Woodbury-NamelessNamelessKatherine WoodburyClocktower BooksCopyright © 2004 by Katherine WoodburyHorror. 2145 words long. enShort Storytext/xml

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Nameless
by Katherine Woodbury
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Horror

Clocktower Books
www.clocktowerbooks.com

Copyright ©2004 by Katherine Woodbury

NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

Day in, day out, she sat in the front office where the elevator doors open and shut, and the creature came and stared at her from the mail chute.

The chute belonged to the building. Her company occupied three of the eight floors, modern looking suites with gray-green carpet and half-dead potted plants. Only she remembered to water them.

The mail chute was old, a long glassed-in box that ran all eight floors. People dropped letters down now and again. She had become accustomed to the whitish gleam at the corner of her eye, the faint thud as the envelope bounced against the chute's sides.

The creature's whiteness hovered. And it had made no sound except to draw breath.

The breathing attracted her attention. Behind the buzz of the computer, the whir of the space heater and the clank of the elevator a different, fainter rhythm developed. She found herself breathing in tune to it and raised her head.

The creature had eyes as blue as the blue of hospital gloves. It was too big to fit through the mail slot. She ignored it.

It tossed a letter out of the slot. It glided across the room and floated downwards beside her desk. She rolled her chair over it, her eyes on her computer screen while the creature floated and watched her and sucked in breath.

The cleaning lady would pick it up.

Her supervisor stopped her in the lobby the next morning."Will you vacuum the office this week? Our cleaning lady is in the hospital."

She started and gaped. Her supervisor had retreated before she could frame a reply. She stared into the trashcan where the letter lay on top of a banana peel and workshop mailings. She could distinguish it by the wheel marks on its white surface.

She slid from behind her desk and walked between cubicle walls to her supervisor's office, a window office with all the shades pulled.

Her supervisor hunched over his desk, muttering, “We already paid that. We already paid that."

“Why is the cleaning lady in the hospital?"

“Heart attack."

“When?"

“Here. Tuesday night. You don't mind about the vacuuming? Just until we find someone else."

“I don't mind."

She retreated to the front desk. The creature waited. Another letter lay beside her chair.

She left it. All day, she typed, answered the phone and crunched the letter under her wheels.

She did not pick it up. Her co-workers wouldn't notice. If they did, they would tell her, “Hey, there's a letter on the floor” before they did anything.

The letter was still beside her desk the next morning.

She sucked it up with the vacuum cleaner while the creature watched and struck its hands against the glass.

A letter lay by her chair when she got back from lunch. The flap was open, revealing a crimson line along the gum. She fetched the vacuum. It sputtered, coughing on the dirt and sand brought in from the outside slush and show. The cough became a wheeze and swallowed itself.

She brought in a non-electric vacuum; carpet fibers clogged its wheels.

She let the letters come after that. The creature sent them spinning out of its slot. They lay face up or face down on the carpet. She could see the red flaps. They clogged the wheels of her chair and she had to pull herself free, holding on to the desk with both hands, her feet hooked around the chair pedestal.

The letters patterned the carpet, hiding the subtle grayish green pattern. Visitors looked at them oddly and even her supervisor, passing through the lobby one morning, said, “Where did these come from?"

“Post office,” she said, and he nodded and moved on.

She brought in a sharp stick and managed to skewer half the letters before it broke. The creature gripped the edge of the mail slot, its fingers glaringly white against the gold brass lip. She brandished the stick point in its face.

“This isn't my fault,” she said, her voice muted.

The creature grimaced.

It gained more form. The blue eyes hung in a face like an ocelot's with a long cheeks and small chin. It had hands like a human's, five slender fingers that curled and reached.

She brought in another stick and got up the rest of the letters, using both ends to impale them from floor to garbage. One letter lay directly under the chute. It rested against the molding. She used the stick's full length to prod it loose. The creature stretched its long, slender arms out of the slot. Its fingers brushed her hair.

She shoved all the letters into two plastic bags and piled them under her desk. She waited.

The creature wafted upwards. She lurched from her chair, jammed a thin piece of plastic into the slot, secured it in place with clear tape.

The creature returned in a rush. She was close to it. Its opaque body was the cloudy white of a lamp shade. As she watched, a split appeared in the center of its chest. The split widened, and she could see black shapes whirling inside the creature's body: long, skinny shapes twisting round each other. One writhed out of the creature's chest, flattening itself against the glass: Over.

She fled to her desk. She looked back from her chair. The creature's chest was closed. Its eyes burned, blue as winter ice. Her piece of plastic was gone.

She came in early the next morning and poured gasoline down the slot. It splashed against the inside wall of the chute and streaked the glass. She covered the slot with duct tape and waited.

The creature fled upwards. She followed it on the elevator, pouring and taping at each floor. She waited on the eighth floor for it to descend from the space near the roof. It couldn't breathe. It had to fall.

It did, tumbling like a white leaf. She followed it down, taping the floors below her own until she reached the large metal post office box in the front hall on the ground floor.

A mailman stood in front of the box, cursing as wet, amber liquid dripped out of the box onto his pants and shoes.

“Crazy,” he said, wringing gasoline from his hands. “Kids—” because there was a Boys & Girls Club on the fifth floor, and teenagers went in and out of the building all day. “You don't use this box, do you?"

“No,” she said, the tape behind her back.

“Good.” He slammed the door.

“There weren't any letters?"

“Hasn't been a letter in there for two weeks."

She walked slowly upstairs and opened her plastic bags. No trash had been picked up since the cleaning lady's heart attack. No one had remembered to make different arrangements.

She shifted the largest bag. Dr. Anderson. Jack Smith. Allstate Insurance. Auto Wreck Repair. The letters slid off each other and she leaned to read the addressees: Parents of Tom Bell; Parents of Theresa Silverson.

There were traces of red on all of them, fronts and backs. Smears discolored the labels and stamps, marring the American flag and the heart of flowers.

She retied the bag ends and looked up.

Across from her, the creature hovered in the chute.

Streaks of oil discolored its body. The eyes were shadowed and almost green.

She jerked open the top drawer of her desk, her hands scrambling amongst the push pins and highlighters and keys which belonged to no one and fit no doors. She brought out a book of matches, tossed in after a lunch date at The Wood & Grill.

She dragged the match alight as she walked towards the slot. She pulled the tape loose with one hand and flung the burning brand into the chute.

She watched it drop, the creature watched it drop: a flickering yellow dot.

From three floors down, came a muffled roar like a large man clearing his throat. Hot air gusted upwards followed by flames. The flames ran up the streaked oil, trapping the creature. It whirled, flailing, its fingers curling wildly.

Its chest paled. She could see the thin black shapes inside it more clearly.

She thumped her hand against the chute's glass.

“Get away. I don't have to live with you. I was right to send it."

The creature's chest, wrapped in flames, turned to glass. The black shapes whirled faster, chasing their ends.

The creature's body shattered. The black shapes burst free. They sped towards the slot, and she covered the opening with her hands. The shapes struck her palms. They burned.

The creature's face drifted, bodiless. The eyes still watched but dimly.

She shrieked at those eyes silently:

“I had to do it. He wouldn't listen. I tried to talk to him. I had to write it. I had to write it all down. I was right to send it."

The black shapes clustered at the slot opening. They plucked at her skin, tearing it from her bones. She screamed aloud.

“Will you look at that?” co-workers’ voices said behind her. “What's happened to the mail chute?"

“Kids upstairs."

“Looks like they've been throwing in firecrackers."

The bones inside her hand shattered. The shards rippled through her body, striking to dust the skeleton of her arms, shoulders, back, chest, legs.

“You should call the post office,” her supervisor said to her.

The voices drifted away:

The black shapes dragged her limp body into the chute. She fell through the slot into the dying flames and the stench of burning oil. The creature fell beneath her. The large, blue eyes rolled in the now translucent face. It struck the side of the chute and the eyes burst, showering blue specks. She fell through them. They cooled to ice her aching skin, and then they were behind her, and she landed on a hard, wet floor.

The black shapes settled upon her. Not just words but phrases: “You'll never change.” “Immature.” “Self-centered.” The sharp and soft edges folded themselves around her.

But they're true. They're true, she moaned against the sticky, warm surface of the post office box. I didn't write one lie.

“We're two different.” “I'm over you.” “Over.” “You."

The words smothered her.

I had to write them. I had to get them out. The relationship was over with her boyfriend of five years, and she didn't want to argue, didn't want to discuss anything, she just wanted it to end.

I got out. I got free. Didn't I?

“I don't want to see you again."

I sent the letter, and it was over. I sent it, and he stopped calling. I sent it, and I didn't have to worry any more.

“Fire!” said an irritated voice; it rumbled throughout the box. “I think this thing should be dismantled."

“Historical value."

“My ass, historical value. There's nothing left in this building of historical value."

The door to the box swung wide. Touched by the light, the dark, clinging words crumbled. She fled from the darkness, winging past the postman and the building manager. Her skin stretched around reformed bones, her feet touched the smooth tiles of the front hall. She thrust trembling hands against the outside door and gulped cold, clean air.

She wore a dress of paper. She was covered with white envelopes woven together like strands of yarn in a macramé. Stamps appeared here and there, the corner of an address, a return label.

“Ma'am,” said the postman, who had followed her out. “Ma'am, where did you get those letters?"

“They're only envelopes,” she said. “They're empty. There's nothing inside."

She lifted a flap to show him. Blue dust spilled out onto the sidewalk. She raised another flap, lifted fingers covered with fine, blue specks to the postman's face. She gasped, almost laughing, and the postman laughed too in bewilderment.

“My name,” she said. “That was my name."

And the blue dust whirled down the sidewalk, leaving her hands entirely clean.

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About the Author: Katherine Woodbury, a Maine resident, is a part-time grad student, legal secretary, and evolving eccentric writer (complete with two cats). She has had stories published in Leading Edge, Cicada, Irreantum, Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine, and Space & Time. Her stories run the gamut from revisited fairy tales to Danteesque office satires to surreal science fiction. She likes to explore the possibilities of reading between the lines.

More Stories From The Publisher: We hope you'll want to enjoy other entertaining and imaginative stories from Far Sector SFFH. You can visit the Clocktower Books page at Fictionwise.com (www.fictionwise.com/eBooks/ClocktowerBookseBooks.htm). We are the world's oldest web-only professional magazine of science fiction, fantasy, and horror without print antecedents, publishing continuously since April 15, 1998. Clocktower Books has been publishing online since May 1996.

Visit www.clocktowerbooks.com for information on additional titles by this and other authors.