UNKNOWN POSTAL
WORKER
An unknown postal worker, the first in the line of a great succession of unfortunates, was born in the little seaside town of
Festeron, where this person was eventually employed at the Post Office under the supervision of the boss
Mr. Crisp.
Mr. Crisp did not spice up the postal worker's life—he was more like a
thorn. But the mail clerk did what he dictated, whether it was selling
a stamp or delivering a letter. The postal worker spent a lot of time
daydreaming, creating a magic world that would be visited at will, but
the only problem was Mr. Crisp, who always showed off just when the
dragon was about to be polished.
It was an ordinary
Frob Day afternoon, sometime in either
Augur or
Suspendur of 1157 GUE, when
Gladys first implemented her curse. As a part of her plan to control
Wishbringer, the Stone of Dreams, she captured her sister,
Y’Gael’s, cat
Chaos.
This feline, black as night from head to tail save one little white
spot right in the middle of her forehead, was turned into a black
marble sculpture about 14 inches high, and the only way to bring the
cat back to life was to insert Wishbringer into a round, shallow hole
carved into the sculpture’s forehead. Gladys composed a ransom note to
be sent through the Festeron postal service.
This unknown mail
clerk had been performing ordinary duties in an altogether ordinary
way, when the boss, Mr. Crisp, asked for the ransom note, concealed in
a strange envelope, to be delivered to the proprietor of
Ye Olde Magick Shoppe on the outskirts of town before five o’clock. The following note was attached:
So you want to work for
the Post Office, eh? Okay, sport. Take this letter over to the joke shop on the
other side of town. And don’t listen to the creepy old dame who runs the place.
She’ll go on and on about black cats, trolls, magic quests and somebody she
calls the Evil One. Says she’s got a rock that makes wishes come true. Probably
talks to UFOs, too.
Be polite. If she offers
you a gift, don’t take it… and whatever you do, DON’T let her send you on any
errands!
The Boss
PS: Better hurry. It’s
getting Dark outside.
The postal worker made way for the pinnacle of the mountain on North Festeron island and delivered the note to Y'Gael:
Deliver the Magick Stone
to me before the moon sets or you will never see your cat again!
--The Evil One
The Wishbringer stone had been placed within the bottom of a tin
can, which she secretly handed over to the postal worker, who was sent
on a quest to recover the feline. At the same moment, Festeron was
transformed by Gladys into the cursed town of
Witchville.
All the familiar buildings and landmarks became completely hidden under
a thick blanket of evening fog. Only the summit of Post Office Hill was
high enough to pierce the clouds, which now helded the frightening
tower of The Evil One where the Post Office had once been. Sweetness
and light could not exist in Witchville. The people who were friends
would be friends no more.
Due to a rattling sound, the postal
worker eventually discovered the Wishbringer stone beneath the false
bottom in the tin can. Contradictory accounts of this tale have been
handed down to us—in one version, the postal worker uses the powers of
the Wishbringer stone to bypass many of the hazards of Witchville; but
in another version, the postal worker refused to call upon the wishes
of the Stone, instead resorting to conquer the dangers of the curse by
natural means.
For example, when Princess
Tasmania was unhappily trapped in a pit on the shore of the
Western Sea,
the first account tells that she was rescued when the postal worker
used Wishbringer to wish for rain, which quickly filled the narrow pit
and allowed her to swim gracefully out; while the second version tells
how the postal worker lowered a dead branch into the pit for her to
grab onto and hoisted her up. Despite these minor differences, all
accounts detail the events of the quest with identical encounters and
rewards—Tasmania honored the postal worker with a silver whistle, and
the blowing of it transported the human to the platypus palace on
Misty Island where Tasmania's father, King
Anatinus rewarded the postal worker's deeds with a wizard's hat.
The
postal worker returned to the island of Witchville with a single toot
of the whistle. At Festeron Point was a miniature lighthouse on the
shore, barely ten feet high with a pelican perched atop it. When the
hat was given to the bird, its eyes opened wide with interest and the
wizard’s hat quickly found a place on the pelican’s head. All at once
the lighthouse blazed to life. Its shining beacon whirled like a
gyroscope, and a pencil-thin beam of light pierced the sky and traced a
word on the passing cloud. (There are three textual variants here that
tell which the magical word was that was capable of lowering the
drawbridge to Gladys’ tower: KALUZE, FRATTO, and SORKIN. Scholars have
not been able to determine which one is authentic, if any are.)
One
thing that researches have been baffled about is that when Festeron was
cursed into Witchville, there was a dimensional tunnel in the northern
forests leading directly to
the White House.
In these days, its stately colonial architecture was in ruins, after
eons of trespassing by thoughtless adventurers. Here, the postal worker
experienced the extraordinary conversion of a lifeless mailbox into a
fantastic living creature that trailed after like a faithful canine
companion. When the postal worker arrived at the
Pleasure Wharf, the little mailbox defended its new master by battling a larger
wild mailbox until the two combatants disappeared under a cloud of dust.
In one version of the story, the postal worker was caught by the dreaded
Boot Patrol, an army of living boots. Having escaped from the Police Station cell twice,
Sgt. MacGuffin decided to have the postal worker tossed in the ocean to the sharks for a little bedtime snack:
I was
thrown into an especially smelly Boot and carried, kicking and screaming, to the
edge of the Pleasure Wharf. With a mighty swing, I was thrown high into the air
and fell with a splash into the churning waters of Witchville Bay. The boots on
the wharf stomped and hooted as a black fin rose above the waves. It circled
slowly, getting closer. I shut my eyes and prayed that the end would be quick
and not too painful...
“Hop on!”
The tiny voice was somewhere near my left ear. “Don’t just thrash about with
your eyes shut. Hop on!”
The boots
on the Pleasure Wharf stopped hooting and started screaming. Timidly, I opened
one eye. The bay was boiling with thousands of seahorses! They leapt from the
waves like wet little rockets, splashing the Pleasure Wharf with black, oily
water. Many of the boots had already slipped and fallen into the sea; and a
black fin was gliding confidently in their direction.
“What are
you waiting for? Halloween?”
The familiar seahorse at my ear urged me to a nearby buoy. I grasped it
with my last ounce of strength and felt myself speeding across the bay,
propelled by dozens of seahorses reined to the buoy with seaweed.
When
the postal worker finally was able to make it to Gladys’ tower, the
human found that its only entrance, a drawbridge, was closed tight.
Speaking the word which had been displayed by the beacon of the
lighthouse, there was a great creak of wood and rattle of chains as the
drawbridge slowly lowered across the moat.
Upon entering the
vestibule just inside the tower’s entrance, the postal worker stared in
horror at Princess Tasmania who was chained to the floor. She warned
the human to turn back. Mr. Crisp closed the drawbridge shut and a
gigantic Boot pinned the postal worker to the ground. Both the human
and platypus were taken to the torture chamber. Unwilling to start his
experiments without giving the postal worker a chance to bribe him, Mr.
Crisp searched the human’s inventory. In the possessions of his victim,
he discovered a personal letter from
Violet Voss. This prompted Mr. Crisp to instantly abandon the torture procedure so that he was not late for his date with Voss.
This
opportunity allowed for the postal worker and Tasmania to escape from
the torture room. After stating, “But even if you fail, your deeds
shall live forever in our legends. Have faith!” she returned to her
people on the Misty Island by blowing into one of the silver whistles.
The postal worker explored the remainder of the castle, but was unable
to discover The Evil One. Instead, in her laboratory, the human found a
switch to disable the library security. And thus the postal worker made
way for the Witchville Library.
Just as the postal worker was
about to place Wishbringer into the forehead of the statue of Chaos,
Gladys appeared in the form of Y'Gael, hoping to discourage the
placement of the stone through vile means of temptation. But, wearing
magical glasses, the postal worker was not fooled, but could peer
through the disguise. Resisting the urge to hand over the stone, the
postal worker set it into the feline statue's forehead to become a
living cat once again. Chaos was taken back to Y'Gael at the Magick
Shoppe, where no records of a reward other than gratitude were provided
for the heroic services. The mailbox, which had vanished during the
fight with the large mailbox, faithfully returned to its master.
Gladys
first attempt was foiled, but she was not discouraged. Her wickedness
endured for many years, and through many postmen. As she killed many of
these mail clerks, it is probable that this first postal worker was
killed during a future Witchville night. Future postmen included
Mr. Sneed and
Simon.
TRIVIA:- The postal worker had a TV set at home.
- The postal worker had an oldest aunt.