Curiosity Killed the Postwoman

Date: 12/27/2025

I’m in the depot — just shoot me now, why don’t you? — staring down a parcel that refuses to be known. I’ve turned it, weighed it in my hands, traced every seam with my thumb. Nothing. No barcode. No proof of identity. It’s a brown, anonymous insult. “Kate, there’s no barcode on this packet,” I say, surrendering it to the queen of packages herself. Kate takes it, squints, hums. Then she does the thing. She leans in, presses her nose to the cardboard and inhales — long, reverent, obscene. Like a dog reading a stranger’s diary through scent alone. The sound vibrates in my skull. Sadist ASMR. Horrifying. Comforting. Deliciously Satisfying. “Knew it,” she says, eyes glittering. She digs her nail beneath a fold of the box. Not a satisfying sound. A soft, tearing schk. There it is. The barcode, buried. Hiding in plain sight. “Duuude,” I say, awed. “You really know your codes.” Kate orders me to sort parcels in the corner. By sort, she means open. I try not to smile. I’ve always wanted this — to see what lives beneath cardboard skin. Mally’s granddaughter is helping today. I scan for a five-year-old with a sticky face and a balloon animal. Instead, I find Sasha. Sasha Brown. Nearly forty. We went to secondary school together. She’s building a small, unsettling mountain of toys — mermaid Barbies, shimmering tails, vacant smiles. “Want some help?” I ask. She looks at me and says, in a voice pitched too high, too sweet, “Me like Barbies. Mermaids only.” Something crawls along my spine. “Okay,” I say. “I can help with that.” Cardboard splits. Tape peels. The depot fills with plastic perfume and promise. Scan. Beep. Scan. Beep. Everything checks out. Everything always does — until it doesn’t. The scene jumps, clean as a cut. I’m in my local shop hunting for milk. Proper milk. Milk milk. None of that alternative crap dressed up as milk. The shelves glare back at me, bare but for oat milk cartons, smug and angular. “I bloody hate oat milk,” I mutter. The shopkeeper materialises behind me like a conscience. He leans in, breath damp against my ear. “Better get used to it,” he whispers. “Milk’s gone extinct.” I laugh. Of course I do. Milk? The ancient comfort. The white lie of childhood. “It’s true,” he says, thrusting a newspaper into my hands. “Government’s been lacing it with poison.” The headline screams back at me: MILK IS POISONING HUMANITY: GOVERNMENT’S IDEA OF A DEATH CULL “I always knew it was poison,” he adds. “Never touched the stuff.” I chuckle, nervous, distracted by the chalky scabs of calcium deficiency on his teeth. Ghosts of what he’s refused. He ain’t wrong. Outside, the air tastes thin. I ring Mum. “Don’t drink any more milk,” I say. “It’s poisoned. Government job.” She laughs. Of course she does. “Have you heard yourself?” “I’m serious,” I insist. “They want us dead.” She hums, unconvinced, and the line goes quiet in the way that means she’s already forgotten. I pass a block of flats. On a table by the entrance, a carton of milk stands upright, almost ceremonial. Next to it, a drying rack of men’s underwear sways gently, like flags of surrender. Just one more taste, I think. What’s the harm? I lift it. The plastic is cool, familiar. My mouth waters. “Put that down!” A man steps forwards — perhaps the owner of the undergarments I’m trespassing beside. His voice is sharp, parental. “Just put the milk down and walk away.” I do. I shuffle. Shame follows me like a stray. I’m in front of a mirror now. I don’t know how I got here. My reflection stops me cold. I look… incredible. My skin glows. My lips are full. Years of stress have evaporated, ironed smooth. I look younger — not sculpted, not artificial. Restored. As if something ancient and kind has reached up from inside me and said, Here. You can have this back. I pucker. Smile. I feel brave. Ready to show the world. Then I see it. A shadow beneath the surface. Not a pimple. Too deliberate. A swell, then another. I lean closer. Oh. There are bumps. Several. Scattered like fingerprints pressed from the inside. Hideous, bulbous things, stretching my skin thin and shiny. I don’t know how I missed them. They twitch. No. They move. Slow, purposeful shifts — like beetles trapped beneath carpet. Like fingers testing the walls of a coffin. My stomach drops. I press a fingertip to one. It slides away. Something skitters beneath my touch. A wet sound escapes my throat. I scratch. Once. Then harder. Nails dragging, desperate to hook whatever’s wrong and pull it free. My skin tears. Blood beads, then runs. The bumps buck beneath my assault, writhing as if offended. I scratch more. I can’t stop. Red lines bloom across my face. I look up. A bloody clown stares back. I think of Kate, of the barcode hidden under the fold — how easy it was to miss until someone knew where to dig. I think of parcels that weren’t mine, how eagerly I tore them open, hungry for whatever secret waited inside. I think of the milk. The sodding milk. How clearly I was warned. How beautifully I didn’t listen. Under my skin, the things begin to travel. One slides along my jaw, another pulses beneath my eye. I can feel their weight now. Their impatience. My heart flutters like a hummingbird trapped in a cage — wild, futile. The mirror blurs. I stumble. As I fall, one last thought needles through the panic: I always believe I’ll stop before it costs me something. I don’t remember hitting the floor. But I know — finally, too late — what’s been moving all along. Not the poison. The consequences.