A Dead Letter - By Bitter Crank
Jack was up against a long enough sentence, but he was already a dead man. There were death threats from a prison gang to make him spill where the money was hidden. A couple of guards were interested too. His days were numbered.
Got to get a message to Sam about the stash. Maybe the back of a postage stamp, he thought. He needed a really sharp pencil. He swiped an extra-hard Faber from a class room.
Sharpening the pencil was beaver work. He had had a blade, but that had been lost in the last raid. He was going to kill himself with it.
The labor of micro-writing on the stamp was painfully hard. When he was done, he wrote a farewell to Sam. Save the stamp! he added. Its flawed and will be worth a lot.
A week later Jack was found dead in his cell. A Faber pencil had been rammed through his eye into the brain. The letter and stamp had left the prison, but like many released men, it came back: Return To Sender Addressee Unknown. The inmate in the mail room delivered it to himself.
Got to get a message to Sam about the stash. Maybe the back of a postage stamp, he thought. He needed a really sharp pencil. He swiped an extra-hard Faber from a class room.
Sharpening the pencil was beaver work. He had had a blade, but that had been lost in the last raid. He was going to kill himself with it.
The labor of micro-writing on the stamp was painfully hard. When he was done, he wrote a farewell to Sam. Save the stamp! he added. Its flawed and will be worth a lot.
A week later Jack was found dead in his cell. A Faber pencil had been rammed through his eye into the brain. The letter and stamp had left the prison, but like many released men, it came back: Return To Sender Addressee Unknown. The inmate in the mail room delivered it to himself.
Comments (10)
ADL: an unclaimed, undelivered and unreturnable piece of mail. Returned to Sender or destroyed.
Jack was in prison, a dead man walking; days numbered not lettered. But he had a stash of money to leave in his 'will'. How to get the message out, secretly.
Decision taken to write the shortest of sentences on the back of a stamp. So, he needed a really fine writing tool. Not being the sharpest pencil in the box himself, he stole one and chewed it to a fine point.
A previous cutting tool had been removed. J has suicidal ideation.
[A nod by the author about the hard work of micro-writing]
He wrote a cryptic hint to Sam as to the stamp's value. Would Sam have 'got it' even if he had received the letter which he didn't.
J killed himself with the pencil.
Letter not returned to him. Now in the hands of a mailroom inmate. Wonder if he 'got it'.
***
A simple, straightforward story. Unappealing characters I didn't really engage with. Of limited interest.
But well done author anyway - bringing in the point about recidivist offenders.
Perhaps J had always been a dead man walking.
Thanks for micro-writing and 'posting'!
You did a lot more than some, including myself. So, I appreciate this :up:
It could be that he was murdered with the pencil. Maybe the prison gang killed him for not revealing where the money was? Jack apparently thought he was dead meat, one way or the other.
Sadly, Sam remained clueless, or maybe not?
Oh, of course. I hadn't thought of that. The previous mention of suicide threw me off. I wonder if that was what was on his death certificate.
'A Faber pencil had been rammed through his eye into the brain.'
That would take some brute, frontal force.
How likely is it that someone could effectively/easily commit suicide that way?
Only the terribly mad and crazy.
Not like J. who preferred a blade.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Hah. You have great insight.
Sam (a friend, previous inmate or fellow thief) might have wised up and gone straight. Moved on.
Like it :up:
The reason why I liked this story is because there may be people like this. It captures the interplay between hatred and self-hatred so well within the limits of micro or flash fiction.
The double irony was a bit over the top. I'd have preferred him shanked or strangled, but the suicide also works. The death itself was inevitable, and very well set up. That the letter would find its way back to the prison - "like many released men" is a terrific line - was not predicted. It's good that the inmate in the mail room, who selfishly kept it, thinking the stamp itself was valuable, will not profit from it.
I know this is a very loose tangential interpretation and maybe not intended by the author but I think the phrase "Labor of micro-writing on a stamp was painfully hard" reflect the actual short story activity itself.
The challenge of writing a microfiction on a very small, restrictive 200 word "post". A mere stamp of a thing.
Yes. I hinted at such earlier:
Quoting Amity
You said it better :clap:
Haha sorry Amity I didn't realise it. You beat me to the punch. Guess with think similarly hehe
Easy to miss. I could have made more of it, as you did.
You brought the point home brilliantly :up: