Plush Godfather

Gertrude ruled Bed Town with an iron fist, from Pillow Heights, down East and West Side to South Central. Only Cold Foot Flats where even blankets wouldn't go lay outside her dominion. She ran snuggle rackets, engaged in blanket smuggling, temperature fixing, beating pillows who refused to fluff up. She would trade favors for preferential placement on the night light side. If it was underhanded and comfy, she had a hand in it. All the plushies of Bed Town trembled before her and did as she said.

One day, a newcomer, Fluffy Bunbun rolled onto the bed with an eye toward taking the number one snuggle spot. When Gertrude saw him sitting there on the down pillow by the end table lamp, her pillow, she knew she could show no mercy, or else risk losing her once unquestioned control over the bed. In the night, when Suzy, the mayor of Bed Town, was fast asleep, Gertrude sent her boys Teddy and Mrs. Diggles to handle Fluffy Bunbun personally.

Fluffy Bunbun protested as he was torn from Suzy's sleeping arms, but they would not hear his pleas for mercy.

“Tonight, he sleeps under the bed, behind the clothes Suzy hid from her mother,” Gertrude said, her voice as icy as the bottom side of the pillow.

“No!” cried Fluffy Bunbun. “I'll never be seen again!”

“Not until cleaning day, three whole days from now,” chuckled Gertrude. “By then, she will have forgotten how excited she was to get you, and you'll be just another toy. I control cuddle distribution in Bed Town.”

Fluffy Bunbun wanted to protest, but it was too late. He had already fallen to the floor, all but forgotten. Three days? May as well be three years when it came to six year olds.

- Originally mailed to M. Taylor in Seoul, South Korea

C-Block Scout Troop

In prison, a group of C-Block lifers sat around one afternoon lamenting their life choices. I shouldn't have robbed that bank. I shouldn't have shot that guy. I shouldn't have tried to sell five kilos of coke to that cop. Then they began to reflect farther back, to look at the decisions that led them to their various lives of crime. After tracing their way through their past, through their criminal twenties and delinquent teens, they finally reached childhood, and somewhere between talks of failed parents and bad schools, they all realized another thing they had missed out on. All of them had either been pulled from Scouts programs early or never been a Scout at all. It was a shot at redemption, they decided, but how could they do it? There weren't exactly woods in the prison yard to go camping in. That's when Inmate #54363-A, who founded a tech company and then embezzled away everything, came across the idea of telecamping. Using a CraigsList ad for a Scout Master, the band of criminals met Roger Acorn, who always wanted to be a Scout Master but had also missed his boat many years ago. Through the wonders of modern telecommunications and prison ingenuity, he taught them everything a scout should know. Navigating by the stars. Making knots with rope (made from sheets). Knife (or in this case, shiv) safety. How to build a proper tent (more sheets). They could build a fire in theory. They knew which berries to eat and how to catch a fish if they ever made their way into the world again. After earning their eagle badges, they realized they had all the tools they needed to escape prison and live as free men in the wilderness. They realized this, but they didn't do it, for they had also learned a thing or two about integrity and responsibility, and spent the rest of their lives in prison not because they had to, but because they knew they should.

- Originally mailed to D. Nichols of Cambridge, Massachusetts

The Glenndale Seven

The Glenndale Seven thought they planned the perfect crime. They would break into the gold vault at Fort Knox using techniques a court injunction has barred me from describing on a post card, leave with seven hundred gold bars, and lay low at a local church while waiting for a fence to restamp the gold and sell it to buyers waiting in Eastern Europe and Central and South America. One member of the Glenndale seven was a federal agent who used his understanding of FBI investigation procedure to avoid detection, and another member served as custodian for the Greater Life Baptist Church of Glenndale which gave him both 24/7 access to the large building and an thorough understanding of which rooms were never visited, and thus ideal for gold storage. Their plan would have worked flawlessly, but for one thing. God took none too kindly at being made an accomplice in this daring crime. Of course, the age of miracles had long since past, and God, being older and more mature, decided the somewhat subtle approach would be best. He waited patiently for a detective with a fondness for Irish folklore to pass the church, and He set a rainbow in place above the building, knowing the detective would remember that the gold is found at the end of the rainbow.

- Originally mailed to W. Murphree in Rosenburg, Texas

The Dark Defender

Rupert Graves, alias the Dark Defender, felt a calling from the time he was a child to don a mask and serve his community as a vigilante crime fighter. Where as other boys and girls saw comic books as escapist fantasy, he viewed the role of caped crusader as a viable career choice. He spent his teens and early twenties honing his body and mine, trying to stay sharp, to be at his peak when criminals struck. Unfortunately, he lacked the powers of Superman or the Flash, and thus he could not quickly run from one side of town to the other, let alone to the other side of the world. He lacked Batman's resources, so he couldn't invest in a fast car to get him to distant crime scenes, and he had no super computer, no super hearing to let him known where mayhem was afoot. Because crime fighting paid so poorly, he didn't even have a police scanner. Still, a calling was a calling, and so he accepted his limitations and made do. He couldn't defend the whole city, but the five thousand block of Mayfair Avenue from the post office to the tire shop and the grocery store in between were under his protection, and he would fight to the last breath to keep those five hundred feet safe.

- Originally mailed to R. Cox of Biloxi, Mississippi

DUI Fawns

To the surprise of absolutely no one at all, fawns and satyrs loved to drink. They weened their children on wine, poured bourbon into their cereal, and celebrated literally every occasion down to the opening of a door with a libatious toast. Small wonder, then, that there were so many drunk driving incidents each year involving these mythical men and women. Police had a hard time doing much enforcement, however, as their unique biologies made Breathalyzers unreliable and they were experts at every example of proving sobriety while utterly sloshed. They could walk in straight lines, do acrobatics, say their alphabet backwards and forwards, even rub their heads and pat their shoulders at the same time. Still, the highway patrol repeatedly posted soaring numbers of fawn related deaths each year. ATF statistics likewise indicated the average satyr consumed two point three gallons of alcohol per day. Despite all of this, police couldn't prove on site that the creatures were intoxicated behind the wheel, and to arrest any who operated a motor vehicle on suspicion would be racial profiling. To help curb the problem, police stations all across the country began receiving statues of fawns engaging in “sobriety-proving” activities with statistics about their drinking habits, and a reminder that even if they couldn't be charged with a DUI, they could always be arrested for reckless driving.

- Originally mailed to C. Merritt of Juneau, Alaska

Advertising Cthulhu

 

 

 

 

Cthulhu's followers were a secretive bunch, but it seemed the harder they tried to conceal their existence, the more problems they had with police, private detectives, academics, and pulp writers doing everything they can to delve into their mysteries and throw monkey wrenches into their schemes. Not that these daring individuals could help themselves. Man was by a nature a creature of immeasurable curiosity and insatiable discontent. He wants nothing more than to have what he has been told he cannot possess or to learn what he is not meant to know. For centuries the cultists presumed the answer was more secrecy. After all, if the rest of society knew nothing of the Old One's existence, how could they pry? But then jealous wives wondered where their husbands went when they claimed to be bowling and meddlesome police inquired into the disappearances around town.

In 1987, when the stars were almost right, they stumbled upon the answer. The old truth held that the more man was told he should not have something, the more he wanted it, but so too was its unspoken reciprocate. Man wanted nothing to do with anything required of him. The cult began to publicize their activities, to print books and games about their dark lord. They merchandised action figures and vests and Franklin Mint commemorative plates. They preached door-to-door. They made Cthulhu so ubiquitous that cultists could now freely do as they pleased, for the last thing anyone wanted was to learn a fellow was into the Great Old One and be forced to spend the rest of the night listening to him prattle on about how glorious it would be when Lord Cthulhu rose from his slumber and devoured the world.

“What are you doing?” police would ask cloaked men holding knives to a bound man's throat.

“Making a sacrifice to Cthulhu, who-”

“Enough!” the police would cry. “I don't need to know all that.”

And he would then fake an important call from dispatch to extricate himself from the ensuing lecture.

 

- Originally mailed to J. Tahon of De Haan, Belgium

 

B-Boy Cat

All the ladies love a bad boy, and for cats, it's no exception. Coleridge T. Whiskers lived by his own rules, and beneath his fur had a belly tattoo that read ALLEY LIFE and across his back, YOLNT. When he was supposed to be studying, he would throw his notebooks on the floor and practice his sweet b-boy backspins instead. In fact, there was no contest he wouldn't attempt to settle in a dance off: who took a sweet feline home, who rode shotgun, who got the last hit of catnip.

At school, the teachers would get on to him after breaking into a butterfly-windmill-backflip into a headspin in the middle of a lecture. “Mister Whiskers,” they would stay, “behave this instant!”

“You must have me confused,” he would say. “Mister Whiskers is my father's name. You can call me Coolcat.”

The teachers would roll their eyes, but the girls would swoon. “You're heading down a bad path, Mister Whiskers,” they would say, but he wouldn't listen. They were talking to his dad.

He did end up poorly. Too many fights, too much attitude and he got kicked out of the house, just another homeless alley cat begging for scraps and digging in dumpsters. Sometimes, he and the other strays would descend on the same can only to find one fish bone to nibble on. Coolcat wasn't worried though. He had a dance move for just such occasions.

- Originally mailed to M. Wilkes of Ridgeland, Mississippi

Vodka Robbers

Contrary to the hyperbole people like to throw around, during Russia's vodka shortage, the popular beverage was never worth its weight in gold. It was, however, worth its weight in silver, which, though no where near as pricey, would still end up costing a man as much as $550 just for the run of the mill stuff. Sure, a person could make their own, but the cost of distilling supplies, ingredients, time, and skill made most just bite the bullet and buy a bottle.

Its value, however, created a brief but fascinating barter market in which vodka, while not legal tender, may as well have been. People even bought safes and established vodka savings accounts at banks, where they could keep their precious liquor and set withdraw limits of two shots per day. Unfortunately, this gave rise to a new, virtually unarrestable band of bank robber, who would charge in, guns brandished, and demand, “Give us all your vodka!”

Sure catching them was easy. They could often be found stumbling about in fields. Given the nature of the theft, however, there was rarely any evidence left to convict with.

- Originally mailed to P. Brown in Clovis, New Mexico (whom I am told has a vodka allergy, ironically enough)

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