Hey, I just wanted to put some cards on the table. Why? Don’t know. But I think I have to write this down. Nowadays there is this fad, umm….yeah, so there’s this fad that you’ve gotta be busy. Doing work and staying busy have positive connotations. Well, I am not that busy, and I guess this needs to be told. To some people. To anyone who’s willing to listen. I got mail.
Yeah, I know it’s not such a big deal. We all get mail all the time. It’s just that, I haven’t been feeling the same since. It arrived the day before yesterday. I can still see the glossy green envelope containing the letter. And I can also see the letter itself, lying on the wooden desk in front of me, showing its bare contents upfront, as if challenging the reader to a duel.
I’ve had a rather gloomy experience with letters throughout my life. The few ones that I did receive were ones that informed me about colleges that chose to reject me, how my childhood sweetheart Anna was now marrying Ted from the corner, and why my landlord would be forced to evict me if I did not pay the rent in the next 3 days. So I did have some animosity when I found the glossy green envelope huddled in a dark corner of my letterbox the afternoon two days before today.
I brought it in and kept it hanging on the edge of the mantelpiece. When I was arranging a flower vase kept nearby, my arm accidentally brushed the envelope and it fell on the wooden floor beneath.
I was about to pick it up when I heard my phone ring. I picked up the call, and heard a female voice from the other side-
“Good afternoon sir!”, she said in a rather unnaturally joyous way.
“Afternoon miss”, I replied.
“I was wondering whether you could spare a few of your precious seconds to talk about how car insurance ensures long-term safety and financial benefit for you?”, she said.
“No thanks, ma’am, I am not interested”, I said rather dully.
“That’s quite alright. I was wondering then whether you’d be interested in learning how to handle stuff properly?”, she said.
“What?”, I said, a little amazed.
“Yes sir, it’s been a minute since the letter arrived, and you’ve started dropping it on the floor.”, she said in a rather icy tone.
“What the….how did you….”, I muttered in awe.
“No need for all that”, she cut me off,” we’ve got a complaint that you’ve mishandled the envelope that was sent to you. Please do not engage in such behavior in the future, and respect the message!”, she said.
“What the hell are you talking about? ”, I said, clearly dumbfounded.
“All in good time, sir. Mail can carry messages that can be life-changing. We must therefore ensure that we must handle mail responsibly. You took the mail, out of your own free will. You accepted the gift. Now please respect the message,” she said.
With this, she hung up the phone.
I went back, quite shocked and overwhelmed by the experience.
I picked up the envelope and opened it. Inside was a letter, which contained something like this-
“Dear Receiver,
Congratulations! We’ve decided you to be our next postman, the bearer of our message. We would require you to follow some rules, which are protocols that all bearers of our message must follow. If you don’t follow these protocols, well, let’s just say you won’t go down that road.
If someone knocks at your door exactly 7 times, then don’t open the door. Immediately rush to the bathroom, take a razor blade, and place it on your tongue for three seconds, with your tongue protruding out of your mouth.
Do not let the mail drop to the ground. If you haven’t read these rules and do so, you will get a warning. If you do so even after reading the rules, then Mr. Jenkins the Magician will enter whichever room you are in. He will ask you a riddle, failing to respond to which he will cut off one of your fingers.
If you enter your house and you find a little girl eating a cupcake on your dining table, do not talk to her. You can look at her, but if her eyes start becoming red, then immediately shout “Respect the message!”. The girl will become hysterical, and shout at the top of her voice, and then will jump off the window from the first floor. Don’t worry, you won’t find a body, she is not from this world.
If you ever open the door and find a boy and a girl carrying mail for you, then refuse to take the mail they give and close the door. We do not hire any children. Be careful, they will continue to try to persuade you even after you close the door. Do not try to talk to them for long, they would eventually ask you a riddle, which if you won’t be able to answer, will lead to your death.
If you ever get a call from a woman called “Abhirta”, asking you about why you misplaced her mail, then tell her to dial 131. Her name will display if she calls, no need for us to give a number for you to save. Never cut her call or ignore her without talking, or one of your close ones would die. And never say “Hello” when you pick up the call, or she will consider this as a welcome sign and will want you to personally deliver her mail. And you don’t certainly want that.
If you are outside and a boy who’ll introduce himself as “Jim” comes to you and tells you he needs your help to find his lost parents, then just tell him to respect the message and move on. Do not go with him, or try to drop him at any nearby police station. He likes to play hide and seek, and none of his playmates survive.
If a hitchhiker wearing a black suit and pants, along with a black bowler hat is ever seen by you at the side of any road you are driving on, then give him a lift.
If he talks to you, you can respond. Do not initiate the conversation. And by no means are you supposed to look at him. In the end, he will ask you to drop him at the same spot where you picked him up. He will come to you and ask you for this mail. Give him the mail. In return, he will ask you a question, a personal question, in exchange for your freedom. Respond truthfully.
And then you’ll finally be free. Remember, you are not supposed to break any of these rules. Also, remember one thing. If you hear any noise in your backyard resembling police sirens, they are not real, do not follow them. Good Luck!”
I was, just shocked. Dude, I did not even know what to say. This was just….bizarre. As I was sitting on one of my chairs in the drawing room, I heard knocking on my door. One…two…three…four…five…six….seven.
I immediately remembered, rule number 1. I rushed to my bathroom, took the razor blade kept on the wash basin, and placed it on my protruding tongue for exactly three seconds, a little more, I guess. I then went back downstairs. I checked my keyhole and found that no one was outside, even opened the door and cross-checked. I went back to my drawing room and saw the letter was still as I had left it, only the first rule had been struck out by red ink.
The rest of the evening passed rather smoothly, but I was nevertheless quite tense. As I was sitting in my armchair, sipping coffee, in the middle of the night. I heard knocking on my door, this time three knocks.
I first checked from my keyhole. I saw two children there, a boy and a girl. The boy was wearing a T-shirt and shorts and the girl a blue frock. This was surprising since it was literally the middle of December. I opened the door, and they chimed -
“Hello, sir! We have your mail with us! Please take it. We have other places to visit too.”
“No thanks, I am not interested”, I replied.
“Sir, we have come a long way to deliver this mail. Please do not refuse. Nothing will happen to you.”
“Nope, I am good”, I replied, now starting to close the door.
“You won’t take Jenny’s mail, sir?”, the girl asked me.
Jenny was my long-dead eight-year-old sister. She died while she and I were playing hide and seek in our farmhouse by the countryside. Slipped, right before my eyes, from the half-open window on the third floor. I still remember that one moment when my heart skipped a beat when she fell. She just shouted my name, extending a hand for help. It was one of my most painful memories.
“Jenny wants to talk to you. You could have done better. You should have not left the window open. Mom told you to lock all the windows the night before. But you left the one on the third floor open, out of your laziness. Jenny wants answers, and she has written what she feels in this letter”.
The more I stayed in the company of those children, the more dread I felt. It was like I was losing a desire to live, it was not fear, but just plain idleness. As if any will to be in this world was getting lost.
I mustered up enough courage to close the door right at their face, after breaking that trance. A few seconds afterward, I heard very loud thumping sounds from my front door.
“You must accept the mail! Jenny’s not at peace, and she blames you for this mess! Open the door”.
Their voices slowly converged into one, resembling Jenny’s voice now.
“I trusted you, Timmy. You said you would be there for me. But you didn’t help me”.
I stood there frozen just some steps away from the front door. I thought I stopped hearing Jenny’s voice after some time, and the voice was now of a four-legged creature, trying to break in. It pranced about the periphery of my house, angry at its inability to enter.
I now heard my dead mother’s voice from outside.
“Open the door, Timmy, it’s me. Open the door. Please Timmy, I need you”, the voice said.
I knew that it couldn’t be trusted.
After some minutes the prancing and rambunctiousness stopped. Everything went quiet. I saw the letter again, and this time, the fourth rule was struck off by what looked like red ink.
I dozed off after a while.
When I woke up, I found myself amidst a tea party. The people there were all wearing masks.
I saw that in front of me, was a goat, that was presiding over the party. He gestured to me to drink my tea. I was dumbfounded for a while, then I obliged.
After drinking, two bears walking upright grabbed both of my arms and threw me outside the room to the dark hallway. I instantly heard the sound of chains loosening from somewhere.
When I looked behind me, there was a moth there. Only it had razor sharp wings, and was larger in size than me. I ran for my bare life as it started chasing me.
As I ran through the corridors, I heard different tape recorders go off during different time intervals. It was Jenny’s voice, and she was constantly accusing me of betraying her.
When I turned and opened the door sideways, I saw a small room, with a badly disfigured body of a girl on the table placed in the middle, along with a mechanical toolbox and a surgeon’s kit.
I saw a masked man sitting on a chair at one end of the room. He instructed me to sew a pig’s face on the body. He additionally told me not to let the warden catch me.
When I looked closely at him, I realised that the mask which he had worn was not a mask, it was rather the actual skin of a deer that was sewn to his face. I was overcome by disgust and disdain, but I tried to take whatever tools I had, and started operating on the corpse.
When I looked closely at the corpse, I was shocked. It was actually the dead body of my 8 year old adopted daughter, who died three years ago due to a car accident. The accident happened because a wild boar had suddenly come across my car at midnight. To sew the face of the animal that was responsible for my little daughter’s death was reprehensible to me. I refused to perform the procedure any further.
At that moment, another door to the same room opened and an old woman with a lamp came inside and started looking for me, calling me by my name.
She then put the lamp in my direction, and when she saw me, a sinister smile spread across her face.
“You’ve been a naughty boy, Timmy, time for detention”, she said.
She ran on all fours to where I was, nearly toppled me, and then grabbed the hide of the pig on the table. She took a pair of scissors and then smiled, while saying-
“You shouldn’t have taken that watch, Timmy, oh you shouldn’t have,” and with this she sprayed something on my face, and everything went dark.
I woke up on my couch in the drawing room. I now knew why this shit was happening.
As you guys might have guessed till now, I was a surgeon once. It was my duty to operate on people, often to save them from life threatening conditions. Once, a little boy of 7 years came to the hospital, with a rather peculiar problem. It was a rare heart condition.
I tried to reassure him that it would be okay, but he repeatedly told me that he had taken the message and there was no other recourse he could take. He said that the elders would soon outcast him from the tea party, and he would be a sinner.
Of course, no one took him seriously. The operation was a hard fought battle, yet an unsuccessful one. He died in the process. When I saw his belongings the next day, they comprised of a letter packed in a green envelope and a gold watch.
Greed got the better of me, I pocketed the gold watch. One unusual thing that I noticed was that when they were taking his body away from the theater, I saw a barrage of moths encircling it.
And here we are today. I am writing this letter as a testimony of my fate, which is not going to be good. I am hearing police sirens as I write this letter. Whoever gets this letter, I’ve also additionally sent the gold watch along with it. In my dreams, the moth gets closer to me, and the game is cat and mouse between me and the warden.
If you’ve found this letter, you’re next. Respect the message, my dear one, you are the next Alice. Sorry, I, just… it’s getting a bit incoherent, it’s just……