Post E

“I need to send this.” The young man took a package from inside his heavy suncoat and put it on the counter. It was wrapped in yellowed newspaper tied with chord made from discarded plastic packaging, gathered and spun back into utility by enterprising street vendors.

 “Ok, if you want me to address it for you that’ll be an extra ten pounds,” said the Postmaster, his voice a tin-can echo from behind his bulletproof window.

“Ten! It won’t be that much to send it.”

“Rules, I’m afraid. You should address it yourself, if you can. Or, you could always speak to one of the letter writers outside. I can’t officially recommend anyone, but Hannah is usually around at this time of day and she sometimes has pens for sale too. She’ll address something for a reasonable price.”

“No. I’m not queuing again. I’ve been here since dawn.” The young man looked at his feet and fished in the pockets of his suncoat. “I’ll just pay the tenner.” He retrieved a crumpled ball of paper receipts and crude notes and teased it apart on the counter until he found George VII, creased and folded into no more than a forehead with a beard. He flattened out the ten-pound note that would have paid for that night’s food and water.  

“Ok, put the parcel in the drawer. What’s the address?” said the Postmaster unclipping an expensive refillable pen from a chain around his neck.

“It’s Mikey4564@freemail.org.”  

“C’mon, son. You know those don’t work anymore. I need a real address. Door number, tower, street, town, code would be good.”

“I don’t know it.”

“Then I’m sorry, son. Can’t help you. Some of the freelance bike couriers might take the job on if you can give a verbal description of the address, but our riders need a real address. It’s the rules. There’ll be a few Freewheelers hanging around outside. They aren’t cheap though.”

The young man snatched up his parcel and shoved it back into his heavy vinyl coat. He snapped his UV visor down over his face and hammered the counter with a grimy fist. “This is bullshit!” The angry words fogged up the inside of his visor and he staggered half blind into the customer behind him before storming out of the Post Office past the queue that snaked out into the hot midday street. He stomped past the letter writers’ pitches and hurried through the circling pack of Freewheelers who waited for jobs on the dusty road, without stopping to speak to any of them.  

The queue edged onwards. Always moving, never shortening. A worm pulsing on a tectonic treadmill, baking in the heat until the head disappeared into the grey shade of the Post Office. Inside the room, the last twenty feet of human beings, chained together by stamina and manners, passed by walls thick with layers of advertisements and notices. The space was dominated by large dog-eared map showing the official delivery routes of the Post Office peloton and the associated charges. The arteries of communication spread out from the Post Office at the heart of the map, cutting through coloured zones indicating an increase price proportionate to distance of carriage.   

A slowly turning ceiling fan stirred the soupy air, succeeding only in amusing a few zipping bluebottles who possessed more energy than the fan and the inhabitants of the room it failed to cool. Under the fan a trestle table holding a banquet of undelivered mail. A pyramid of poorly addressed parcels surrounded by a miscellany of misdirected letters. Some were for addresses that had existed when the peloton set out for them, only to be dismantled or re-zoned by the junta before they arrived. Some just bore insufficiently accurate descriptions of the abodes of intended recipients, either scribbled by the semi-literate sender or dictated to a letter writer. Some lacked specificity; To Dave, near the top of his block, near the market. Some covered the packaging like a Yakuza tattoo, indecipherable despite their prolixity. Some still bore the old addresses from before the systems collapsed and the records were lost, in the hope that Bigmick66@yahoo.net or Amybadger91@AOL.co.uk would recognise themselves as intended recipients. All hopeless. The pile grew faster than the queue.  

The analogue clock clunked the minutes away, the big hand moving several times more quickly than the queue.  

A chorus of tuts and huffs rolled into the room, a peristaltic wave carrying passive aggression along the queue in the wake of a young man in an improvised mask. He ignored the seething queue and stamped up to the counter. Through holes poked in a carrier bag he glared at the Postmaster who stood impassively behind his window. After an awkward pause the young man raised his arm, hand still deep in the pocket of his vinyl suncoat, holding an object that he pointed at the Postmaster.  

“Give me all of today’s takings! Everything! Now!”

“This glass is bulletproof, son,” said the Postmaster, the tinny echo of his voice making him seem even less anxious than he looked, leaning heavily on his counter, pen swinging on its chain.

“Give me everything, now! Or… Or I’ll start shooting customers!”

“It’s a while since these types of shenanigans had much effect. You’re not even the first this week. Nah. You’re either just pretending you’ll shoot them with a real gun, or, you really want to shoot them, but you’ve only got a pretend gun. I think it’s the latter, and either way, we’re fine. Well, except you, who just pushed to the front of a queue of several hundred British people.”

The eyes in the ragged plastic holes moistened. “It’s real!”

The old lady at the front of the queue stepped up to the counter between the young man and the window.

“Good afternoon, Michael. I’d like to send this first class, please,” she said to the Postmaster, putting a neatly wrapped and addressed package into his drawer.

“Certainly, Agnes. That will be eight seventy-five. The next peloton leaves at three.”

“I swear to God!” yelled the young man, his voice breaking.

Agnes tutted and looked over her shoulder to stare a hex onto the young man.    

The Postmaster looked up from stamping Agnes’ parcel. “Son, if I hit the alarm button the security team will be here before you can say unwise decision and they’ve got more batons than questions. You can argue about Schrodinger’s peashooter with them if you like? You’ll be biomass before the end of my shift. That’s if the people in the queue don’t tear you apart first.”

“But, I…” The boy’s arm dropped to his side. “Shit.”

“All of this silliness because you couldn’t send your package?” said the Postmaster.

Agnes shook her head and shared a loaded look with the next man in the queue who returned her shake of the head and looked pityingly at the panicking boy.

“That wasn’t me! You don’t know who I am.”

“You won’t want the tenner back that you left on the counter then? Give him this and show him where the door is, will you, Agnes?” said the Postmaster slipping the crumpled tenner under his window.

“If you can keep a civil tongue in your head then I might be able to help you, son,” said Agnes, turning from the counter, her business concluded. She held out the note to the slump shouldered young man who took it with mumbled thanks. She linked his arm and pulled the plastic mask from his sweaty face. She walked him back to the door under the dagger stares of the queue. “Now what was it you were trying to send?”

“It’s the new Rolling Stones DVD. It’s my great uncle’s birthday.”

“Well, it just so happens I’m a fan. Let’s see if we can’t go and negotiate with one of these nice Freewheelers. Now, dry your eyes and put your UV visor on, there’s a good lad.”