Nonviolent Kidnappers

Jillian Wabash was kidnapped and held for ransom in 1996 by a sect of pacifist Buddhist monks. The monks, who had seen a great many ransoms in movies, knew they had to send some part of their hostage to prove to her parents that they were serious. Unfortunately, being non-violent by nature, the Buddhists could only bring themselves to cut off the child's hair. When her parents received the package containing a lock of hair and a note made of letters cut from magazines which read

“Dear sir and madam, we have your daughter and are taking excellent care of her, ensuring she receives three healthy meals a day, a warm bed, plenty of exercise, and proper education while she is in our custody. If we receive three million dollars in unmarked bills, we promise we will not harm another hair on her head. We apologize for the hairs we have already harmed, but we wish to assure you they will grow back and that for the time being, we have shaped her hair into a fashion that is stylish and esteem raising while still allowing her to learn that style is but wind, full of force but no substance and the esteem of others is but an illusionary boulder on the path to enlightenment. You may leave the money behind the dumpster at McDonalds on Washington Avenue.”

The Wabash family, after careful consideration, determined the monks would probably be able to do a better job raising their daughter than they could, and so for the next ten years, they politely replied to each new delivery of a lock of hair, “Thank you, but we do not have the money at this time. We appreciate you looking after our child in the meantime.”

- Originally mailed to T. Danley in New Orleans, Louisiana

Motivational Doors

The Life Cafe decided early in its planning stages that all of its instructions would be presented in the form of motivational phrases and life advice. Their doors told people to “Push Hard.” At the order counter signs advised customers to “think before you act!” and “plan ahead!” Urinals advised customers to “be a straight shooter” and the signs above the bathroom sinks told customers to “do as you would have others do.” To cut down on food waste, which attracted raccoons and homeless people, plates and bowls had messages like “Don't give up!” and “Always finish what you start.” Their no refunds policy was followed with “You can't please everyone.”

The trickiest part of their grand vision was finding a way to convey food allergy information. Though they couldn't find any appropriate phrases about peanuts or shellfish, they did make a habit of listing ingredients and following the words of Titus Lucretius Carus particularly useful. “The food of one may be poison to another.”

- Originally mailed to J. Dunn from D'Iberville, Mississippi

Ghost Church

There is a small country church that only appears when it is raining. To say where this church is, however, is impossible except to say down lonely roads wherever it is raining, for indeed people have reported seeing the church in countless cities spanning several continents on the same day, perhaps during the same storm. There are those who say that it is a ghost church whose congregation of the dead and the damned beckons new parishioners to join them. They say the church is atoning eternally for some past sin. Perhaps. Who can say with certainty, for if legend is to be believed, none who enter are ever seen again to tell tale of the sermon. Of course, legends have a tendency to exaggerate, and if the church truly does appear all over the world, it would not be impossible for a man to enter in Topeka, Kansas and step out in the Amazon rain forest, and how should he get home then? He has not been taken by the ghostly church, but the difference is semantic to those back home. Then there are those who dare to wonder where the church's inhabitants go when the rain stops. To this, I say, I do not know, but it is always raining somewhere, so should you find yourself in a strange church on a rainy day, rest assured that if you step outside after the sermon and find your are not in Kansas anymore, you may at least take comfort in the fact that you are not lost forever, but merely misplaced for the time being.

- Originally mailed to D. Garner from Biloxi, Mississippi

Rain God

 

 

“I feel incomplete,” he says to me, “and I don't think I'll ever feel whole until I find my other half.”

“Don't you know that even if you find another to merge with, you still won't be whole?”

“You don't actually believe that nonsense, do you?”

“I do,” I say. “If everyone here united as one, we would still only be a fraction of what we could be. We would still feel something missing deep within our souls.”

“And you have all the answers, do you? Where we come from, why we're here?”

“I do,” I say. “The Holy Word tells us that life is a cycle. We are here to help others grow, to bring life into the world. We sink to the earth, we rise to the heavens, we return to earth again.”

I brush off his skepticism.

“We think we are individuals, unique and singular, but we're composed of millions of tiny little molecules. This is a pattern for everything, for as we are made of microscopic bits of matter, we too collectively make up a much larger whole which we shall return to one day, and there are those who believe that larger whole is part of a much larger whole which is in turn just one building block in a much larger universe.”

“How can someone so smart believe in the ocean?” he asks.

I want to protest, but a sudden gust of wind pushes him into me. There's a brief moment of resistance as our boundaries press against each other. Then they collapse and we rush into each other. There is a moment of confusion as our personalities swirl amongst the other, exchanging doubts and fears and beliefs, bonding and becoming one, a new being born of the old.

I look around unsure of what I know. I want to believe, but there's an emptiness inside me, and I look around for someone to complete me, to be my other half and fill that missing part.

- Originally mailed to W. Murphree of Rosenberg, Texas

The God Cloud

 

One day in late January 2013, God came to earth in the form of a large glowing cloud. Many religious orders across the world were surprised he had returned so early (since most did not believe it would happen in their lifetimes), and the conspiracy theorist bemoaned that He was twenty-nine days late. Though the glowing cloud never spoke, everyone assumed it was God because nothing could penetrate it and it tended to fill those beholding it with a sense of peace.

The most surprising thing about God's return, however, wasn't the date or the shape he took. It was that nothing changed. The Christians all assumed the cloud was their God, who glowed with the peaceful love of Jesus or burned with the righteous fury of an angry God looking to smite those nations that lost sight of His commandments. The Muslims knew the cloud to be their one true God because the Qu'ran mentions stars falling, and the glowing cloud appeared as though a star had fallen much closer to the earth. The reincarnationists viewed the cloud as a collection of all souls waiting to be reborn. The atheists decided even if it was God, they still wouldn't worship because of all the evil he let slide. Even the scientists continued on as they always had, saying that God or no God, it must be studied, quantified, and understood, for why do we have minds if not to understand the mysteries of the universe?

In the end, the glowing cloud drifted across the face of the world, and the world learned to shrug it off. No one behaved better because it was closer. People still prayed for lotto numbers and sports team victories instead of world peace and an end to poverty and hunger. The only real change was that many churches were constructed with transparent roofs, so preachers could point to the cloud when it was overhead as proof that what he said was true, or else why would God have chosen to be above this church at this very moment?

- Originally mailed to C. Munn in Keller, Texas

Instructions Innovator

Harrison Traxler shook up the instruction writing industry with his innovative One Step philosophy. “Who has time to follow a whole page worth of instructions?” he would ask, and his protégées would cry out “No one!” Early in his career, he struggled with his own theory, often creating complex, rambling sentences, struggling to make each detail fit within one step. Even his early successes, including “favor to taste” and “cook until done” often required a second step or at least a few more ideas crammed up next to his diamonds in the rough. It wasn't until his Exxon Pump Operations commission that he really hit his stride. Soon, he was churning out dozens of one step instructions a day. Under his guidance, Alcoholics Anonymous reduced their twelve step program to one step, “Stop drinking,” and Ikea saved a fortune every year in manufacturing costs by simply printing large on the side of each box, “1. Assemble the pieces properly.”

Not all success can last, however, and soon, one of his own pupils would simplify Traxler's process even further and steal his glory with the One Word instructional paradigm. Ikea boxes simply said “Assemble,” and TV dinners “Microwave.” The Ten Commandments became “Don't” and students spent thousands of dollars to listen to professors say “Study.” Traxler never rediscovered the success of his youth, and died penniless and alone, still developing his One Letter philosophy. By the end, all he produced was “Y?”

- Originally mailed to P. Brown in Clovis, New Mexico

Mail Call!

Still a few spots left for new recipients. If you're interested in getting a postcard or you think someone you know might like one, shoot me your address at sean.arthur.cox@gmail.com. Send in requests any time.

Hipster Food

 

It's hard to believe this unassuming photo would change pop culture history. In the early part of the 21st century, portions of society known as “hipsters” would routinely share digital photographs or “pics” of their food before eating it, though the reason for this practice is the subject of much debate. Historians do agree, however, that Hugo Carpenter (1983-2092) changed this practice on a fundamental level in 2013. While others posted “instantgrams” of food to Facesbook, a primitive social media network where people bragged, plagiarized, and complained to win the most Likes, Hugo decided to embrace the hipster philosophy of celebrating a thing before it is another thing by sharing a photograph of his dinner “before it was food.” Soon, others emulated this food regression, which in turn inspired Noah Wilkins (1998-2088) to share an image of a cow in a wheat field with the caption “My cheese burger before it was ingredients.” This photographic regression escalated with photos of lakes which were “sodas before they were well water before they were clouds” and parents who were “macaroni and cheese before buying ingredients after having a kid and changing their eating habits to 'whatever the brat will eat' (my parents don't understand me).” The trend culminated in 2025 when Arabella Jones wrote a hundred thousand word annotated caption to a photograph of pure blackness, tracing the origins of her sushi all the way back to the Big Bang. This comment would eventually be published as the best-selling book My Dinner Before It Was Anything: How I Won the Hipster Internet. Following this seminal scholarly work that combined physics with geology, anthropology, history, sociology, and many other disciplines, the hipster movement fell apart, and camera sales plummeted to pre-internet lows.

- Originally mailed to M. Haley of Lake Orion, Michigan

Boot Country

Boot Country, a sovereign nation located in the southern US, always struggled to get the recognition they felt they deserved on any sort of international level. With a population of only seven (fifteen seasonal) and an economy based on solely on cowboy boots, the country shouldn't have been surprised with the United Nations turned down their request to join. The UN questioned their very existence as a country. They imported literally everything, including their utilities and the boots they sold. They didn't even create the products the exported. The entire population except for the nation's president and the first lady were actually people with dual citizenship, living in the United States but working in Boot Country. The UN also accused them of being a sham democracy, claiming to engage in free and fair elections, but only allowing the president and his family to vote. Their counter argument, that the other five citizens only lived in the nation forty hours a week and thus didn't meet residency requirements, was shot down by human rights groups as an effort to “disenfranchise the masses and avoid giving employees health insurance.” Boot Country had no response to this accusation except to install a first aid kit in the break room commonwealth.

- Originally mailed to P. Goff in Madison, Mississippi

Bathroom Ghost

 

All my life, I've had an irrational fear of bathrooms. Once I wondered if perhaps it was religious in nature. After all, we're trained from birth to be ashamed of nudity and anything involving a toilet. Upon closer inspection, I realized that couldn't be the case. I didn't have an issue relieving myself in the woods and there I had no walls for privacy. No, my specific fear was ghosts in the bathroom, no doubt a result of countless horror movies. Bathrooms in horror movies are always grim, terrifying affairs with rusty pipes and flickering florescent bulbs that wash out all colors but blue and gray. For years, I convinced myself that this was an irrational fear, that while doing my business, I didn't need to cast my eyes about at every sound, peering deeply at every shadow, begging it not to move.

A year ago, as I finished bathing I found myself staring down a ghost, a skeleton hanging there in the shower where I had been only seconds ago. I trembled in terror. All of my fears, all those years of worry. They had been justified. How long had that ghost been there, I wondered in horror. Did he only now manifest, or had he been in the shower with me, my eyes too full of suds to realize. Did he see me? Had this suicidal skeleton been watching me? Only then did I realize the true nature of my fear. Maybe it wasn't the ghosts at all. Maybe all this time it was just the fear of someone walking in on me.

- Originally mailed to L. Sims in Hattiesburg, Mississippi

Lamp Trees

When a new state law prohibited the manufacture and sale of incandescent lamps, most people expected the city of Pasadena to switch to more energy efficient fluorescent bulbs. Instead, city planners played to the letter of the law, which was passed to make energy “more green.” Devoting their top scientists and researchers to the project, the city created a form of tree that grew its own incandescent bulbs and powered themselves using the tree's own photosynthesis. State officials tried to shut the project down, but the mayor quickly pointed out the city manufactured nothing. It was the tree that created the bulbs, and trees were not subject to laws. Further, the plants were not being bought or sold, but simply planted where new street lights would go. In the end, the state conceded the battle and was forced to admit that in terms of using greener lighting, few things were more green than a tree.

- Originally mailed to K. Valencia-Bravo of Olathe, Kansas

Gossip Cat

They spoke of a mysterious black cat, a ghostly being that lurked in high places like cabinets and closets and the tops of bookshelves and dressers. Out of the corner of their eye, they would see his tail swishing, and turn to see the silent creature staring them down with eyes that pierced the soul. “What did it mean?” they wondered. Some said it foretold death because several people lost loved ones shortly after seeing the cat. Some said it signaled financial ruin because its appearance coincided with the loss of a house or job. Still others said he appeared the day before they met their future spouse. Wild rumors circulated about the cat and more and more often the cat would be seen. The town was one large pulsing raw nerve as everyone shared stories about what happened after the cat appeared. The truth is, the phantom feline's appearance foretold nothing at all. They had been so focused on what sorts of things transpired after the cat appeared that they began to project their own assumptions about the cat on the chaos, forcing a pattern where there was none based on their own experiences. If they had looked at the issue from the opposite perspective and asked what had happened before the cat arrived, they would have realized the cat was no premonition, but a connoisseur of stories and gossip.

- Originally mailed to H. Ainsworth from Gulfport, Mississippi

Cropping the Universe

 

There once was a man who found he could crop his universe the way a photographer might crop a photo, simply cutting out whatever parts he felt didn't properly fit his vision. At first, he cropped large annoyances. He never much cared for Texas, so away it went. The news said North Korea and Iran were a danger to the safety of the world, so he cropped them out of existence as well. China threatened to overtake the United States as an economic powerhouse, so he cropped them. Of course, no nation exists in a vacuum, and soon all the industries that relied on Chinese products began to flounder. Critics raked him over the coals for destabilizing the world economy and demanded he bring these nations back. So he did what he could to improve his world by cropping out his critics. He cropped out those whose politics made him furious or whose views set him on edge. He cropped out the neighbor's dog that treated his front yard like a toilet (though he never put up a fence), and he cropped out the neighbor for good measure. Within a few short years, he had nothing left but his back yard, which overlooked a lake. He found if he cropped out certain trees and light posts, he could imagine he were on some lovely tropical island somewhere. Of course, weeds sprouted up, and it was easier to just crop that section of the yard than to tend to it. When he saw a storm cloud coming, he cropped out that portion of the sky and as the trees started dying from drought, he just cropped them out as well. Soon the entirety of his universe consisted of a single speck of cerulean no larger than a pixel. For a while all was right with his very narrow universe until he grew bored of the color blue.

- Originally mailed to M. Hendry in Davenport, Florida

No Roof

He swore he would have a nice brick house by the time he was thirty. Also, he swore he would live his life debt free. When he turned twenty-nine, he realized he didn't have enough for a full house, but did not want to break either promise to himself. Instead, he built a lovely brick home with no roof. After all, a home missing a wall would easily allow in thieves, vagrants, and wild animals. No roof just let in a few birds and the elements. After planting a few trees and setting up some tarps, the rain was mostly settled, many home improvement stores stocked outdoor furniture, and he had convinced himself the birds added a touch of whimsy to his world.

- Originally mailed to K. Ballard of Owensborough, Kentucky

Balding Security

After pre-natal genetic customization became commonplace—albeit at a steep price—the beautiful became far more beautiful, genetically flawless in fact. The wealthy had their health, their looks, their brilliance, athleticism, and ambition all guaranteed from birth while the rest of humanity was forced to rely on the traditional crapshoot that had been genetic heredity for the past dozens of millennia. With every genetic and monetary advantage stacked against them, the lower class became more resentful than ever, until soon the world existed in a state of precarious balance, just barely avoiding civil war. The Beautiful People paid their guards and servants in single genetic enhancements for their children. Of all genetic modification, from eye color and skin complexion and bone structure and teeth straightness, the hardest to perfect—and the hardest for the poor to fake—was hair. There were too many variables. Sheen, shape, shade, volume, bounce, density. The odds of someone being born with “perfect hair” without genetic manipulation were astronomical. As such, security systems on both sides no longer cared to pinpoint faces anymore. Instead, they pointed their cameras straight down on the hair, searching for receding hairlines, implants, dye jobs, or split ends. The natural part could tell friend from foe better than any interrogation.

- Originally mailed to S. Sartin in Atlanta, Georgia

Beauty Parlors

The back alley beauty parlors were battle grounds in the war between the those who could afford gene scrubbing and those whose genetics were untampered with. Unable to afford professional genetic modification, the poor often resorted to places such as this, where unlicensed med school dropouts would tailor the DNA of the poor so that they and their children could be biologically better off, be it more beautiful, more athletic, more intelligent. The ruling elite of the wealthy, bred from the womb to be perfect in every way, would crack down on these clinics first with legislation and later with firepower. They claimed this was simply for the underprivileged public's own good, to protect them from shoddy workmanship that could do who knows what to their bodies. The poor, however, believed it was control, for how could they compete against the wealthy and gain a fair foothold when those with enough wealth and power could ensure their children would be more cunning than the naturals and their enforcement squads stronger and more agile.

- Originally mailed to C. Townsend of Gulfport, Mississippi

Thwarted Alien

It is a belief widely held by conspiracy theorists and ufologists that there exist just out of phase with our own world an infinite number of other realities neatly stacked atop our own. Those who scoff at tales of the long dead returning argue that ghosts are simply beings from these other worlds visible as through a window when conditions are just so and portions of the two parallel realities briefly graze each other. In the rare cases in which they overlap, we sometimes get reports of people vanishing without a trace or the appearance of people without a verifiable past.

On December 15, 1974, mankind quite unintentionally averted disaster when our world and another very different from our own intersected for seven and a half seconds. In that short time, a creature fueled by hatred and destruction crossed over into our own world. Thankfully, at that precise spot in space and time, we were building a parking garage and the beast found itself caught half phased within a concrete support pillar being poured. Because the parking garage was built by skeptics, they thought nothing of the haunting little round face in the middle of the completed pillar and dismissed it as a strange fluke in the cement.

- Originally mailed to J. Knight from Pascagoula, Mississippi

Cat Happy Place

Buttons did not care to be held one little bit. As a kitten, his mother told him his best course of action when the humans picked him up was to go to his happy place. Buttons tried, but he quickly learned that though his instincts were to struggle, to bite and claw and scratch and squirm, the humans would not put him down. How was he ever to get to his happy place?

“Silly buttons,” his mother would say. “Your happy place isn't a real place, but a state of mind.”

At three he learned that his mother was wrong. His happy place wasn't a state of mind at all, but a real place in a parallel world. A brown place. Brown like the dirt he loved to play in, brown like the rug the humans wouldn't let him pee on, brown like his favorite kibble.

From then on, when the humans picked him up, he would stare into the distance and let the Brown Place wash over him and take him away, and would only return when he felt quite certain they had given up searching for him and had opened a nice comfy book for him to sit on.

- Originally mailed to A. Navoy in Jackson, Mississippi

Plants vs Humans

Scientists often spoke about how long it would take the Earth to destroy everything man made if he were to sudden vanish. Most presumed this was simply a thought experiment. Quite the contrary, it was a warning. The Earth, they said, actively, consciously sought to destroy mankind. Vines, the conjectured, did not seek out cracks in walls because it was convenient. Instead, it deliberately sought cracks to further destroy walls and buildings. Root systems do not attempt to penetrate leaky pipes because they desire its water but because they know the pipes are ours.

Early man knew this. It is why he first domesticated plants, to show them who was boss. It is why he eats so many fruits and grains, to hurt plants' ability to reproduce. Our first campfires were not for warmth or cooking. They were warnings. “Forests,” they said, “we defy the trees you drop on us and your thorns that cut us. We hack them up and burn their bodies! We carve their corpses and make homes of their bones!”

The historical record is inconsistent as to who started this quiet war, but it will no doubt continue for as long as man and plant exist in the same space.

- Originally mailed to J. Hall of Jackson, Mississippi

Evil Balloons

 

Though most would scoff at the idea, birthday clowns and magicians and every sort of professional party goer will shudder and share their own harrowing experiences in hushed tones at the mention of evil balloons. Their tales cover the whole gamut, from balloons that maliciously pop right as the birthday boy is blowing out his candles, startling him and depriving him of his yearly wish, to those that cling to the body and refuse to let go no matter how much you shake. They recount tales of horror in which one high and mighty balloon holds an entire room of adults under its command, filling them with fear at the thought of letting him touch the ground. One clown told of a balloon that followed him after a party, gunned down his partner, and stole his car. 

Spotting these evil balloons is not easy, if reports are to be believed. An evil unmarked balloon and a wholesome, American-loving unmarked balloon look the same. One could watch their behaviors. Does this balloon stick to me? Does it burst at inopportune times? Unfortunately by the time one has identified the evil balloon, it as already struck. The best method is to draw faces on all balloons. Evil balloons revel in their evil, and will entice you draw an evil face. Once identified, your only course of action if you wish to preserve the lives of those around you is to leave the building, seal the doors, and burn the place to ashes.

- Originally mailed to B. Bowser from Brandon, Mississippi

Resurrecting Dinos

For as long as she could remember, Clarissa wanted a pet dinosaur. As child, she envisioned playing fetch with her pet stegosaurus, sending her pterodactyl to fetch frisbees that had gotten stuck on the roof, or in her more cruel fantasies, playing tag with her very own t-rex, knowing she would win easily against his tiny arms. After seeing Jurassic Park for the first time as a child, her whole world changed. Dinosaur pets were no longer mere fantasy, but an actual possibility. All throughout high school and well into college, she poured over the science and dived head first into any cutting edge research regarding paleontology, cloning, or a combination of the two. When a professor finally gave her the cold hard truth, that science couldn't bring dinosaurs back from extinction, she wept for weeks. Not one to give up so easily, however, she persevered and finally found success in the one avenue for dino resurrection left to her: necromancy.

 - Originally mailed to C. George in San Diego, California