She
met the mailman at the doorstep, wearing a colorful floral dress she
always remarked was her favorite. The lush green grass was bright
thanks to the cloudless blue skies above. Birds chirped and danced on
branches of nearby trees, leading the sounds of summer in a lovely
way.
“Expecting
something,” asked the mailman, already knowing the answer. He
handed over the brown package and was met with a smile from ear to
ear.
“I
wish I knew what was inside here that would give you a smile like
that,”he remarked.
“Well
if ya did that you’d be breaking the law,” she said as she turned
and walked towards the door, taking one last glance at the outside
before stepping through the door. The light aluminum screen door
latched shut behind her on its own as she tapped over to the kitchen
table.
She
looked down at the package that was addressed to her in sloppy black
ink. “Sarah Atchinson,” followed by her physical address. She
picked at her lunch before reaching for the scissors, opening the
package very gently, as if there were rare historical documents
inside.
When
she pawed through it, she immediately clutched a shirt and brought it
to her nose, inhaling deeply. Sarah placed the first one neatly over
the kitchen chair and dug through the rest of the package. Inside was
a letter and another t shirt. The first shirt was the polar opposite
of the first. The first was red and soft as velvet, the second navy
blue.
It
was the first package she’d ever received from him. She adored how
he would go out of his way to make her happy. The small things were
the biggest, and cliches were cliches for a reason. As she walked the
now empty brown paper packaging to the trash can to toss it out,
something else dropped on the floor in front of her feet.
As
life would have it, it rolled beyond the trash can and turned into
more of a project than a surprise. It was becoming a task now to move
the can, search around kitchen counters and scope out near the
refrigerator before clutching it with two fingers.
She
looked at it and chuckled, not knowing the meaning behind it. The
situation ended up turning into a semi-difficult surprise, worth it
in the end. She walked back over to the table and spread open the
note with each end bending a corner of it, with the eyeball finger
puppet on her index knuckle.
She
scanned the note before reading it in detail, searching for a meaning
to the small gift. As she reached the end she noticed something
underlined at the bottom, jumping her eyes to it immediately.
“PS,
I included a set of Oobie eyeballs for the times I can’t look out
for you.
ALWAYS
GOT MY BASES COVERED”
Grabbing for her phone, she
unlocked it and text him smiling emoji’s, adding how funny it was.
His sense of humor was always so charming, it was a big reason she
was felt the way she did about him. A small calico cat rubbed up
against her legs, perhaps telling her that he was fresh out of food.
She looked over to his food area by the pantry and noticed that he
had both food and water. As she stepped out of the backdoor, she
kicked her shoes off and walked barefoot to her backyard tree house.
The feeling of walking barefoot through the soft blades of grass was
like heaven to her. It just felt so freeing.
She reached for the first
2x4 rung and placed her weight on it, which wasn’t much, and
climbed up one by one. When she crawled into the nest, she scooched
over to her corner, as she called it, and opened a book. As she was
flipping through the pages of Warm Bodies, she felt her phone vibrate
and checked it with excitement, but it was only an email
notification.
She had read this book
before, many times over, but it was the only book up here. She picked
up her phone from between her legs, still wearing the Oobie
eyeballs. Sarah put her finger on top of the book and snapped a
picture and sent it to him. The fact that he hadn’t read the
previous messages yet wasn’t too concerning, as he was at work for
another twenty minutes.
Sprawling out on the queen
sized bed in the middle of the tree house, she thumbed to a favorite
part of the book. After reading for a few minutes she became tired
and laid it down beside her.
She woke up thirty minutes
later and reached for her phone.
No notifications.
Odder still, the messages
remained unread.
She climbed down the wooden
ladder and towards her shoes and eventually into the vintage stone
house. Shutting the sliding screen door behind her, she again walked
over to the letter. In her rush to send a text that was never read,
she had forgotten to read the rest of it besides the silly punchline.
Starting from the beginning,
she read each word until she reached the middle of the page. She
stepped back a bit and read through it again. Re-reading the fucking
sentence over and over again.
“I’m no good for you, I
wish you’d see that.” Finally, she allowed herself to continue
further.
“You’ve been asking for
space without saying a word.”
She walked over to the
kitchen chair and then into her bedroom, removing her dress. She
tossed on the red shirt and stepped outside, barefoot and towards the
tree house.
