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Set your story in a post office.

Posted in Fiction on Aug 18, 2023

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✍️ 36 stories

Spatial Parcel and Communication Exchange Office (S.P.A.C.E Office)

Submitted to Contest #212

Welcome, new employee, to the Spatial Parcel and Communication Exchange Office, or S.P.A.C.E. Office, for short. Here at S.P.A.C.E. Office, we take pride in what we do. This isn’t just some post office from the pre-Space Age, where parcels only had to move across land and water of a single planet in order to reach its destination, but rather across alternate realities, cosmic layers, universes, and even realms. With technology advanced and relations between dimensions the best they’ve been in eons, our employees’ jobs of ensuring corresponde...

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Post Office

Submitted to Contest #212

Post Office “Where am I?” Frankie Lewis asked as he opened his eyes only to feel a wave of dizziness hit him like a hammer causing his stomach contents to lurch. He squeezed them shut again hoping everything would stay where it should be. “Well, you're here Frankie.” A familiar man said that caused him to slowly open his eyes to see who it was. “Gary, what the hell is happening?”  He said as he looked up at the other man, a thick bearded white haired fella that he knew from the Post Office that dressed up as Santa Clause every year...

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of branches and fire extinguishers

Submitted to Contest #212

Ruth taps a sticker onto the top of a brown box, one practically identical to the thousands she's stickered before and completely unassuming.It's important work, work that keeps a whole country moving. Grandmas sending strange trinkets to grandkids a thousand miles away, letters sent by dramatic lovers, the occasional small business owner pretending they aren't selling those candles they're shipping to avoid paying extra. Ruth has seen all kinds of people ship all kinds of things in her forty-some-odd years at her sleepy little post off...

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Care Package

Submitted to Contest #212

This story deals with the loss of a child during the Covid 19 epidemic. Right smack in the middle of the summer, I walked down the main drag in town, up the cement stairs, and between the Doric columns of the grand entrance to the Post Office. It made me feel fancy for some reason even though I looked disheveled, my mousy brown hair pulled back in a cheap claw clip from the Dollar store. I dragged an overstuffed garbage bag through the narrow doorway, hoping that there would be a free kiosk to claim to dump and organize my wares. I a...

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Ms. Volunteer

Submitted to Contest #212

Living overseas can be a challenge. Especially when you are living in a country that you are not familiar with for three years because your husband is serving in the armed forces. Ms. Elena knew what she signed up for when she walked down the aisle five years previously in a small church just outside her hometown. This is the military life, and I will do everything that I can to support our family while we are here.  Ms. Elena loved challenges and she also loved to help people. There were many times that she would go out of her way to...

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New Start, Old Wounds

Submitted to Contest #212

"Supplies delivered to Montreal, check. Upcoming food delivery to Manitoba has been noted. Plane repaired?"  Chuck looked out his office window, out upon Lake Superior, the snow falling gently down from the dark clouded sky. His seaplane was parked by the dock. He smiled at the sight of his business partner, Ryan, who was down by the plane attempting to fix the engine.  "Attempted," he said with a slight chuckle. Chuck had earned a name for himself around Copper Harbor as the town supplier and local mailman, or as the childre...

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Frank's Last Letter

Submitted to Contest #212

You're bored, living the same day over and over again, until all of a sudden you're leaving the life you knew behind. One year ago, I made an impulse decision to buy a one-way ticket to Pennsylvania. I needed to leave Arizona and leave my life with Brian behind."Happy one year! Natalie shouts at me as she jumps up from behind the service desk. Today was December 21st, making that my one-year anniversary working as a postal office clerk. Natalie is my co-worker and one of the only people I have talked to since moving to this small town in Pen...

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Kenneth's day.

Submitted to Contest #212

One Tuesday morning Kenneth Wilson came to the realization that he despised people. He was about to open the doors of the small post office when he glanced up at the informal queue of waiting people. Each wore the same look of quiet impatience. It was a look that said he was the sole reason for the delay to their self-important lives. He stopped, key paused halfway to the lock, and smiled. The squat, balding man standing in front responded with a puzzled frown. For the briefest of moments Kenneth considered not unlocking the door, if only to...

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Unexpected Delivery

Submitted to Contest #212

In today’s world of technology and so much of our communication being via e -mail or texts, most of us, myself included, find it unnecessary to go the post office. We all know we have them, after all, our mail must come from somewhere and we see the mail carriers out doing their deliveries, sometimes even on Sundays. Depending on where a person lives, they may get their mail in a mailbox in front of their house, but, in my case, my mail is delivered to a box assigned to me according to my address, in a cluster of boxes at the end of the stre...

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Going Postal

Submitted to Contest #212

Going PostalIt wasn’t Mattie’s fault.Put it down to a chain of events. Circumstances. An uneven floor; a wobbly cart; a gap under a cabinet. Perhaps slipshod maintenance, or a less-than-diligent cleaning crew.Mattie was a temporary employee. A college student, home for the holiday break. His job was to roll a canvas cart full of mail from the receiving room to the sorting center, and it was not his fault that the cart had a wonky wheel. Certainly it wasn’t Mattie’s fault that the wonky wheel caught on a floorboard which sat just a bit t...

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His Undelivered Letter

Submitted to Contest #212

Sensitive content warning: Implied abuse and alcoholism, blackmail, mentions of homophobia, mentions of historical events, issues with mental illness & suicide. “Hey, Martin? Can you start sorting through these packages? The next shipment goes out this afternoon.”  I glanced over at the annoyingly large stack of packages towering over the office, then at the woman who had just spoken to me. Twenty years at this office, never learnt her name.  As for the packages, I never did enjoy seeing the pile grow. It always simply bec...

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What Had, What Has, I Have

Submitted to Contest #212

Magnus struggled with the buttons on his new vest. Button, then unbutton, button again and then undo. The slip and thread of the wooden discs moving between the fabric became too difficult for him to be effortlessly indecisive as his hands were sweaty in the heat of September.He had figured that the colder months would have allowed him to wear thicker clothes, but every year, like the ones before, September held onto that lingering touch of sunshine that was more annoying than ever. He loved autumn and could not wait for the struggle to brea...

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A Tomorrow Letter

Submitted to Contest #212

John Mayors fumbled with a book about dolphins and their relationships, a chocolate muffin from yesterday and a giant spiders nest of keys in the other hand as he arrived at his destination. A charming green post office door that had been painted a vast number of times throughout the years since its inception more than a hundred years ago, which had created a moon-like surface if one looked closely. Postman Mayors rarely looked closely. As for anyone, looking at the moon up close for the first time is a mind boggling experience, for the secr...

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A Goosey Gander by Caitlin E. Elia

Submitted to Contest #212

To Chaddeus P. Waddlebury, Hovering Goose of Letters, Pixie Parcel Division, On this day, I find myself in a rather peculiar state of mind. It could be attributed to the recent arrival of my newest son, a robust little lad who's but the size o’ your thumb. I realize you lack thumbs, but I know you catch my drift.  Then again, it might also be the consequence of a bout with fae froth hooch from the night prior. Anyway, I require your assistance with just one delivery for today. Please proceed to the customary collection point to re...

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The Letter

Submitted to Contest #212

The Letter By Andy Pearson © 2023 Joshua Weston moved the cane to his left hand and pushed on the door with his right. It swung open slowly. The cowbell hung above the door clunked and clanked as the door struck it. Getting his balance, he shifted the cane back to his right hand and stepped into the lobby of the post office. Walking past the rows of tan mailboxes, each with a little window showing the edges of the mail inside, he made his way to box one hundred and forty. Looping his cane handle over his blue jacket-clad arm, he reac...

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