it was a dark and windy night.
a man stood in the shadows watching a mailbox.
you do not see as many mailboxes as you used to on city streets, but they are still out there.
as the man in the shadows watched, the wind picked up a piece of paper - a letter? - that was stuck in the opening of the mailbox, and lifted it so that it, still stuck, would be visible in its whiteness to any random passerby.
perfect, he thought.
*
augustus brown went for a walk every saturday night no matter how good or bad the weather was.
he had been doing it since he was fourteen years old.
it was just his way.
when he was introduced to people, which was not very often, he would try to bring the conversation around to the fact that he took these walks.
augustus was five feet nine and a half inches tall and weighed 176 pounds.
his favorite movie was “the animal”, starring stanley o’hara and zora young.
his favorite song was “wild is my heart”, as sung by norine sue.
he did not have a favorite book. he preferred taking long walks in the dark city streets, to reading books.
but he did spend hours reading the online posts of strangers, especially on the most inflammatory political issues of the day, even though he never posted anything himself, about anything.
on a scale of 1 to 100, 1 being the least interesting and 100 the most interesting, augustus rated an average of 14 to his fellow inhabitants of the planet.
on the dark and windy evening on which our narrative commences, augustus approached a corner at which a mailbox stood beside the traffic light.
he noticed a white piece of paper - a letter? - stuck in the slot of the mailbox and fluttering in the strong breeze.
you do not see as many mailboxes as you used to on city streets, but they are still out there.
augustus’s curiosity was piqued. he gently removed the letter from the slot.
not only was the address handwritten, but the return address on the upper left corner of the envelope was handwritten as well. you do not see that very often these days.
augustus was a somewhat inquisitive person - 53 on a scale of 1 to 100 - and had no particluar respect for the privacy of others, so he put the letter in his pocket, to open and read at his leisure when he returned to his room.
the man in the shadows smiled.
to be continued
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