Y’know, I’ve had weird things in the post, before: a plastic rosary, a pair of mutilated trousers. A packet of Phenergan with a biting insect in it. (I know it was a biting one, because it bit me). There was even a mummified rat, one time, but I ordered that on eBay, so it doesn’t count.
Today, though, today’s post was the strangest. I got a spoon in an envelope, and it had breached the envelope, and part of the handle was sticking out. Someone at the post office had taped over it, to keep it from escaping entirely. Enclosed with the spoon was a note, handwritten, on fancy paper: “sorry I stole your spoon.”
There was no return address, but the postmark came from Sweden. So, I suppose my question would be…who in Sweden stole my spoon? And why’d they wait fifteen years to return it? And—and that wasn’t my spoon! I never had spoons like that. I never had spoons at all: I had a flatmate, and he had spoons, and I used his. And his didn’t look like that, either.
Here it is, by the way: just a regular old spoon…which doesn’t match any I’ve got.
Maybe it’s a spoon made of poison, and when I use it, it’ll dissolve into my food. But it’ll do it slowly, over years and years. I’ll linger for ages, wasted by arsenic, and I’ll never know. No-one will, till they do my autopsy. If they even do one. Maybe they won’t. Maybe they’ll assume I just died, the way people do…just wound down and died.
I should probably throw it away. (I won’t, though. I’ll keep it separate from my other spoons, and I’ll tell myself it’s paranoid not to use it…I’ll wait for Mother to use it. If she doesn’t die….)
Really, though! If you’ve sent me a spoon, please own up to it! I’ll be frightened to use it, till you do.
RG Double Ghost 