by Nina Post
In the post office under Amenity Tower, the employees―foul and demonic on any given day, even in their thin human facade―had transformed to pure demon, a trifling difference in temperament, yet worthy of urgent action. Kelly didn’t know what triggered them to return to their original form (job stress?) but it was unpleasant.
A postal demon scuttled forward with a horseshoe crab body, looking in all directions from three slug heads on a long scaly neck. One of the heads shot out a tongue, tipped in a suction cup and coated with yellow mucous. The suction cup stuck to a postal scale and the demon yanked it into its mouth.
The second demon sounded a warning croak from its giant toad head, cracking its skin and activating pus eruptions. It reeked of rotting potatoes. Claws punctured out of toe pads at the end of turtle legs. Fetid drool oozed and sizzled onto the counter, setting the stamp book on fire.
Murray walked up behind her. “Where to start, right? I hope you brought some of the bigger vials. You’re going to need them.”
Kelly rummaged through her bag as the slug-head demon spewed chartreuse-colored vomit, which instantly eroded a black-rimmed streak in the floor, toppling the entire series of queue barricade poles.
A third demon emerged from the package processing area. “Another Richmond in the field.” She recoiled from the giant wasp body with twelve long-necked heads.
The wasp-demon’s faces morphed from the postal employee facade, to the customers it probably ate, to random celebrities it had probably read about in magazines. Most of the heads spat or drooled green foam as it reached toward Kelly and spoke in a voice that sounded like a wood chipper.
“Fiend-smiter!” the wasp-demon said.
“I guess that’s me,” she said to Murray. “Can you get that embossed on one of those metal nameplates for my desk?”
“You don’t have a desk,” Murray said.
“For now, I do.”
“Fiend-smiter!” the wasp-demon shrieked again and flew at her, knocking her down with surprising heft, and she pushed away the tiny, snapping, sharp-toothed heads. Green foam dripped onto her jeans and burned away the cloth until she frantically wiped off the residue with a Priority Mail envelope.
Two of the heads clasped on to her upper arm and her hip and wouldn’t let go. Its saliva burned through her shirt and tiny serrated teeth hooked into and pulled her skin.
Murray pulled at the largest section of its wasp body and some of the heads that weren’t already attached to her. Some of the heads whipped around to bite at him and one sank its multiple rows of pointed teeth in Murray’s arm.
He yelled and she reached down to her right ankle under her jeans, past the head gnawing on her hip, and pulled out one of her knives, a true switchblade. She pressed a button and the knife sprang out.
She seized one neck a time, slicing back and forth, then scrambled backward to avoid the darker and more viscous green slime spurting from the necks like arterial blood.
“These post office employees are the worst,” Kelly said.
She cut off the rest of the heads, took a bigger knife from a sheath on her left calf, tossed the knife to Murray, who thrust it into the back of the wasp with a dry crunch.
The twelve decapitated heads on the floor writhed and shrieked and she grabbed one of the large vials from her bag and held it out. The vial sucked in the postal worker, severed heads and all.
“One down, two to go.” Kelly secured the still-shrieking, green foam-filled vial into her bag. “Try getting that through airport security.”
She faced the remaining two, who were still digesting their meal but no longer distracted with eating. “C’mon.”
The slug-demon hissed.
“Big deal,” Murray said. “A post office employee did the same thing when I defaced government property one time.”
“What’d you do, piss down a mailbox?” Kelly asked.
“No, I adhered stamps over other stamps, but she treated me like I humped the President’s leg at a press conference, so I’m really enjoying this.”
The postal demon came towards them following the slime trail the other one left.
“We’ll show her how defacing really works.” In one deft movement, she lunged forward with her right leg, fencing-style, and sliced downward with the knife. The slug body waved and clicked its claws.
A woman opened the door near them and walked in with a package.
“It’s closed.” Kelly gestured her off, but her face and shirt was coated in demon viscera and vomit, so the woman recoiled anyway.
The customer made an exasperated sound. “Can’t I just get some stamps?”
Murray took the customer by the shoulders and guided her out, locking the door behind her and ignoring her look of affronted surprise. He turned around and tried to wipe some of the viscera off his face with a package insurance form.
Kelly held out a vial and it sucked in the slug-demon. “Just one more, then we go get some lunch.”
“Nothing takes away your appetite, does it?”
“Not really.”
The toad-demon slithered down the counter, stopped to regurgitate a shoe, jumped onto the floor, and threw up more chunky chartreuse-colored barf.
“Even now?”
“Nope.” She kicked the demon the front, embedding her sneaker in a bubbling pus sore, and when she pulled back, her shoe stayed. “I’m submitting an expense report for that.”
With all three postal demons dispatched, she wiped the sweat off her forehead and leaned against the forms counter to rest a momen, then hoisted her bag up to the counter and made sure all the vials were secured in their pockets in the bag.
“Those vials should blow sunshine and rainbows up Don’s butt,” Murray said. “But what do we do with the… uh… that.” He gestured at the pile on the counter.
“There’s only so much room.” She took a sweeping glance around. “This’ll take just a minute.”
She snapped on a rubber glove and scooped the postal demon pile into a UPS Express Flat Rate envelope. She handed the envelope to a grimacing Murray to hold while she yanked open the bottom door to a copy machine, which beeped loudly in protest.
“Envelope, please.”
Murray held the envelope by his fingertips and she stuffed the envelope into the copy machine and called the number on the copier. “I’d like to report a broken copier.”
She finished the call then put her phone back in her pocket.
“That’s nice, make it the copy tech’s problem,” Murray said.
“He’s got the easy job.”
f stepped onto the building’s patio for his midday walk. The perimeters of the invisible prison extended to anything on the property, which included the patio, the outdoor area at the front of the building, and the small grocery store, accessible from inside the building.
Gaap, a fallen angel with huge bat wings, a purple sweatband, and mesh shorts, jogged around the patio, just inside the bound zone, and punched out jabs and hooks. Almiras, the master of invisibility, popped in and out of vision while doing jumping jacks and pushups, and Purson, who could discover lost treasure, pulled comrades in a wheelbarrow using heavy-duty rope.
Af was soon in the midst of a large-scale training exercise.
Roger was outside in his usual black suit, red shirt and black tie, holding up a boombox. Over a rousing song evidently titled “Teeth of the Smilodon,” Roger led dozens of fallen angels, giants, locusts, scorpions, worm and moth creatures, wasp-things, and unidentifiable blobs in a series of warmup exercises.
“Well, screw this,” Af muttered, going back inside.
“No backing out of this class,” Roger said through a bullhorn. Right everyone?”
Af paused, hand on the door.
“Right!” the residents yelled.
“Teeth of the Smilodon!” Roger yelled.
A worm-thing said ‘Teeth of the Leopard’ instead, which Af thought was perfectly understandable.
“Got the guts?” Roger asked over the mu
sic.
“Not really,” Af said. He wanted to set up the lighting for a hand sanitizer photo.
Whatever his fellow fallens and those monsters were up to, he didn’t want any part of it. He was still getting acclimated to the building and didn’t want anything to upset his delicate equilibrium.
Af liked exercising well enough, but thanks to those locusts, he never wanted to use the fitness center again. Not worth the hassle. But before he even knew how it happened, he was doing jumping jacks in the third row of the bootcamp class .
“Teeth of the Smilodon” ended and an upbeat instrumental started.
“OK everyone―grab one of those sacks of fertilizer from that pile and run sprints from the door to that patio umbrella, five times. Let’s go!”
Af wondered why the property manager was trying to kill them. He snuck back inside and watched the melee from the safety of Amenity Tower’s automat.
Roger spurred the residents into jumping up like frogs then throwing heavy balls to the resident across from them. Some of the resident monsters who didn’t have any appendage capable of catching just let the ball hit them or drop in front of them.
Exhausted just from watching, Af went back to his apartment and made a yogurt from his soft-serve machine while reading a few hard-hitting articles from The Amenity Tower Bulletin (“East Stairwell Vs. West Stairwell: Which is Better?” and “What’s That Thing Delivering Our Mail?”)
Later, he took the elevator back to the second floor and stopped by the automat to check the status of the bootcamp. He found Roger looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the bootcamp participants, still working in teams.
“Isn’t it great?” Roger didn’t turn around when Af approached.
“The building’s cleaning company wants all this extra money for 24/7 service,” Roger said, “Triple the cost compared to regular business hours, can you believe it? So I’m training the residents to do all the after-hours work, which saves me the money for after-hours service.”
“Is that legal?”
Roger ignored him and continued. “Not only that, but I told the janitorial service that I’d get the residents to eventually do all the work, and they quaked. Amenity Tower is a big contract, so this will give us huge leverage when the next renewal comes around.”
Af didn’t think this was a good idea.
Roger cocked his head at the residents on the patio. “During this morning’s bootcamp, they’ve already completed the landscaping replacement, cleaned the grill heating plates, applied the concrete sealant, power-washed the deck, cleaned the patio furniture, repaired the granite, and finished the caulking and patching, without knowing they were doing any of those things. With some plyometrics in between. You were smart to leave early.”
he postal demon bite on Kelly’s upper arm needed attention. Using his first-aid kit, Murray cleaned the wound and sterilized a one and a half inch needle.
“Go faster, I’m hungry.”
Murray pulled black thread through the edge of her skin. “I’m not going to go faster. This is precision work, and I want to minimize scarring, if that’s okay with you.”
He tied a knot, cut the thread, then applied an adhesive strip.
“Tinkerbell couldn’t use that as a panty liner. Get me a bigger one.”
Murray pressed on the adhesive. “Keep those in for two weeks and don’t remove them even a minute sooner. Keep it dry for the next twenty-four hours and dry it off when you shower. Try to avoid getting it wet, if you can.”
“Thanks. Can we get some dinner now?”
“Dinner?’ Murray asked.
“Lunch.”
“Then what’s dinner called?”
“Supper, at least where I’m from. Can we just eat, please?”
At the soda fountain across the street, they took seats at the counter.
“Also,” Murray said, “try not to, you know, block someone’s punch with your wound. Stuff like that.”
“Got it.”
Overhead, a tube similar to the one in her building moved transactions from the cash register to an unknown place that returned change and a receipt.
She ordered eggs, toast, and pancakes. Murray ordered the special. “I’ll have the sweet potato fries and the cream of kate,” he said.
The spider-cat server raised a questioning brow at them from behind the counter. “Cream of kate?”
Murray nodded.
“You mean the cream of kale?” the spider-cat said.
“Ha! Right. Sorry. That’s what it looks like on the specials board. A bowl of that, please.”
The spider-cat went over to the specials chalkboard and redid the ‘l’ in ‘kale.’
“Cream of kate? Really?” Kelly said while she played with the table jukebox.
“That’s what it looked like on the specials board!”
She chose a song by The Specials on the jukebox and a new set of customers entered: giants. Four of them attempting to fit through the front door, which they finally just removed, knocking over the gumball machines at the entrance on their way in.
“I’ve seen them in Amenity Tower. They can leave?” She asked Murray in a whisper.
“Only the angels are bound there. Anything else is free to leave and eat in the soda fountain or stop by the pharmacy or the museum or get jobs or whatever else they want to do.”
The rest of the customers threw down their papers, sloshing their coffee over the rim as they hastily put down their mugs and hurried out the back. Kelly and Murray exchanged glances and hoisted themselves over the counter.
The spider-cat ran out the side door.
The giants ripped out the tables and sat in the booths, their knees tucked up against their chests and touching the opposite giant’s knees.
“First, how are they going to eat, sitting like that? Second, who’s going to serve them?” Kelly asked in a whisper.
“Pothole City wasn’t designed with giants in mind―and I guess we’ll have to serve them.”
“Sure, I’ve got loads of free time.”
The giants, four in all, at adjacent tables, sat patiently, but looked around for the server.
“Yeah, why not,” she said. “Giants have to eat, too.”
Murray tied a white apron around his waist.
“You first.”
Murray nodded and crept over to the tables. “What can I get for you?”
The giants responded with various buzzing sounds at different tones and pitches. Murray scribbled something on the order pad and went back to the counter.
“What did they say?” Kelly asked.
“I have no idea. Let’s just give them whatever we can actually make and hope they don’t get mad.”
They made grilled cheese, egg salad, BLT, and chicken salad sandwiches, reasoning that the giants could swap if they didn’t like it. Kelly made iced teas and ice cream sodas. Murray got servings of fries from what the cooks left, and some pickles. They brought everything to the two tables then waited at a safe distance.
The giants leaned forward and moved hands the size of cast iron pans over the food like they were reading auras. The bald one with the orange Swatch chose the egg salad sandwich and slid the sandwich and fries off the plate into his mouth with one gulp.
The giant with the bushy hair and an arm tattoo of a horse riding a skateboard followed suit with the grilled cheese and drinks and ice cream sodas. The giant wearing a t-shirt with something written in Swedish took the BLT, and the fourth giant, the one in pink headphones and a bathrobe, took the grilled cheese.
Then all four of the giants turned in creepy unison to stare at Kelly and Murray, standing ten feet away.
“We’re gonna need more sandwiches,” Murray said under his breath to her.
She wheeled around to go back into the kitchen. They carried out sandwiches and ice cream sodas piled high on three successive platters. The giants, buzzing with apparent impatience, devoured everything on the table in under a minute.
“I’m not sta
ying here all night.”
“Wait,” Murray said. “Look.”
The giants unfolded themselves from the booth benches. Their buzzing took on a lower, calmer tone.
“Are they leaving or are they coming to kill us?”
“I think they’re leaving.”
As a tip, they each left a giant coin, which wasn’t acceptable as currency anywhere. Except with giants.
ragomir, Traian, and Bogdan, Amenity Tower’s full-time engineers, skulked into the mechanical room, which spanned an entire floor in the penthouse section. An engineering consultant, holding a clipboard like a shield, followed them into a cavernous room with high ceilings, brown walls, and insulated pipes, and where a motor emitted a continuous muffled roar.
Traian took a broom and cleared snow from the mesh filter. Dragomir and Bogdan peered closely at the primary filter bank and heating coil behind the louver.
“The opening clogged from the snow.” Dragomir gestured to the louvered vent. “We clear out, but pressure readout too high again.”
The consultant stepped over to the stack and waved his hand in a circle around the vent. “The gauge isn’t designed for this equipment. It reads like it’s too high, but it’s fine how it is.”
Dragomir turned from the vent to the consultant.
“Oh no,” Bogdan said under his breath.
Traian froze in position with the broom and muttered a Moldovan Orthodox protective blessing. Bogdan took a few cautionary steps toward the door, shaking his head at the consultant’s foolishness.
“Is fine how is?” Dragomir glowered at the consultant. “Is fine how is? Do you lose job if pressure gets too high and breaks? You have other jobs, soft, squishy American! Our building just one of many for you, like loose woman is to sailor.”
The consultant folded his arms, looked down and chewed on his lip as though to gather his patience. “Look, Drago.”
Bogdan clapped a hand over his mouth and gaped at Traian, who warily resumed sweeping, head tucked down.
“My name is Dragomir.” The engineer thumped his chest once. “I will say it as I spit on your grave.”
The consultant put up his hands, acquiescing. “Dragomir. Well, I have to say, this is the most unusual situation I’ve seen in my whole career.”
