The Indecent Perambulations of a Most Weary Postwoman

Date: 11/25/2025

I drag myself through another morning of drudgery, the sky a sullen grey pancake pressing down upon my spirit. My trusty trolley — loyal companion and rolling torment — rattles behind me, swollen with the pre-Christmas deluge of parcels. It lurches over the cobbles like a drunken mule, threatening mutiny with every bump. Nothing looks familiar. Not a house, not a lamppost, not even the particular shade of misery in the air. Everything has rearranged itself as though the town planners have been drinking. Still, I march on, for one must maintain the façade of purpose even while spiralling into absurdity. It is then that I spot them. Pages. Loose pages. Strewn across the stones like the shed feathers of an ill-disciplined angel. They flutter in the breeze in a most theatrical manner, leading onwards as though inviting me into mischief. Ahead, I hear voices — neighbours gossipmongering perhaps — yet one voice rings clearer than the rest, trembling with outrageous self-assurance. “I possess a far superior voice to Bob Dillon!” the unseen gentleman declares. “In due time I shall be a household name!” The kind of confidence only madness or gin can bestow. I turn the corner to greet this titan of delusion… …but the street is as empty as my enthusiasm. The silence feels deliberate. In the middle of the road lies the culprit of the fluttering: a small, battered volume. I stoop — fighting my spine’s theatrical protests — and collect it. I flip through. Victorian smut. Of course. What else would fate hurl into my path before breakfast? On one page, a sketch: a woman mid-ecstasy, ink lines trembling with the artist’s nervous enthusiasm. Around her, the breathless refrain: “Aaaah-hooOOh—haaah—hhaA–aaah!” scribbled in manic spirals. I choke on a laugh. Good Lord. Someone needs a lie-down and perhaps a physician. Before I can ponder further, a familiar voice darts through the hedge. “Mother!” Relief floods me. Finally, someone real. “Maxwell!” I call back. My son appears only for a moment before vanishing into a nearby hut. Toilets. Naturally. If my dreams were a novel, the lavatory would be a recurring villain. He emerges from a cubicle looking sheepish, though I wisely choose not to investigate further. I attempt to enter — only to recoil instantly. Good heavens. The smell. It is not a smell but an experience — a physical blow to the soul, as though Satan himself has taken up plumbing. “Merciful saints preserve me,” I gasp, clutching the doorframe. “I shall simply expire before I relieve myself in such conditions!” I flee the hut before it can permanently scar my lungs. With the usual lack of courtesy, the dream flips its scenery. I am back on my actual round — or what pretends to be. It is shambolic. The hours Charlotte and I spent planning lie in metaphorical ruins. Alex (forever gifted with opinions nobody requested) laments that he would have organised it better. Annoyingly, infuriatingly, he is correct. Kev and I leapfrog the streets like deranged Victorian couriers in an interpretive dance of despair. Kev, poor soul, looks extinguished — a man whose spirit has gone out like a gas lamp in a gale. “You seem troubled,” I say gently. He swallows hard. For a moment, I fear he may burst like a teapot left to boil unattended on the hearth. Then he musters a thin smile. “Let us simply continue, shall we?” Before I can reply, I find myself — absurdly — running up a steep hill in my undergarments. In winter. Carrying my bag over one bare shoulder like some deranged, frostbitten nymph. A Royal Mail van passes by. Alex leans dramatically out the window and cries: “Your performance is of notably poor quality!” “Your candour wounds me, sir!” I shout back, half-laughing, half-lamenting all my life choices. At last, the depot crowns the hill like a grey temple of bureaucracy. Inside, Mark paces with the tortured energy of a man awaiting a duel. “You are quite pale,” I venture. “Is all well?” He ignores my inquiry entirely — a beloved workplace tradition — and instead asks when I shall be driving again. “For the thousandth time, end of December,” I sigh. He nods as though this news has shaken him to the core and shuffles papers with great ceremony. I return to my frame — only the depot has transformed. The warehouse is gone. In its place rises a cold, sterile labyrinth. Walls too white. Lights too bright. The whole place humming with an eerie, antiseptic dread. Karl leans against a wall with the smug composure of a cat that has buried something regrettable in the garden. “You heard about Jamima-Leah?” he asks. “No,” I reply. “Not for months.” He points towards a stairwell. “Up there.” The temperature drops. My skin prickles. I ascend, each stair creaking like a warning. A small crowd stands at the top, clustered around a narrow window in a door. Jenni is among them, looking as though she has wandered into the wrong chapter of her own life. “What’s happening?” I whisper. “Jamima-Leah,” she murmurs. They part for me. Through the glass, I see her. Hunched. Wild-eyed. Scrawling page after page with feverish devotion. She crumples each sheet the moment it is finished and flings it behind her. The floor is carpeted in discarded manuscripts. Recognition hits me like a falling anvil. The book. The smut. The spirals of “Aaaah-hooOOh—haaah—hhaA–aaah!” Jamima-Leah is the author. “She has writer’s block,” Jenni sighs. “Cannot progress beyond the smut. But apparently, it will be the next bestseller.” “What?” I gasp. “More renowned than Bob Dylan?” Before she can answer, Jamima-Leah stops writing. She lifts her head. Her eyes are too round. Too bright. Far, far too awake. Though the room is sealed, her whisper crawls directly into my ear: “Fame is inconsequential.” The lights flicker. “It is influence I seek.” Behind her, the mountain of crumpled pages stirs. Moves. Shifts. Not by breeze. Not by human hand. But with a soft, papery rustling — like something beneath them flexing its new limbs. A cold shudder grips me. And from under the shifting mass of manuscripts… a small voice rises. A voice that should not be here. A voice I would know anywhere. “Mother…?” The pages convulse. The lights snap out. And something in the dark begins to crawl.