“UNDELIVERANCES” by Charlie M. Case, our second Honorable Mention for the 2025 Summer Short Story Award for New Writers, employs a point of view that both invites and ensnares the reader. Through the mail-carrier protagonist, we are invited into the homes and lives of the suffering and celebrating people in this near-future, slightly dystopian city. Here, institutional violence is the norm, but a network of communication and resistance still hums through the skyways and canals that traverse the city.
You are a vital organ.
A mail carrier, that is: the only connector between people far away. So it stands to follow that you’d take your work seriously—and you do. That’s why you’re sitting on Mg. Opal’s windowsill in the early morn, shredding piece by piece a letter from their ruinous ex-husband, and letting the tiny, illegible bits flutter down into the canal below.
Within the apartment, on the other side of the open window, Mg. Opal drinks coffee leaning against the sill. Their back is to you, politely pretending they don’t know the crime you’re committing—but of course they do. The sound of paper ripping is a music that has them smiling into their mug.
“Stay safe out there,” Mg. Opal says when the last shred has fallen, and you’re re-chalking your climbing gloves, ready to begin your route in earnest.
“Always,” you promise.
It’s early morning yet. Just after six, and the world is still waking; you have plenty of time for your deliveries. Both the postal and personal.
Mg. Opal’s expression grows solemn as you deliver the latter: a message you’ll be taking to many of your peers today, both on and off your route as you can easily detour.
“I’ll be there,” they promise, offering a sad smile.
You return it. “Then I’ll see you tonight.”
Between now and then lies your route and your deliveries and the climb, hand over hand. You stand from the windowsill and step out into the skyways, the mail-carrier’s bells at your wrists and ankles chiming your beginning.
* * *
This early, the thin, rail-less staircases that run up the skyscrapers aren’t yet overrun. Only the usual early-morning crowd are out: you; old folk talking and swaying on the flexible gangways between scrapers; the earliest commuters; and backpacked kids, carefully holding the lifelines as they toddle down toward schools on the lower levels. A woman a few stories up sends out whites on a communal clothesline. Far below, the nets that catch suicides and accidents still haven’t been repaired, and the canals between scrapers run as ever with their deceptively fast currents.
For now, you could use the actual walkways, or even the paternoster lifts; it won’t get properly busy until eight. But you’ve always preferred to climb.
Your route takes you around a block of four skyscrapers: enormously tall and wide, with thin, dizzying skyways between them, the canals at their bottoms. You deliver mail by window because, as nonresidents, mail carriers are not permitted to use the internal walkways. You and the other carriers climb because the stairs, lifts, and gangways are, for most of the day, so crowded they’d put you impossibly behind schedule. As it is, the only reason you keep up is the unspoken strategy of all the best deliverers: you ditch the spam mail and catalogues first. Illegal, of course—but even if someone actually wanted them, no one would listen to complaints about lost mail.
The bulk bullshit you shred in the unlit mornings you sell to craft guilds and artists, to whoever wants or needs it. And with your lighter load, you skip huge swaths of rooms as you climb, make up the minutes. It’s a game to you these days—how much time can you save? How quickly can you work?
You have a lot of detours to make today. That little competition with yourself will make all the difference—even pressed for time, the climb yields to you.
* * *
Trembling in her cramped, sicksweat-smelling rooms, Mrs. O’Lahey continues to decline. You see her on Tuesdays.
When you step through her window, she turns to your tune with her usual weary welcome. She doesn’t have much energy for sight anymore, so the thin crack of her eyelids is all you’re getting, but you remember their color: a deep brown, near-black, that always made you feel like you were in on some joke. When she was on her feet she’d exchange homemade meat-pies, containers of potato-and-brisket, spoonfuls of hearty soups for your letters. Never a mail carrier herself, but her daughter was for a stint seven summers ago; she remembers the hunger all that climbing creates.
You alight on her floors, a soft jangle, move up to her bed with the quick steps that your tight schedule has taught you, and pull from your pack Mrs. O’Lahey’s usual: a letter, two late payment notices, and—in a cold-storage pack—her insulin.
She takes the envelopes first, as she usually does. She traces them with her frail brown hands: the soft edges, the points. Those plasticky viewing windows on the bills. Mrs. O’Lahey tucks those away and lingers, just for a moment, on the letter, pulling a finger across the penned address, that slight difference in texture. Her daughter’s handwriting, faraway.
Mrs. O’Lahey has never asked you to read them to her. You don’t know if she musters up energy enough to read them herself, or if maybe she doesn’t even want to. You’ve never offered. You don’t think you’d have the stomach to linger and be her daughter’s voice, even if you had the time.
“Your medicine.” You pull the last item from your pack. “I don’t have any new syringes for you this time—do you still have some left over?”
This, you can help her with. This is tangible, necessary. You know well survival.
Mrs. O’Lahey shakes her head. You pause.
She should have plenty of needles left. You only asked to be polite. “Okay. I can get some at the pharmacy for you, bring them back after my shift. Do you have doses left for today—?”
“No, sweet thing, don’t worry yourself about it,” Mrs. O’Lahey says, her voice a thin creak.
Again, you still. “Is there someone else helping you? In that case, I can just leave it in the fridge—”
“You know full well there isn’t.”
You do. Her husband died when they were in their forties, a work accident. Her son walked out a long time ago. Her daughter is cities away.
“I’ve been around quite long enough,” she says, clearly, without regret or compunction. “The grief I could hold, the diabetes I could deal with, the snatches of brightness—” and she smiles at you, damn her “—I could rejoice in. But this new sickness isn’t going away on its own, baby, and I don’t have the money to make it go away.”
Mrs. O’Lahey’s chest rises and falls in stuttering, labored motions. Her rooms putridly smell, with the laundry she cannot do and the trash she cannot take out and the sheets she cannot replace. You do for her what you can on Tuesdays, what moments of time you can make up in the climb, but it was never going to be enough.
“Your daughter?” you ask.
Mrs. O’Lahey turns away. She sighs. “Emilie is never going to come back to this city.”
You’ve been delivering less letters and more bills here, lately.
“Take your package with you, dear. You know plenty others who need it,” she murmurs.
In your mind you run over and over your monthly budget. There is no room for her price-gouged insulin, for a doctor’s expensive house-call, for diagnosis or treatment. Still, you look, and look.
Mrs. O’Lahey reaches out and finds your hand. She smooths her frail thumb over it, and then reaches further, and taps the ticking face of your watch.
“You have places to be, child,” she says. And you do.
One of the rooms on your route belongs to a thirty-something parent of two teenagers, one diabetic, the water often off but never the electricity.
You take Mrs. O’Lahey’s hand and squeeze it. You smooth her blankets. You don’t look over the room, at all the little comforts you don’t have time to fix.
“Have a nice day, Mrs. O’Lahey,” you say, ever polite.
She smiles. “You too, dear. Don’t take any risks on that route of yours.”
“I won’t,” you promise.
Mechanically, you replace the cold-storage pack in your carrying bag, and you buckle it up again, and you re-chalk your climbing gloves. And you go.
* * *
On the edges of the city, the skyscrapers get smaller, more single-purpose as they shrink. Here in the thick of it, though, everything gets jumbled together, and at the near-peak of one of your scrapers, a quartet of rooms was purchased six or seven years ago in the middle of a residential floor for a church.
It’s something Christian. You didn’t grow up religious, don’t know which denomination meets here, don’t particularly want to, besides. Although you don’t begrudge it, worship isn’t for you. You know how people like to use it.
The man who bought the rooms and manages the church also lives here, uses it as his home address; those letters he receives are a mixture of personal and professional. When you arrive with his mail, usually the church space is empty—you take care to come before or after the services, hand your bundle off, leave with the echoes of your bells ringing behind you. How he managed such acoustics in this converted space, you don’t know.
This morning, however, there are two people with Mr. Church. One, a strict, straight-backed woman, stands before the front altar. Next to her, a girl kneels: twenty-something, trembling, hands raised in something like a plea.
You recognize her. Not in that you know her—you’ve never seen her before in your life—but you recognize her. The slouch to hide her height, the hair only just short enough to still be a boy’s cut, the soft colors and cut of her clothes as close as she can get to femininity. The way her voice, understated, shudders as she recites some repentance under the sharp eye of her mother and Mr. Church.
Your bells give you away when you walk swiftly forward through one of the small pew aisles. Mr. Church and the mother both turn to look at you, and the girl stutters in her prayer. When she does, her mother places a rough hand on her shoulder, compelling her to start again. Her throat bobs, a nervous swallow that you can’t help watching.
You hand off Mr. Church’s mail without fanfare. He receives them as usual, sifts through the bundle and waves you to go; no missives today for you to bring back to the post office, it seems. Beside him, the mother looks away from you with a judgmental brow, returning her attention to the terrible, penitent image she has made of her daughter.
It would draw attention if you lingered. You do not want to cause any trouble for this girl, but you wish you could linger. Could slip her the password for your peer group, the address of the meeting place, your own name so she knows she isn’t alone.
As you walk away, you hear her voice break as she recites: “…and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…”
You look back for just a moment: at the curled grip the mother has on the girl’s shoulder, the sharp silhouette Mr. Church makes as he watches them both.
Deliver us from evil. Shit. You wish you could.
* * *
To the thirty-something parent: the insulin, too many bills, a promise of water jugs that one of your peers will bring later. To a woman in a corner room: a university acceptance letter over which she weeps. To a barely-eighteen first time renter: a threat from their landlord and whispered murmurs of their rights. To so many: letters and letters and letters, things you are not allowed to read, things you sometimes linger long enough to watch people’s eyes soften for. To so many: bills, notices, thinly veiled and bald threats.
You skip Mr. Liu’s window today. Every other Tuesday he isn’t home, and he doesn’t like you coming in when he isn’t there, even if you’re supposed to. His rooms are as close to the water as anyone’s can get—still far off, above the nets, but close enough the moisture molds his carpets anyway. In your carrying pack you have what is surely another evasion from his landlord; a dismissal of the problem, a refusal to solve it. Whatever they can come up with this time. Next Tuesday you’ll deliver Mr. Liu the held letter and stay long enough to listen to him bitch about it, drink the warm tea he offers, try not to think about what might be growing in it.
At a window one floor up from his, there is someone waiting for you: a child, perhaps around middle school age, clearly trying to look nonchalant. The window is closed as you approach, and when the kid notices you, they subtly gesture to your bells, glancing away and then back, raising a shh finger to their lips. Curious, you climb careful, quiet, and wait for them to open the window when you’re close enough.
The kid does, and then sticks their body halfway out so you won’t come in. Sharply, they mutter: “Do you have something for us with the school’s name on it?”
Your brow raises. You don’t know this family; whatever you have for them is as yet a mystery. “Let me in and I can actually look.”
The kid reluctantly scoots back, and pleadingly shushes you again. Amused, you duck in with care not to jingle.
The kid hovers by the doorway across the room, probably listening for their parents, and makes anxious glances towards you as you unbuckle your pack and kneel. Six things to be delivered: bill, bill, letter, bill, bank notice, and… yes, this has the name of a school on it. You recognize the formatting; a friend just got one of these for hir kid, and you were there to look over hir shoulder. It’s a report card.
“Is it there?” the kid asks, and you try very hard not to laugh.
You’re about to answer when clomping footsteps start down the hall, and the kid puffs up in alarm. You stand, pulling the items from your pack, allowing your bells to tinkle. Best not to surprise homeowners with your presence.
The child’s presumed father rounds a corner into the room and looks pleased to see you. He says, “Oh, very timely. I’m expecting a letter from my cousin…” while reaching to take what you hand over, absentmindedly ruffling the kid’s hair as he does. The kid seems not to notice, eyes glued to the envelopes.
“What’d you get, Dad?” they ask, sounding surprisingly composed. You’re impressed.
“Bunch of bullshit…” Mr. Dad mutters as he flicks through them, before brightening. “And that letter from Carlos!” He smiles, and looks up to thank you, and then walks off.
The kid is left standing there, surprised, before their head whips around to you. You’re already buckling back up, chalking your hands, putting one leg up on the windowsill—and on your way out, report card tucked safe in your pack, you catch the kid’s eye and wink.
Their little surprised smile lights you as you return to the climb.
* * *
Your pattern is regular: in the early morning, you begin at the canal-level rooms of your first scraper, and work your way up to the church. From there, you take the topmost gangways—always empty—to your second scraper and work your way down. Third up, fourth down. Stop by the postal office to drop off the outgoing at the end: a ritual. Your own rooms are midlevel, and your friends always wonder why you choose to do another hike upward at the end of your route, citing mail carrier insanity. Well, sue you. You like climbing—and you don’t even live in one of these four skyscrapers, so you’d have to trudge back a distance anyway.
Your first scraper is the only one that makes for a peaceful climb. By the second, the world is in full swing, and by the third you’ve forgotten the morning could be so quiet—it’s around 3:00 now, and everywhere there are bodies: crowded in the gangways, moving up and down stairs, dangerously crowding the paternosters. You alone evade them: postal service blue, bells singing a song that loses itself in the crowd, a bright spot against the slate-gray scrapers. You climb the buildings like a bug. Untethered, the handholds and ledges so kindly make themselves your skyway.
The next household on your route belongs to two people you know well. You’re not good friends with Marta and Sariha, closer to friends-in-law, but you cherish them still; together they run the food pantry that keeps your peers fed. Marta volunteers with the citizen-led public sanitation team. Sariha, a nurse, saved your fevered life, once.
The message you brought to Mg. Opal this morning is meant for Marta and Sariha as well. It, along with their actual mail, weighs on you as you climb through the window.
Marta is in the kitchen when you enter, and she leans back from the counter to see you, a wide smile on. She’s chopping something—tomatoes, onions, garlic. Prep for some delicious dish. Low music plays from a scratchy radio in the corner.
“Hey!” she says. “Come in. Sariha has a few things for you.” There’s always letters outgoing from these rooms. “Sariha!”
You pad into the kitchen, unbuckling your pack and swinging it around. There is just one small parcel attached to your pack today, and here you finally get to unstring it.
Marta washes her hands and steps over to receive it from you, along with a few envelopes. She purses her lips flicking through them before turning her attention to the package, and tugs it open just as Sariha comes in from the other room.
“Hello, nice to see you,” Sariha says, smiling, coming up to Marta’s shoulder to look down at the package.
The contents seem simple enough to you: little goodies, probably from a relative. Snack packs, a wrapped homemade something, et cetera. A note, and… oh, interesting: a decently-sized velvet jewelry box. Marta flips open the note, and Sariha the box.
And they both still.
You do too, unsure what they’re reacting to.
And then Sariha smiles so wide, and Marta bursts into tears, and the package is discarded on the counter as they embrace, both laughing, and your gaze falls to the now-visible words and the open box.
I apologize, the note says in a looping hand. I hope you will return to us. And nestled in the box is an ornate, jeweled necklace. A family heirloom.
You’ve heard about it secondhand—how Marta’s grandmother has long disapproved of her “lifestyle choices,” how she’d been disowned and disinherited. How there had been a tradition in Marta’s family that she was denied. How, for so long, Marta and the minority of her more accepting relatives have been fighting to get the others to understand.
Despite the extra news you carry for them, you smile, too.
“Congratulations,” you say, and Sariha beams at you, and Marta releases Sariha to wrap you up in a hug as well.
You end up leaving after a minute more of happy crying and chatter and Sariha remembering to grab her outgoing mail for you. They send you off with such joy that you can’t bear to deliver to them the message you promised you would.
You’ll stop by a mutual friend later on your route. You’re to pass the news on there as well; you’ll have them inform Marta and Sariha. It’ll be in a few hours, after the joy calms. No need to kill it so soon.
* * *
By eight o’clock, the sun’s mostly gone down, and all the outdoor lamps come on. They light the gangways and staircases almost regularly, and many windows remain bright, betraying the surface of the skyscrapers. Even so, the skyways are wide and tall and newly-empty, the day’s rush fallen to a deserted calm—the meager lamps cannot quite illuminate the full swaths of dark.
In the night, per regulation, you turn on the lights embedded in your uniform and make yourself a little beacon, lighting up your handholds. You don’t need to see—you could make your climbs by touch alone—but, you’ve learned, it’s better to have them on than risk some resident complaining about you stealing into their rooms in the dark like a burglar.
That won’t be an issue for this next place, though. This window is alive with dancing lights of many colors. Through the glass you hear music and many voices crowing a sweet cacophony: a celebration.
At the window, you knock. The music inside isn’t quite loud enough to drown you out and a guest opens the way for you, grinning a woozy hello; they’re happily intoxicated with something. For their amusement, you bow an exaggerated greeting, and they giggle before waving you on.
The rooms have been decked out: they’re draped with tapestries and hangings, strung with lights. Extra furniture has been set up as well: folding chairs and tables, some decorated, some defaced. Surfaces are piled with grazing snacks and scattered board games; one is covered with drinks, another a buffet-line of dinner food. Thirty people at least are here, mingling and imbibing, all orbiting a little couch in the center. There, three people rosy with happiness sit squished together.
You can’t help but smile, seeing them. They’re all short-haired, one dimpled, two plump and one thin, all tall with so much leg—and those legs are angled together, the three of them turned into each other, some sense of privacy between them even as they chat with guests. The leftmost of them wears a ball gown; the middle is draped like a fancy vampire; the right dresses in a simple tux. Looking around, all the guests are similarly attired: they wear variations of formal and eclectic and intricate that make you think the assigned dress was something you never wear anywhere else.
The three central figures are clasping hands. On each sparkles a gleaming ring.
Ah, you recognize with delight. A wedding.
The kind they won’t officiate in a church, that few invite their family to. The crowd here is so many young faces, all different: a parade of friends and friends-in-law. In the corner, observing with a melancholy pride, is one lone mother.
You could leave your delivery by the window, but you want to hand it off personally. You want to meet them. So you slip through the crowd, bells adding to the noise, and head for the newlyweds.
Tux sees you first, and must squeeze Vampire’s hand, and Vampire Ballgown’s, because they look up at you in that order. And like you had with that girl in the church, you see it when they recognize you: their wide grins, their welcome. Vampire has no free hand to reach you with, so Ballgown does it for them: she reaches, and you take, and she pulls you closer, makes you lean down, and kisses your cheek. Tux leans over to do the same to your other.
“Congratulations,” you murmur, squeezing Ballgown’s hand and returning the kiss to Tux. To Vampire, you squeeze their knee with your free hand—leaving a swipe of chalk behind, oops—before pulling back, unbuckling your pack and swinging it around. Carefully, you pluck out their things: some university correspondence, some personal letters, a bank statement.
You do not withdraw the angry eviction notice marked for them.
Tux takes the lot and dumps it in Vampire’s lap, and Vampire wiggles their hands out of their spouses’ holds to reach out and hug you.
“Nice to meet you,” they laugh into your ear.
Before you leave, you press a little paper into Tux’s hands: your peers’ meeting place, the password. They hug and kiss you again and tell you their names, and you tell them yours, and you promise to meet again. And then you buckle your pack back on and slip away, farewelling guests as they greet you, returning to the open window, escaping through it. You echo out into the skyway, and behind you the window slides shut, celebration hiding back inside.
You’ll bring the notice by tomorrow on your route. This is an initial notice; they have a good chunk of time to respond to it, so one day’s delay won’t hurt. The newlyweds should have this night unharried.
* * *
It’s just about ten at night when you finish your route. In the darkness, the canal swooshes, and above you the skyway is lit intermittent with promise of the steep climb back up. This area’s postal office is a few blocks off from your little quad of skyscrapers, so you head there diagonally: up and over, up and over. So far into the evening, the walkways are empty, so you give your muscles a break and take them where you can.
You’re very near to the office when you see them: two figures on a gangway further along, shadowed silhouettes. One is an enforcement officer—anyone could recognize the shape of that hat and belt—and the other is a passerby. You watch as the officer catches the other man’s wrist. An aggressive altercation begins.
You know exactly what will happen next. Your body stills, afraid.
And then you force yourself to move: you dart along the gangways as fast as possible without sending them swinging, zigzagging across the skyway for lack of any central bridges, trying to get close enough to see their faces, be an adequate witness—
But you are too far away.
The enforcement officer, in the dark of night, and with lit windows shuttering around him as onlookers in their rooms willingly turn away, uses his grip to tug and shove the man over the edge of the gangway.
You’re only a few levels up from the canals. There are no bridges below to catch him.
The suicide nets here still haven’t been repaired. They do not catch him.
You are still too far away to make out either of their faces. You cannot catch him.
The man hits the water with a distant splash, and the officer is already moving on, too quickly for you to reach before he disappears into a scraper, authorized to enter when you are not. Your hands white-knuckle on the taut gangway ropes. In and out you breathe, and breathe.
And you keep walking.
Just nearby, the windchimes hung outside the post office harmonize merrily with your bells. They do nothing to soothe you.
You will report this. Without names—even with them—none of the right people will believe you. Still, you will report it. Sharing news is what you are good for.
Straight-backed, you head toward the post office to drop off the outgoing. And you apologize in your head to the murdered, for the justice you cannot alone deliver.
* * *
Your work is done, but your day is not.
Tonight’s last destination is your peers’ meeting place—a humble two rooms, community-owned, used for small meetings and large gatherings alike. Tonight, the small meeting areas have been broken down and pushed aside, temporary walls folded back, folding chairs arranged in neat rows, standing room left behind them. A makeshift meeting hall.
You’re a late arrival. The place is already crowded with murmuring people, solemnity keeping voices low. Slipping through the fifty, maybe sixty community members, you head for the front of the room, and on your way see so many familiar faces: Mg. Opal, a few friends, Marta and Sariha—good, the message was passed on—and even a few of the lone wolves who don’t come out often. It’s a good turnout, you think, but the thought doesn’t warm you.
At the front of the room, the unofficial community leaders stand bent together, conversing in hushed tones. Mischa is the one who notices your approach. He presses his lips together and draws you into the huddle, clasping your arm briefly, a wordless I’m glad you’re here.
“Any news?” he asks, quiet.
“Another murdered by an officer. Name unknown.” But not for long, you hope. Your peers will spread word and find out if anyone is missing.
“What happened?” another of the people in the huddle asks.
“He was forced into the canal.” I saw it myself, you don’t say. With you, the message could have come from anyone.
Someone else curses. Mischa bows his head.
“We’ll mention him. Anything else?” he asks.
Something happier. “A wedding. And Marta has been re-recognized.”
You share as many details as you have. The leaders bend together again, murmuring, Mischa slotting the news into the speech they had already prepared. Moments later they are peeling away, finishing preparations to begin the meeting, and you move to join the audience—but Mischa stops you.
“I wanted to ask,” he says, uncharacteristically hesitant. “Do you want to give a speech? Or anything? A eulogy, a few words?”
Your throat closes. You had hoped he wouldn’t ask you this.
A beat passes.
“No,” you say. You’d try to leave again if Mischa didn’t have a gentle hand on your arm.
His brow creases. “Are you sure? He was your—”
“I’m sure.”
You couldn’t. This is something you cannot deliver. You would crumble if you did.
Mischa lets go of your arm.
“I miss him too,” he says, soft, so understanding. And then he lets you turn away and disappear.
You find your place in the back as the meeting begins. You settle into yourself. You place the murdered man and Mrs. O’Lahey and him back into their box, and you shut it. And you listen to the pretty words Mischa strings.
“We’re here tonight to honor the life of our trans brother—”
“—call you to act: we’re holding a demonstration—”
“—another of us killed tonight—”
“—would anyone like to say a few words?”
His picture is blown up at the front of the stage, and you try, try not to look at him. You try not to listen to the meeting—the closest thing he’ll get to a funeral service—with too much of yourself.
Your best friend has been dead for three days.
* * *
It’s one in the morning by the time the meeting breaks up and people start to leave. Much had been discussed, and so many people stood to speak, to say something about him, and about the world you live in, and to share the good things that persist even despite the hardship. You clutch close those pieces: the engagements, the newcomers, the accomplishments. Legislation passed. Tragedies subverted.
You will be dead tired when you wake up at six to get back to work, but you had to be here.
Mischa catches you before you can slip out of the window.
“Wait,” he says, jogging up, and you curse your bells that caught his attention.
“What?”
“Just—wait a second.” He reaches out as if to tug you back from the window, but he doesn’t touch you, and you don’t move. “Do you need anything?”
You shutter. “No, I’m alright.”
Mischa frowns. He opens his mouth, and then pauses, and says: “I wish you would stop carrying everything yourself.”
Bitterly, you smile. “That’s my job.”
Silence. Mischa seems to want to protest, but is without the words, and you aren’t going to offer any.
“Can I hug you at least?” he asks weakly.
He reads the answer on your face.
“Okay—okay.” He sighs. “Then, I have something else for you to deliver, okay?”
You turn fully to him, taking back the leg you’d started to swing out of the window.
“When you get home, deliver yourself tea. Or take a hot bath. Skive off work, even.” Mischa bites the inside of his cheek and searches your eyes. “Take care of yourself, okay?”
You put on your work smile for him. Sure. You can be a mail carrier for Mischa, in this moment. You’re even still in uniform.
“Okay,” you say.
* * *
The skyways are very silent at this time of night, in this part of the city.
There are of course the few night wanderers—those tortured poets, houseless folk, insomniacs. In other areas, the scraper-tops are lit up, raucous with nightlife. Everywhere, there are bars and little libraries open into the wee hours, their soft lights beckoning. You don’t pass any as you make your way back to your rooms. It’s deliberate—you don’t want to pass any, don’t want to be tempted inside to distraction, or comfort.
You still have Mischa’s last missive to carry tonight: to deliver or not, at your discretion. As is your unspoken duty. This is what you do.
Your rooms are small and simply ornamented and, when you finally arrive, the lamp you’d lit early in the morning welcomes you. Your bells harmonize with it, music-and-light, and their little song signals a workday done. Another six-to-ten in your pocket, two out of three days a week finished. Hurrah.
Off come your climbing shoes, your uniform, your bells. They fall in the kitchen, the hallway, the threshold; you discard them as you walk. By the time you reach your bedroom, you are left with just your underwear, and the ache.
Swaying, you consider your last delivery.
Tea—too long a wait, too many steps. A bath is impossible; you don’t have a bathtub. And taking off work? Hah. You’re not going to do that.
Mischa didn’t mean it so literally, you know. But it’s two in the morning. You have work in four hours.
This you don’t deliver.
Charlie M. Case is a fiction author from Southern California, currently based in New England. Case has prior been published in Sublunary Review, Apricity Press, and Long River Review; more of Case’s work can be found at https://cmcase.org/.