and I trotted up the field through the wavering grass with our two mailbags bobbing in the wind.

The porch creaked as we stood outside under the shade. Bells hung free from the posts that held up the roofing, chiming as a gust brought under warm air from the scorching field.

“Tom,” I said. “They’re not opening up because we look like two Jehovah’s witnesses. Get away from me, dumbass.”

He made a noise through his teeth as he stepped down from the porch.

The thinly boarded plank-door of the farmhouse slowly peeled open. A man emerged from the shadowed lounge inside; his eyes looked almost golden as they reflected the sun and planted wheat from outside. His hair was white and curly, paled slightly blonde, showing some of his earlier years.

“Hello, chaps.” He spoke. “How can I help?”

Tom was peeking over my shoulder behind me. “Mister Jenkins?”

His eyes narrowed and flickered between us for a while.

“Yes, that’s me. What’s the trouble?”

I looked back at Tom. At that moment we weren’t exactly sure what it was we wanted to accomplish by talking to the man.

“It’s about your mail.” I was spitting nonsense on the fly. “We’re from the post office, it appears a few letters that were addressed to you were damaged in the mail.”

“Oh my,” Maurice was frowning. “How does such a thing happen? Please,” He gestured an arm in. “Do come in. The wind is quite loud, old ears you see.”

And so, we went inside. Help us, we went inside.

To us, Maurice was a perfectly normal old man until he served us some tea.

“I’m fine,” Tom and I said when he brought the pot over to us.

“Are you sure? It’s not ba-ad.”

Tom, the jumpy prick, almost jumped out of his seat. “Excuse me?”

“It’s quite a tasty leaf,” He nodded. “It’s not ba-“

I began to slide my chair out from under the table, too.

“It’s not ba-a”

Green slop ejected from the old man’s mouth onto the oak table as thick white locks began to spread across his skin like wildfire. Any peach-colored flesh was disappearing like a puddle on a summer afternoon, easily replaced by spreading tufts of curly hair.

We made for the door, but the handle didn’t twist open. My heart felt like it was going to give out.

The thing’s golden eyes behind us began to bloom wide, black, horizontal pupils - the globes of a sheep.

Tom was kicking the door to no avail, and the beast was at his heels.

I made a right for the hallway, tumbling over fallen chairs as I went. Tom saw where I was going and tried to follow me, but he was too late.

The snout of the thing clasped over his forearm like a metallic brace. Teeth once meant to chew grass dug into his flesh like it was wet mud, snapping and cracking his bones loudly and in one spurt of hot pain like fireworks inside of his skin.

With one quick hurl I threw the boiling tea over the beast’s eyes. It began screaming like a man, screaming like a wild dog.

But it was already too late for Tom.

His arm had come free from where it had once been, syrup strings and nerves. It was tossed onto the floor, alongside his mailbag, staining the letters he had yet to deliver.

The thing’s rotten bedroom smelled like decay. I tossed an elbow into the window, letting wind bellow throughout the dusty farmhouse. Tom and I managed to roll out and jog back to town.

I’m glad Tom lived that afternoon. For if he hadn’t, I would be alone. And worst of all, it would be a real bitch to deliver double the letters.

Those are about all the wild things that happened to us that afternoon.

I want to come back to tell a few more stories, though, for there are many more.

If I were to tell you of the oddities of this town, I wouldn’t know where to start. I heard from someone that the water here is beginning to freeze from the taps, no matter how warm it is out. Someone else told me they’ve seen a few men in spacesuits patrolling the hills at midnight with flashlights.

I don’t know why the tunnel is still blocked off after all this time. I still don’t know why Mrs. Landry’s cat is reportedly see-through. Hell, or why people in our town are turning into unrecognizable horrors.

For now, I need to deliver some mail,

Postman Cole. 

---

Credits