Content Warning (CW): death
Open Me
Michele Markarian
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RETURN TO SENDER.
Cheryl stared at the stamped words across the enveloper of the birthday card she had mailed to Toby three weeks ago. RETURN TO SENDER. In the almost seven-year history of the mailing of the card, this had never happened—nor, Cheryl thought, would it be likely to again.
The card had started as a joke—who mailed birthday cards anymore?—and depicted a clown, surrounded by the back of kids’ heads, juggling three colored balls in the air. Despite his happy make-up, the clown looked sad. Inside, the message read, HOPE YOUR BIRTHDAY IS A BALL! Cheryl and Toby hated clowns—something a little too John Wayne Gacy about them. Toby had given Cheryl the card for her 27th birthday. She had shrieked, then stashed it away and mailed it back to Toby for his birthday, four months later. Toby had mailed it back to Cheryl the following year, only to receive it back again.
The card had not fared well over the years. Cheryl had drawn head lice on one of the kid’s heads. Toby turned one of the balls into a pudgier version of The Scream. He had also given the clown a small Hitler moustache. And when he sent it back last, he’d turned IS A BALL! into HAS BALLS. Cheryl brooded that he’d beaten her in defacing the writing, and was alarmed that he’d replaced the cheery exclamation point with a period. Shortly afterwards, he’d broken up with her. Cheryl had sent the card back for his birthday anyway, with the addition of an upturned mouth for the clown. How could Toby resist?
Then Cheryl noticed something else in the lower right corner of the envelope, in tiny handwriting—deceased. She drew a sharp breath, looked away and waited for her heart to stop. She looked again, and saw that it was unmistakably Toby’s handwriting. Deceased? Was it a joke?
The ball-less idiot. Deceased my ass, thought Cheryl angrily. She ripped open the card and drew a picture of God standing on a cloud and pointing a gun at the clown’s head. Then she stuffed it into a clean envelope. By God, she would write out Toby’s address on a clean label and affix it to the front. She would drive to another town and send it again. And if it came back, she’d send it again. And again, and again, until he opened it.
Michele Markarian is a fiction writer and playwright living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in numerous places, including Bridge Eight, The Furious Gazelle, Daily Science Fiction, and The Antonym, and in six anthologies by Wising Up Press. A collection of her plays was published by Fomite Press. She has an MA from the University of Massachusetts.