The Mailman

            Brian was a kid of slight build who lived across from the Denny’s on Figueroa Boulevard. Although a young male, he was surrounded by a purely elderly entourage. Charismatic as hell, he defined the picture perfect white businessman schmoozer of the late 1990’s, if not, “that cool friend of mine.” He was nineteen, not in college, but Jewish, dressed in flowing Capri pants, and kept his hair dreaded and high in the air. After all, he was a mailman, wasn’t he?

            He left his house one Saturday morning wearing a blue zip-up painter suit, and took a seat on his porch to soak in the morning sun for a moment. His hair was feeling it that day. He wore dark shades – black or brown – but his fanatic blue eyes pierced right through them, offering equal and opposite rays of blue light back at the sun.

            A backpack slung over his shoulder contained his job’s one and essential tool, a firearm, but reserved most of its cargo space inside for the unique ammunition of every new day.

            As the sun rose off in the distance, high into the sky, his arms began to tingle with anticipation, and he looked down at his watch to see the time. 7 o’clock the dials read. Hairs rose atop his head and toes tapped across the wooden porch as his nose began to twitch. He whistled, “You Are My Sunshine” to the tune of a bird’s serenading ballad.

            “Morning Brian,” said Geoff as he passed by walking his prepubescent cocker spaniel. “How’s it looking today in the world?”

            “Damned if I know, Geoff,” he said with a wink.

            Geoff kept on walking his dog.

            Brian checked his watch again and the time was now fifteen after. He stood up abruptly, and stretched his arms out to the heavens as he recited the Oath of the Mailman:

            O’ I’m a mailman tall and proud,

            With heavy a hand and properly endowed,

            I push further to the point of no return,

            In darkness I’m a deviant and by that I’ll stand firm.

Brian anchored his backpack behind his kidneys with two straps and pulled his firing utensil from its slot on his belt. He coughed loudly and started his feet on a brisk pace down the sidewalk. He soon spotted his first house and immediately crouched down behind a trashcan. Reaching into his backpack he pulled out a folded-up wad of envelopes and placed it delicately into the weapon. One, two, three. He pulled up, out over the trashcan, and rested the barrel of his weapon atop the trash receptacle. He shut one eye and the other peered through a sight just above the barrel. Aiming at the upstairs window – He’d memorized the spots each household wanted their mail delivered through – he grabbed the trigger and fired a big one through his pump-action barrel.

Just as his finger clutched the trigger, Brian’s left knee gave out and he collapsed to the sidewalk. The shot went wide left, piercing a hole in the adjacent house, and causing the shrill scream of a nervous post-pubescent woman in her fifties to fill the quiet morning air. The scream sent shivers down his blue jacket and into his skin. Or at least that was how he felt it.

With that he took off, sprinting into the middle of the street. He was running for his life, dodging right and left past cars and bikers, past stop signs, over potholes, and the wind pockets around his ears were so tight, in fact, that he could barely hear the morning birds anymore – rather the piercing cry of an erratic police siren.

Only once before in his lifetime had Brian heard of a mailman missing a mail shot. He hadn’t just shot the mail into the wrong spot; it had traveled into another house. He would get fired at best. Hung from the gallows at worst. Brian stopped for a second in the street and turned his eyes to the sun at its zenith amongst the clouds. “Cancer?” he shouted to no one in particular. “ Try mail fraud!” he said, and crumpled down into the street. His hands held his head as it bowed low, touching his kneeling knees.

“Fuck my life,” Brian said.

Before anyone could answer, Brian raised his head and caught a glimpse of something red off in the distance, far down Figueroa Boulevard. Could it be?

He stood, and tore off his backpack. He split down the street towards the red blur, leaving hat, gun, and holster behind. A scooter to the right looked ride-able and he picked it up in a flash, pirouetting in the process. The big woosh of a helicopter heralded down from above and sent his nylon-clothed torso undulating with the wind. No matter.

He was flying through a sea of cars, away from the house whose shingled sides his misfired newspaper shell had ruptured, under the helicopter whose beats sent him fleeing terrified down the street, and always towards the red object off in the distance. Brian hadn’t seen anything red before, and it was eating away at him.

To his left Brian spotted a policeman running towards him, brandishing a lance held up in the air with his right, outstretched arm. The point was of steel, and as sharp as a pin, looking him straight in the eye. Alarms in his head went off like the horn section of an opera to compliment the outcries of policemen with megaphones and the beats of the helicopter’s blades and the cry of the woman in the house he’d struck.

So Brian was off once more in the middle of the traffic, running towards the red. At once before him leapt two massive, full-grown tigers. One went higher than the other, and once it had ascended from its aerial climb finally like some transcending creature, growled the most incredibly massive growl that had ever been heard. Indeed, perhaps Brian had met his match.

The beast looked Brian in the eye not a moment longer than it took it to taste his scent in the air, and began galloping along the concrete towards him at a respectable pace. So Brian did the only logical thing, and took off galloping towards the tiger. They gained ground quickly and in the span of only few seconds they were feet from each other, at which point Brian ducked his head and contracted his body into a roll. As the beast flew past it let a frustrated roar, angry at the mockery being made at its expense.

He laughed aloud, however, and kept on running. The tigers twisted in the air behind him, and fell down from the sky, came crashing to the ground, tumbling in a massive jumble of teeth and fur and claws and yellow into a church, crushing an array of Jesus memorabilia, sweatshirts, and books lined up against beautifully opaque stained-glass windows.

But the teams of police were upon him again. Out from the church they poured, first ten, maybe twenty, and then in a matter of seconds an army had amassed. They all ran towards him, brandishing spears and guns and rosaries alike. Brian took a look behind his shoulder, saw the tidal wave, and didn’t take another look back. Instead, he kept on.

To his left and right, black men stood atop the roofs of houses, their black silhouettes accentuated by the grey and white fake shingling and the bright white light coming down from the sun. They began shooting big and wobbling basketball-sized bouncy balls at him through the haze of the traffic in the street. The black bubbles began to strike the area around him at once. Hammering cars and streetlights and occasionally people, the bubbles stuck on impact and began to expand almost at once.

Suddenly from above, one such ball struck Brian in the right shoulder and the immense kinetic force that was delivered sent him crashing into a car to his left. As soon as it stuck to him it started growing, pulsing and mutating into different colors. Soon it was the size of a bowling ball, and as he got up to run again his weary legs collapsed once more, quite unused to the extra fifty pounds of weight that were now doubling their kinesthetic responsibilities.

He got up again, now adjusted to the expanding blubber, and took off. All the while, black objects went whizzing by his head, careening into cars and houses, the force of which would send the cars tumbling to the side into telephone poles and often into the houses, doubling in size the caverns in the sides of houses that the balls themselves had created only seconds before.

The helicopter was close now. He could feel the wind on the nape of his neck again and the beat of the wings in his ears. He couldn't hear anything anymore except this creature up above, except the second ball as it struck him in the head with such a force his feet left the ground for a second. His body carried forward like a rag doll into the wind and suddenly Brian had no sense of ground, or sound.

When his head hit the ground the first thing he felt was relief he wasn't all up in the air anymore. Then the pain came. That he couldn't hear his screams was a more painful phenomenon than the pounding of the blood coursing through his head, and he sat there, in the middle of the street, prostrate, and quite uselessly paralyzed. He was on his stomach, and some disgusting tasting liquid was right around his mouth, oozing into his teeth and soaking into his tongue.

Soon a hand took hold of his expanding shoulder and head and rolled him onto his back. A behemoth stood over him decked in black. From behind his shoulder down to his waist ran a mammoth sheath. Reaching from the sheath with both hands, the man pulled out a fantastic blade. The blade tilted to the side and rays of light reflected off its point quite painfully into Brian’s eyes.

Brian knew the time had come. He had seen with his own two eyes a man punished in such a manner, and by his own gallantry kept from crying.

The executioner’s face was all business. He held the blade above Brian’s head, and recited some jumble of words reiterating his authority to act accordingly.

The muscles in his forearms clenched and his shoulders braced themselves in the cool morning air, but just as the executioner was about to terminate the contemplation and commence the deed, something red shined off his blade and blinded him momentarily.

Instantly a red flower came into view upon the ground in front of Brian’s face. The light coming from the sword illuminated the flower and it seemed to levitate off the ground. Surrounded by a bleak world devoid such a vibrant color, the flower’s red petals leaked color and life into the man’s eyes and they teared up. The sword hesitated in the air as he embraced the beauty of such an experience.

Brian’s head was instantly rejuvenated by the flower’s earthy, pollen smell, prompting his subconscious to establish the prospect of running away once more, but Brian had had enough running for the day. For as long as he could, he laid there with his new friend the executioner and savored the display a bit longer.