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Return to Sender

A short story

By John DodgePublished 3 years ago 6 min read
2
Return to Sender
Photo by Lucrezia Carnelos on Unsplash

All that Garrett could do was stare from where he stood in the open doorway, unsure of whether he should enter the room fully or turn and run. Running wasn't going to help. This was already the last place he could think of to run away to. The old garage was mostly abandoned, but his uncle still owned it and no one outside of the family even knew where it was. Except the package already waiting for him in the middle of the room when he arrived.

It was a week ago when he first laid hands on it. There was nothing special about it at all, just a simple box in simple brown paper no bigger than a decently sized book, addressed to "Sender" in neat handwriting. Should that have been the first sign? Of course not. The first sign was before Garrett even saw the package. The first sign was when he couldn't remember the face of the very insistent person who dropped the package of as soon as they had left the room. Or maybe the blinding hum that had replaced every word they had spoken to him when he tried to recall it.

It was Garrett's job as a private courier to deliver things quickly and quietly, and without asking too many questions. This certainly wasn't his first choice in careers, but after having sold drugs in college and worked as a process server afterwards, it seemed like the perfect route to take when he was done getting car doors slammed on him by local politicians and corporate stooges. Nothing that could be considered trafficking, nothing that could put him on any sort of registration list. He always got to see the contents. That kept things small, simple, and honest. It turned regular clients with documents to deliver across town into even better regulars who couldn't be bothered to make the exact same trek for good blow.

Garrett didn't know what was inside that box. He didn't want to know.

He knew that when he delivered it to its first address, he spent forty minutes just finding the place. He spent twenty minutes looking for the door when he found it. He spent hours wondering how the building didn't have a door until it did. Garrett had left the package on the doorstep after loudly knocking and announcing himself. He had hoped that no one heard him. When he got back to his office he cried, and he didn't know why. Then he saw it, right back on the table where it had begun. That brown paper package. "Return to Sender" emblazoned on top in bright red ink. It didn't make sense. There wasn't enough time. No one else had been there, or here, and Garrett had come straight back after making the delivery.

Garrett looked at the package. The address had changed. He didn't recognize it, and he wasn't going to look it up. Garrett left without looking at the package any further. He was going to go somewhere else, anywhere else, and he was going to let whatever was happening stop on its own. It was a dream, or drugs, or a vivid series of hallucinations brought on by a tumor that doctors would find lodged in his brain after he passed out in public somewhere. For now he was going to go home, leaving the package there on the table, or on the doorstep where he had previously, wherever it actually was. Garrett was going to go home, and if he didn't die from a madness induced heart attack, he would wake up in the morning and things would be normal again.

Things weren't normal. When he finally settled in on his couch and caught his breath the thrumming began. It was like hearing that person's non-words again, this time shrieking at him. He couldn't lay down, he couldn't sit comfortably. He had to get up, and when he did he saw it there on his own God damn kitchen counter. The address he didn't recognize earlier had been his. How didn't he recognize his own address? How the fuck-

So Garrett ran.

He had spent the better part of his entire day running from one place to another, and now there was nowhere left to run to. There wasn't any escaping it. Every time he saw the package, the mere thought of escaping it made the address change to some illegible script that was always going to be wherever Garrett ran to next. And every time he saw the package, its arrival was heralded by that horrible sound. Garrett knew it was a curse. Some wicked thing that some wicked person pawned off on an unwitting courier. It had to be an accident. Garrett had never done anything so vile as to deserve this.

Garrett couldn't run. He could not escape it. He could not run it over with his car or send it away in a taxi. He could only feel the thrumming ease as he consciously considered what might be waiting for him beneath the cheap brown paper and grotesquely neat handwriting. Garrett knew it was time to open the box. He had become resigned, painfully, resentfully so, to finishing this one way or another.

Garrett finally walked into the room and closed the door behind him, at no point taking his eyes off of the package sitting on the floor. Calmly, almost sternly, he picked it up off the ground and walked towards the back of the garage. Up the stairs to the loft office he went, and through it up some more stairs to the roof. Garrett wanted to see the sunset one more time, and he wanted whatever had brought him this wretched thing to see it come to an end. The thrumming came back as he made his way outside. Small waves of it in the back of his mind, trying to drown out any thought other than discovering the contents of the package. Garrett was ready. He stood not two steps from the edge of the roof, his hands shaking in the last glimmer of daylight. The thrumming was more intense now. It was violent. Garrett wasn't going to let some wicked fucking thing be the end of him. The sound was so intense that it had brought blood forth from Garrett's ears in crimson streams down the sides of his face. The pavement below after he threw himself headfirst from the roof of the building brought blood forth from everywhere else.

You can find John Dodge writing about comic books and other nerd shenaniganery over on CBR.com. You can also find him on social media on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, as well as posting daily nonsense over here. If you liked this short story, let him know by clicking the heart below, or by sending a tip right here on Vocal.

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About the Creator

John Dodge

He/Him/Dad. Writing for CBR daily. Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for assorted pop culture nonsense. Posting the comic book panels I fall in love with daily over here. Click here if you want to try Vocal+ for yourself.

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