Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 83281 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83281 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
Yes, I do go out for groceries. You can get them delivered, but that costs a lot more. Ditto for take-out—not that I can afford it very often—but I go out to pick that up too. (Have you seen the price of Door Dash and Uber Eats lately?)
The point is, I’m not a total shut-in. Poverty forces me out into the world—I just hoped it wouldn’t force me into getting one of those dreaded face-to-face jobs. Ugh.
But the job search on-line wasn’t turning up very much—I’d picked up a few more gigs but nothing that would totally make the rent at the end of the month, even if I lived exclusively on Ramen noodles.
At that moment, when I was just about to totally despair, I heard a knock at the door of my apartment. The sound made me flinch and my heart immediately jumped into my throat. I don’t like people at my door—most of my regular delivery guys know to just knock once, leave the package, and go.
The knock sounded again, however—an impatient rat-ta-tat-tat—letting me know that whoever it was, wasn’t going to take “no” for an answer. I would have to take a deep breath and just hope they didn’t want me to talk much—or at all.
As I went to the door, I passed by the small oval mirror which was one of the few things I had left from my Mom’s house. A curvy woman with a long nose, thick dark hair, and pale grey eyes looked back. My Dad was Greek and I inherited my hair from him—it’s coarse and wavy and so thick that I get it thinned when I can afford to. But I hadn’t had any extra money to visit my regular stylist lately, so it was kind of a long, wavy mess around my head.
The woman in the mirror looked pale and unhappy—exactly how I felt. Lately the whole damn world was beginning to feel like a trap. Or maybe more like one of those hamster wheels where you’re running and running and never getting anywhere—just wearing yourself out trying to stay in one place and not get flung off.
The knock sounded a third time—even more impatient this time. Whoever it was, they were getting pissed off. Dealing with an angry stranger was even worse than dealing with a stranger in the first place. I took a breath and put my hand on the knob.
I can do this, I told myself. I can do this, I can do this…
When I opened the door, an irritated-looking little man with bushy eyebrows drawn low was staring back at me. And I do mean little. I’m only five-four myself and he was at least a head shorter than me. He had sharp eyes so green I wondered if maybe he was wearing colored contact lenses. There was a thick red beard on his chin, but no mustache. The strange facial hair configuration made him look oddly Amish and he was wearing a green uniform.
“About time!” he barked in a surprisingly deep voice when I finally opened the door. “I was thinking maybe you were after making me wait all the live-long day!”
I opened my mouth to reply, but no words came out. Words are hard for me with strangers. I wanted to say, “Sorry,” and make up some excuse, but the sentence just wouldn’t happen. I could feel it, trapped in my throat, like a piece of food that was lodged there trying to choke me.
The little man with the bushy beard didn’t seem to notice my anxiety, however.
“At any rate, now that I’ve got you, are you Sarah J. Massey?”
Mutely, I nodded.
“All right, good. I have a certified letter you must sign for.”
He whipped out a clipboard with a form and handed me a pen—a very strange looking pen. In fact, it wasn’t a pen at all, I discovered after closer examination. It was a quill—a long, plumy quill that looked like it might be made from an ostrich feather. It waved a good two feet above my head as I held it in my hand.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” the little man demanded in his booming voice. “Why aren’t you signing?”
Again, I couldn’t answer. So I bent my head and did my best to scratch my name onto the clipboard. However, the sharpened end of the quill didn’t make any marks.
“Oh—pardon me! Here—I see the problem.”
The little man pulled a little pot out of his pocket, uncapped it, and held it out to me. After a moment, I realized it was an ink pot and he wanted me to dip the sharp end of the quill into it.
This encounter was getting stranger and stranger. I wished I could ask some questions, but they lodged in my throat. I dipped the point of the quill into the little pot and scrawled my signature on the form, rather messily.