The Lizard, the Dodo-Brain and the Salamander

Date: 11/17/2025

Back at the drudgery they insist on calling “work.” Can’t I escape this damn place? Apparently not. Even my dreamworld gets infested —parasitically— by letters and cardboard boxes. They breed in the corners like a species no biologist wants to name. I’m in the depot again. Same daily grind: slot letters into pigeon holes, scan parcels, listen to the machines beep with the enthusiasm of dying heart monitors. Beep. Beep. Beep. And lucky me—today I’ve been blessed with the sacred duty of training someone new. Fresh meat tossed into the grinder. They seem nice enough, if “nice enough” came shrink-wrapped in lead-lined paper and smelled faintly of mildew. Another ball chained to my ankle. Another reason my soul wants to file for divorce. Richie taps my shoulder—at least, I think he does. The man looks like someone scooped out his former self with a teaspoon. His left eye twitches as if his last nerve finally muttered, “fuck it” and cut its own wire. “You okay, mate?” I ask. He just stares straight through me, like I’m the ghost haunting his warehouse. “Fair enough.” Beep. Beep. Beep. Out in the yard, I bump into Frankie. I wave, but his head just… drops, like it’s too heavy a burden. He drags his Santa sack across the concrete with all the cheer of a Father Christmas who’s just been told the elves unionised and he’s redundant. “This place is full of joy,” I mutter. It’s fine. No one ever listens. By now it’s late. My trainee has held me up so much I’m starting to fossilise. God knows where management found him—some scrape at the bottom of the human barrel. Dregs. Slag. The bits you wash down the sink and regret smelling. “I know everyone starts somewhere,” I reason to myself. But good lord—was I ever this much of a gormless, slack-jawed, dodo-brained half-awake zombie? Maybe. Probably. New starters never last. They take one look at the machinery of the postal underworld and flee. This one, though… This one is licking the window. “Fly,” he says, deadpan. Tongue still on the glass. Lord give me mercy. Out on delivery, the universe offers no relief. The van coughs like it’s trying to evacuate its soul. I smack the wheel. “Come on, you useless bastard!” Gormless stares out the window as if viewing a better life in another timeline. I get it—another Amanda is out there somewhere: drinking pina coladas in Thailand, coated in sun lotion and a better mood. Lucky bitch. I give up revving the corpse-van before it flatlines completely. Even my vocal cords can’t muster a decent scream. Gormless says nothing. Contributes nothing. Just gazes into the void, probably hoping it’ll gaze back. I check the back—packed full of parcels destined never to reach daylight. Royal Mail indeed. Royal screw-up. I sit in the tiny crevice of space left and bury my face into my palms. A postie on the edge of a breakdown. It’s not a good look. But I let the tears fall anyway. When I finally resurface… he’s gone. The lizard. The dodo-brain. Evaporated. “Gormless?” I call into the dusk. “Dodo-brain?” Silence. Just the faint sound of my sanity rattling I eventually find him. Or someone shaped like him. My memory is mush at this point, faces melting into each other like cheap crayons. He’s dragging a Santa sack along the gravel. Half the parcels pour from a hole in the side like guts. He keeps going, bless his void-filled heart. I pick up the fallen ones and deliver them myself, slipping my cheerful postie persona on like cheap costume jewellery. “Have a lovely day,” I say, smiling with all the warmth of a toaster left in the rain. Together—somehow—we get through the pile. Royal grace. Crumbling patience. When we get to the final parcel, I gesture grandly. “Would you like to do the honours?” Salamander just stares. “Okay then… I’ll take this one.” At long last, the shift ends. My legs ache, my spine threatens mutiny, but I’m done. Home awaits. Peace. Tea. Zen. Before leaving, I dutifully report back to management about how well my companion handled the round, despite the chaos. The Big Boss looks at me like I’ve just confessed to eating mail. “Amanda,” he says. “You didn’t have a trainee today. You were working alone.” “But… lizard man.” The words fall out like wet laundry. He shrugs. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.” And the penny doesn’t just drop—it plummets through the floor. There was no lizard man. No salamander. No dodo-brain. Just me, myself, and the hollow spaces where sanity used to live. Another daydream inside a daydream. So detached from reality I’m practically untethered. “Holy shit,” I gasp. “Did I lick a fly clean off the window?”