Special Delivery
The letter arrived on a Thursday. I remember because the Beaufords had already brought their trash down for pickup the next day. It annoyed me, how far in advance they brought their can down. How it always seemed to take up just a little too much driveway, always seemed to be blocking the entrance to my own.
I remember being annoyed that day, too. So yeah, it was a Thursday.
I didn’t notice the letter at first. It was buried beneath a mailer adorned with a large and vicious looking chainsaw on the front announcing the presence of a tree company in the neighborhood next week. Something about clearing fallen trees from a recent storm and would I like them to give me a quote?
I flipped it over. No company name. Just the oversized chain saw. No return address. No address at all, I noticed. The only way this mailer had made it into my mailbox was if someone had delivered it by hand sometime during the night.
I glanced at my barren yard. I had no trees. I barely had any grass. Why would someone have deliberately sent me this mailer?
And when, exactly, had it stormed?
It hadn’t. Not in months. I was certain of it. Just last night, in fact, the weatherman was bemoaning our extended state of drought, cautioning that water restrictions were likely on the horizon.
The mailer felt heavy in my hand, the teeth of the saw growing larger. I flipped it to the other side.
And that’s when I noticed the letter.
Unlike the mailer, this document had clearly arrived by postal carrier. There was the stamp, the American flag waving cheerfully at me from the upper right corner. There was my address lined up in neat print across the center of the envelope. And directly above, there was my name.
Except it was wrong. The name. The letter had been addressed to the wrong me, the old me.
The real me.
The one no living soul knew existed.
The mail dropped to the sidewalk, the growl of the chainsaw chasing me as I raced down the street.