Microstory 249: Perspective Twenty-Four

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Perspective Twenty-Three

I love dogs, and dogs love me. That whole stereotype about dogs hating mail deliverers has more to do with someone encroaching in on their territory. It’s not the fact itself that we deliver the post. It’s just that the dogs have never gotten a chance to get to know us and make sure we check out. But there’s something different about me. I never consulted an expert or anything, but I did read some things on the internet. Some people were just born lucky, and give off the right pheromones to make animals feel at ease. Dogs just know that I’m not a threat, and I don’t even have to introduce myself to them. Though, sometimes I do, because I like making new friends. Most people would probably think my job is extremely boring, but its tedium is exactly what drew me to it. I get a ton of exercise, and I listen to music all day. As I’m walking by the houses, I like to come up with little stories about them; what kind of people they are, and what problems they’ve been dealing with. One resident hunts vampires at night. He’s cut ties with everyone he knows so that he can focus on his calling without worrying about people asking questions. The couple next door secretly knows what he does, but they’ve never spoken with him about it. A woman who lives on the next block drowned in her bathtub, but somehow figured out how to recorporalize her ghost body. So she’s just kept going with her life as if nothing happened, and never told anyone. Things get awkward when people ask her out to dinner, because she can’t eat food anymore. These stories have been going on for weeks, and I often go over them again when I’m not on shift. It’s like watching TV, but without all the worry about my brain rotting away. But there’s this one woman. I don’t have to make up a story for her. I think she peeks through her blinds and tries to find some contrived reason to be outside when I come round. She’s the town gossip, always trying to tell me all the current juicy goings-on. What’s worse is that she thinks, as a mailman, I have great gossip to tell her. At first I pushed her away, but now I’ve started relating to her my fictional daydreams. Obviously I stick to the more believable ones, leaving out the supernatural, and she certainly eats them up. I feel a little bit bad about misleading her, especially if it could end up doing harm to her innocent neighbors. But it’s just so fun. What should I tell her next?

Perspective Twenty-Five

Microstory 248: Perspective Twenty-Three

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Perspective Twenty-Two

Did you hear about the woman down the block? The one who lives in the house they clearly can’t afford? I heard her husband covered up a rape at work and he’s about to go to prison. At least that’s what I heard. It’s just terrible. I don’t like to gossip of course, but that’s just such a sad story. I mean, how do you marry someone and not know what kind of man he is. My word. My friend had this friend in college who went to court claiming that her roommate’s brother’s friend raped her, but then while in court, they found out she had raped somebody. True story, I swear it. At least that’s what I heard. This is the same friend—my friend, not the friend of my friend—whose daughter sat on a toilet at a gas station and got pregnant. And AIDS. I think. It was something like that. Somebody sat on a toilet and then something happened, but I don’t like to gossip. I know this girl at work who gossips all the time, just nonstop. She’s a hoot and a half, though; her stories always make me laugh. She was telling me about this one time she found a dead cricket in her sauce. Well, I suppose that’s better than a live cricket, she tells me. What a riot. Anyway, she tries to complain, but ya know she was at a Chinese restaurant, and those Chinese, you know? So she complains but they try to pass it off as a delicacy. Can you believe that? A delicacy! She wasn’t fallin’ for it, of course. I don’t remember what came of it, but it was really funny. Those Chinese people, though. I’m not racist, but you have to be careful. I used to get my nails done on Eighth, but I had to stop going there because it was owned by a Chinese family. Well, I think they may have been Vietnamese or whatever. But they were so rough with my fingers, and they are just criminals there. The prices were too damn high! The last time I went there, I refused to pay that woman for her shoddy job. I walked right out and said they could charge it to the dust and let the rain settle it. They were shouting at me in their weird language, but I just kept walking. What are they gonna do, kill my first born daughter? And that’s not racist, because they really do that. I saw a documentary on it once. Well, I didn’t really watch it. I saw a commercial for it, and my boyfriend at the time said he watched it. I can’t for the life of me remember why I dated him, though. He and his cousin lost their virginity to each other. At least that’s what I heard.

Perspective Twenty-Four