The Post Office lost yet another package of mine. This happens at least once per year and it's always for the same reason. The letter carrier scans the delivery confirmation bar code of a package while they are sitting in their truck but forget to actually carry the package to my house. The package then gets returned to the Post Office, where it sits in limbo until I can convince the Post Office to track it down. They usually don't want to do this because the package shows as being delivered in their system even though it wasn't actually delivered.
I finally realized why this happens. It's easier to tell the story of how this came to be instead of giving the precise details, so here's "Going Postal."
Come to think of it, this might actually explain more than my missing packages.
Going Postal
When the doorbell for Shocker Books rang at precisely 10 am, Larry Schwartz knew that it had to be the mailman. Other visitors to his store were very rare these days. Although he still had a brick-and-mortar store that housed his inventory of rare and expensive horror books, almost all of his sales were now orders that he took over the Internet and shipped to his customers.
This made the Post Office an important part of his business, but because the Post Office was one of the most efficient and well-run organizations in the world, he had complete confidence in the white-uniformed mailmen that called twice a day to make deliveries from publishers and to pick up his shipments to his customers. Larry’s business was booming, and the Post Office was an important part of its success.
When the doorbell rang again about an hour later, Larry was surprised to see Mike Campbell at the door. Mike was an old friend from college who he hadn’t seen for quite a while. While Larry had followed his dream of opening a bookstore, Mike had gone into the army and had fought in the Gulf War back in 1991. After catching up on the events of the past few years, Mike showed Larry the antique, leather-bound book written Arabic script that he was carrying and explained how he was interested in selling it.
“I’ve had it in storage in a safe deposit box at my bank for the past few years,” said Mike. “I picked this up in Iraq and held onto it, hoping to sell it one day. You’re the expert on this stuff, and I was hoping that you could take a look at it and tell me if it’s worth anything.”
They agreed to meet again in a few days after Larry had had time to look at the book and assess its value, and Mike left Larry to his processing the huge backlog of orders that he had.
Later that day Larry started to get paranoid. It might just have been his imagination getting the better of him, but he was sure that he had seen suspicious figures lurking outside his store ever since Mike left. Following the example of Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, Larry decided to mail Mike’s book to himself to avoid the possibility of it being stolen that night. There was still time to get it into the 5 pm mail pickup, so he carefully packaged the book in bubble wrap, put it in a box addressed to himself, and gave it to the mailman when he came later that day.
That night, Larry received a panicked phone call from his friend.
“Be careful with that book,” said Mike. “I’ve learned that it’s a copy of the Al Azif by an Arab named Abdul Alhazred. It’s related to the occult in some way and it’s evil. Very evil. It’ll corrupt everything that it comes in contact with, so keep it away from your expensive books. Don't worry - I’ll come by tomorrow to pick it up.”
Larry made his living dealing in books that told stories with supernatural elements, but didn’t actually believe in the supernatural himself. This made it easy to write off his friend’s concerns, but he would still be glad to be rid of the book and the irrational fears that it seemed to cause.
Next morning was fairly leisurely. Few orders had come overnight, so Larry actually had time to enjoy his morning coffee and read one of the books in his inventory. Time passed so quickly that Larry didn’t even notice that it was afternoon before the mailman came. The sound of the damaged box being thrown to the ground outside his door caught his attention, as did the blue uniform that he saw on the mailman as he walked away.
Mike was right.