Morning all. Let’s just jump into it this morning shall we? Excellent. Timers set for fifteen minutes and let’s see what emerges when prompted by the above sentence. Timers set and off we go.
Oh now this is fun. No idea where I want to take it, but fun.
Wednesday, October 28th: He was trying not to freak out.
He was trying not to freak out. He stared at the letter. That didn’t help. He turned away and started pacing, deliberately not looking at the letter. He knew that were anyone else to see it there would be nothing ominous about it. It was a festively red envelope that presumably had a Christmas card in it. The address was a stamp so someone looking might even had assumed it came from some corporate office, sent to all of the customers randomly in hopes they felt special and sent custom back to the company in the future.
He had several just like it in his mail in the past week. He assumed they were a ‘thanks for your business and please come back’ holiday greetings. He didn’t think receiving a card would make his choice any different, but as they were all from businesses he routinely visited he ignored the marketing angle.
Besides it was once to have something festive in the apartment.
This card looked like those but wasn’t. He hadn’t opened it yet but he knew the address. Knew the sender. Had not had anything to do with them in ten years.
He paced the length of his admittedly small living room. He turned at the wall and walked back, making as long a circuit as he could. He tried to tell himself he wasn’t hiding. He didn’t change his name. he had not erased himself from the world, eradicating all digital imprints. He simply put himself out of their sight and didn’t advertise where he was.
He closed his socials, but he had never really used them much anyway and it was a relief not to feel the pressure of checking them. He was in a place where it was unlikely to go and his activities didn’t connect with theirs in any way.
For ten years he and his family lived in completely different worlds. He pretended they didn’t exist and what they did behind closed doors he didn’t care. For all he knew they forgot about him. They certainly hadn’t reached out.
Yet there was the card.
His last turn set him facing the small table he put by the door. He was certain it was more of a stool than a table, given the space, but it worked. There was enough space for a small bowl where he could drop his keys and to put his mail when he came upstairs. The small bowl was only two inches in diameter so he could see his keys folded up and sticking out. He liked that he could see at a glance from the other side of the room if his keys were in place. Now he could see the red envelope, one corner tucked under the bowl and one hanging off the edge.
He hadn’t opened the card. He knew he should.
“Maybe it is a generic greeting.”
He walked back towards the bowl as though approaching a live grenade with a loose pin needing to be secured. ‘Don’t think of grenades,’ he told himself as other darker memories started to rise. He told himself he left them behind to, but they visited his nightmares frequently, even after so much time and he couldn’t deny those memories, those events shaped his last decade. He would have been someone else completely without them.
‘Doesn’t make them pleasant,’ he thought as he reached the table. He took a deep breath and picked up the card. He found himself reluctant to use his fingers to open it and went to the kitchen to retrieve a butter knife.
They poisoned him before. They could do it again. He took out the butter knife. He then took out one of the face masks he still kept after Covid. He had a box of neoprene gloves he bought in a panic at the time, used two pair and then forgot about. He set the envelope down, washed and dried his hands thoroughly and feeling silly but unable to stop himself he slipped on a pair of the gloves, put on the face mask and used the butterknife to open the card.
He felt less paranoid when he realized it was coated with something.
He remembered the timing. Stepped back and grabbed his keys from the bowl by the door. He was in the hall, doors locked before a full thought could form. He took the stairs, yanking off the gloves as he walked, careful not to touch anything that might have gotten on them. He ditched the gloves and face mask in the mail room trashcan, shifting discarded flyers over them to hide the items. Instead of leaving through the front door as was usual, he turned and used the back exit. He walked quickly to the nearest alleyway and onto the street on the other side. He stepped onto the sidewalk and walked briskly way. He needed to be gone before whoever was sent reached his apartment.
