Sign, Sealed and Scorched.

Date: 10/26/2025

I’m out on delivery again, though nothing feels quite right. My uniform’s wrong for a start. Gone is the garish red of Royal Mail — replaced by an American postie’s get-up: pale blue button-up, navy shorts, and a cream Bonnie hat that looks like it crawled out of a retirement home in Florida. I feel like a parody of myself. A British export that didn’t quite make it through customs. A sore thumb among a party of manicured fingers. Still, duty calls — or whatever this dreamlike duty is — and I plod on, black mailbag slung over one arm, the wind picking up as I march through a quiet American suburb. It’s the kind of place where lawns are symmetrical and people pretend they’re not watching you through the curtains. Every step feels rehearsed, like I’m acting out a role I never auditioned for. I reach a large house with a wraparound balcony — the kind that screams old money, new guilt. The wind slices at my bare legs and I curse the shorts. I push through a creaky iron gate and spot two men working in the garden, talking in a language I can’t place. Romanian, maybe. “Gosh, they’ve got a lot of packets,” I mutter, lining them neatly along the porch, snapping a picture with my PDA. The screen glitches — a flicker of static, like the world’s buffering. I call over to the men, but when I glance back, my stomach drops. None of the parcels are for this address. None of them are even for this country. My pulse quickens. I start scooping them back up, stammering apologies. “Sorry, I’ve made a mistake.” My voice sounds small, foreign even to me. One of the men stops digging. Walks over. Calmly plucks a package from my hand. His eyes are glacier blue — the kind of blue that shouldn’t exist in nature. He holds my gaze and says, almost kindly, “Oh. You’ve made no mistake.” The words land like a blade between my ribs. There’s something ancient in those eyes, something that hums beneath logic. My skin prickles. I drop the parcels on the porch, one by one, like laying down an offering, and walk away as quickly as I dare. I feel suddenly aware of the absurdity of it all — the uniform, the foreign soil, the weight of unseen things. Maybe I’m not delivering mail at all. Maybe I’m just the messenger of something I can’t yet name. Up the street, I see Mat waving. Relief floods through me like sunlight after rain. He’s dressed in full running gear — all Lycra and optimism. “Let’s go for a run,” he says. I glance down at my shorts, look up at my ridiculous hat. “I’m hardly dressed for it.” “Doesn’t matter,” Mat says, looking like a plonker-in-Lycra himself. “Let’s go!” So I dump my mailbag in a hedge and start pounding the streets, each step hammering the nerves out of me. The wind tastes sharper here, almost real. For a moment, I believe I can outrun whatever’s following me. “Shortcut!” Mat calls, darting across a manicured lawn. I follow, half-laughing, half-choking on adrenaline. Ahead, a couple runs in sync — an athletic blonde and her beefcake boyfriend. I clip his shoulder. He turns. And I see everything. Not just a face — a life. A bullied boy turned bodybuilder. Muscles as armour. A bully reborn. Then the flash of a uniform, a lab coat, flames. He’s in a sterile lab, dousing a body in chemicals. The smell of ammonia burns my lungs. He lights a match. Steps back. And in the corner — Keira Knightley. My heart thrashes. “Run!” I want to scream, but she just stands there, calm as candlelight, letting the flames take her. I blink, and the vision’s gone. The real world slams back into focus — street, sky, the couple glaring. They know that I know. “It’s not what it looks like,” the blonde says smoothly. “Joe’s a fantasist. Everything you saw — all of it — it’s just in his head.” But her smile falters, just slightly, and the world feels thinner — as if one wrong breath might tear it open. I can’t stop replaying it. My husband tells me to forget it, but my mind’s gnawing the memory like a bone. Something’s off. Something rotting at the edges. And then I see her. Walking toward me. Keira Knightley. Alive. Laughing. Draped in a floral kaftan that billows like smoke. The autumn wind toys with her hair, golden and perfect. It’s impossible. She died in those flames — I felt the heat. As she passes, her eyes lock on mine, and the world folds again. The lab returns — Joe on the floor this time, lifeless. Keira above him, dousing him in chemicals. She looks at me, cold and amused. she says, walking off into the amber trees. “Don’t believe everything you see,” A newspaper tumbles through the wind. I catch it, smooth it open. “Mad Man on Steroids Kills Actress Keira Knightley.” The headline burns. When I look up, she’s gone. The street is empty. Only the wind remains — whispering through the trees, carrying the scent of smoke and something like laughter.