Route 413

     The truck that matched the keys, was the oldest and ugliest vehicle in the entire fleet. The pollen on the windshield and the weeds around its tires gave the impression that the truck had been forgotten in the side parking lot for decades. The dings and peeled paint made it more silver than white. The entire cockpit was coated with a thick layer of dust.
Bridger—who was the type to buy dented cans in the supermarket because he felt sorry for them—gazed at the truck sadly. In a few months, this whole truck would be junked and repurposed for parts.
He used the wheel to swing into the driver’s seat. The chair wheezed and gasped as his weight settled in. Bridger put the key in the ignition. When it rattled to life, the entire cabin coughed and a little cloud of dust stirred from the vents.
     Maybe it would be junked in a few weeks.
     “Poor old girl, you must be older than me.” Bridger ran his hand over the wheel with a half-hearted tenderness. He ran through the rest of the official inspection, testing lights and recording the mileage. He was supposed to ask for help to check if the brake lights were functioning, but he’d learned he could test it himself if he wedged an ice-cracker on the brake to hold it down. That’s our Bridger, self-sufficient and thorough.
When he’d tested everything on the checklist, and a few things that weren’t, Bridger crouched and looked under the chassis. Just in case some scab had jostled loose during his rude examination. He actually felt a twinge of guilt for interrupting the ancient vehicle’s long rest.
     But nothing dripped. She had new tires, the mirrors were clean, and the tank was full. There was nothing to report. The truck was perfect.
     “Well,” Bridger patted the dash affectionately. “I guess you’re stuck working today.”
     The LLV growled and sputtered as if in answer before Bridger turned it off and put the key back on his belt. Then he went back into the annex to case the route.

     He found the case for Route 413 in a dark shadow beside the accountables cage right between the janitor’s closet and the women’s locker room. How had he never seen it before? He must have cased the one just a few feet away, Route 12, a hundred times. And it was so… distinct.
     “Distinct'' was Bridger’s word for it.
     Mine would be “eldritch”.
     But not eldritch in any obvious way. It didn’t glow in an eerie light or have tentacles or anything. But a regular person, say someone like Bridger Duc Hahn, simply wouldn’t see it if they didn’t have to.
     He had to see it now, though. It was his job. An old wooden case. Coated in dust, like it had been standing there longer than anything else in the annex.
     Which, for the record, it had.
     The route’s light buzzed when he turned it on and flickered when he lifted the first tub to begin casing the mail. His very own route. He felt almost happy.
     Bridger looked for the route book, which was ancient and thick and mostly handwritten in illegible scrawl— as if a madman had penned it. It was about what Bridger expected from his co-workers in Atlantic City. He flipped through the maps, then stuffed it into his satchel.
     Wasn’t thirteen an unlucky number? According to Meadow, four was unlucky because it meant ‘death’ in Mandarin Chinese. His little sister collected superstitions like a magpie.
The street names swam around in his brain. You can’t ask too much more of a bit of gray gelatin in a bone cage. He vaguely recognized Highway 666 was also unlucky and not the name of any highway he knew in New Jersey, but then he fell into the rhythm of sorting the mail.
     As he finished, Krajewski arrived with the DPS.
     Ma’am?
     It stands for Delivery Point Sequence and it’s the flats and letters that are already put in order by a machine. And before you ask, a flat is a large piece of mail like one of those floppy books.
     Magazines, Ma’am.
     Yeah, anyways, Krajewski arrived with the tray of the DPS and said tonelessly, “Congratulations. Those are for you.”
     “Thanks.” Bridger took the tub of flats and then realized the supervisor meant the jacket piled on top. “Oh, a new coat?”
     “And overshoes.” Krajewski wasn’t looking at Bridger. He wasn’t looking at anything. His eyes stared unblinkling forward, joyless and unseeing.
     Bridger nodded. Krajewski stared, not looking at anything and not saying anything.
     Was this some kind of joke Bridger was missing? Maybe Krajewski was high. Maybe he was waiting for Bridger to try on the coat?
     So, Bridger, out of polite awkwardness, shook out the coat and tried it on.
     Nice coat, the kind with a lining that came out on warmer days and a slick waterproof shell. It fit him perfectly.
     “Awful nice of the guys to do this for me.” Awful strange. A.C. wasn’t a place with high morale. He zipped the coat. “Aw, you guys even had my name embroidered!”
     Krajewski leaned nearer with a lurch, as if he misjudged the speed and tilt of his own body. He stared at the name for much longer than he needed to. “Yes. Bridger Hahn, we did.”
     Bridger had no idea how he was meant to behave. Was Krajewski making this weird? Was Bridger? Was it weird at all? Maybe he and his supervisor were having some kind of non-verbal bonding moment that Bridger didn’t recognize. 
     “These must have cost someone a nice chunk of their uniform budget. Or is this a–” He put his hand into the pocket. “Dog treats?”
     Bridger chuckled uncomfortably caught with contraband. “That’s funny.”
     “They are a very important tool for your route.” Krajewski said with absolute seriousness.
     “Dog treats are against regulation.” Bridger narrowed his eyes.
     “Put them in your satchel.”
     “But—”
     “In the satchel.”
     And because his boss was telling him, Bridger obeyed.
     Krajewski pointed at the mail and the bundle on top. “There are also overshoes and pants.”
     Bridger noticed them. “Oh! Uh, great.”
     He’d never worn overshoes or weather-proofed trousers. This was New Jersey, after all. Not Montana. But he wasn’t going to be ungrateful to his supervisor. “I’ll be sure to use them when the weather gets–”
     “Put them on now.”
     Bridger instinctively obeyed and picked up the trousers. A thick denim-ish material that would be heavy but warm. Then he stopped.
     Krajewski stood staring at the place where Bridger had been standing a moment ago.
     “I’m sorry… Um, you want me to take off my pants right here?”
     Krajewski tilted his head slightly, jerky and unnaturally. He answered hesitantly, and when his monotone inflected upward Bridger thought he heard a crackling behind his voice. “Yes?”
     Bridger glanced over to the manager in the accountables cage, an old man who spent most of his day playing computer games behind the desk.
     “I’m not… gonna do that, boss.” Bridger wasn’t used to telling anyone ‘no’, but this was definitely weird.
     Krajewski blinked, a slow and unnatural closing of his eyes, then said. “That was a joke.”
     Now, Krajewski was an anxious, stringy man, but Bridger had heard him make normal jokes with the regulars and even some of the other city carrier assistants. But then again, Bridger made people serious. One of his high school girlfriends had written poetry about him being ‘haunted’ and ‘mysterious’ and had promptly dumped him when she realized he was actually just ‘depressed’ and ‘awkward-as-hell.’ Maybe his very nearness had ruined Krajewski’s timing.
     “They are over-your-pants pants,” Krajewski said.
     “Oh, it’s a cover-all?” In catalogs they looked much more light-weight. As he shook out the trousers, they changed in his hands to match his expectation going from dense weather-resistance trousers to a light-weight protective bib.
     Now, I don’t want you to think that Bridger is in any way unobservant.
     You and I know that some very obvious entity had possessed both Margot Formica and What’s-his-name Krajewksi. You and I know, without doubt, that the standard issue protective and adaptive wear he’d been given literally changed in his hand.
     But remember, Bridger is a human.
     And humans are stupid.
     His awareness could not wrap around the idea that the clothing changed in his hands, so his brain tricked him into misremembering the previous weight. It’s a very common defensive—
     Oh! Of course! That’s what we’re here for, Abby. This must be part of that new series!
     Ma’am, do you mean the Public Service Announcement about the Fragility of the Human Mind or do the one about the expansion of universe—
     Yes. That’s the one. Dear Audience, I’m sure as we watch Bridger Hahn more we’ll see how the human defensive mechanism is worn down into madness.
     Real shame. I liked him.

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