Morning all. Let’s jump in with the morning prompt and see where it takes ups. Timers set for fifteen minutes and off we go.
I really like this. Not entirely sure where it is going, but I really like the character and set up. Not bad for a Tuesday morning.
Tuesday, April 7th: The letters remained unanswered.
The letters remained un answered. Yet he sent them each month. One letter mailed on the fifteenth of every month. He chose the fifteen as it seemed less obvious than the first day of the month and less variable than the last day of the month. If the month ended on the thirtieth each month he might have found that more convenient. But it didn’t. Some months were thirty one days and one even had the temerity to vary by year. Twenty seven, twenty eight. Call it a calendar adjustment all you want but he knew choosing a date that varied would drive him insane.
So he chose the fifteenth. It didn’t matter what day of the week the fifteenth fell on. If it was a day no post was picked up, he would still slide the letter into the box on the fifteenth. When the letter was picked up was someone else’s concern. The fact was, he posted the letters on the fifteenth and had done for years.
How many years, he did not like to count. It made him feel old.
The fact that he never received a response in all the years simply made counting them pointless. They weighed heavier on him then. His efforts felt fruitless. Still no matter how much time passed without a response, he posted the letters.
In the end they were less about who read them and responded to them and more of a way to purge himself. He took in so much evil, drew it in with his breath and let it circulate through his body. Somehow it felt purged through his system. It didn’t drip through the ink onto the page when it wrote. It was not the transfer of evil he was after. Instead he felt lighter as though the evil evaporated, the ink on the page a harmless residue.
He was certain that someone nearby, perhaps even himself would draw the evil back in with their breath, but it would not touch the letters. They were clean and for a few moments after writing and posting them, he was too.
It never lasted and so each month he wrote a new letter.
Sometimes he wondered if they were being read. If the reason they were not answered was the horror of perceiving his evil deeds preventing pen setting to paper on the other end. He decided it would be a wise course of action on the other end of the circuit.
He sometimes wondered what would happen if a letter came for him. If one actually arrived. He was not certain it would be a good thing. If he was condemned would it crush him? If he was granted absolution, would he forgive them or believe them to be tainted?
He did not know.
He hoped never to find out.
It was on a Thursday that a letter arrived for him. He stared at the envelope. It was shaped like a card, a small thank you note. The kind his grandmother sent routinely. She kept a box. White cardstock with gold lettering. She always ensured that the two words Thank you were done in raised gold letters in a cursive script. She abhorred having it shortened to Thanks as though the person writing it couldn’t be bothered with both words when writing of gratitude. She had also abhorred prewritten cards. If one could not find the words, then one ought not send the card was her mantra.
It was with trembling hands that he slit the envelope open.
Ten til Midnight 