The First Day

A very short story with an ominous theme.

The First Day

Late in the stifling hot afternoon after a tough day at the office, Tom Walker as usual strolled absent mindedly out to his mailbox on his quiet suburban street. Only a couple other souls stirred outside at that dinner hour, and Tom waved or nodded to them in a cursory manner. As part of his daily routine, he let out a sigh expecting only to find junk mail inside the box. Before he pulled down the door, Tom speculated how long it might take for his mailbox to become crammed full of junk mail if he never collected it and directly throw it in the trash. A week at the most he decided imagining a cascade of brightly colored fliers, envelopes and brochures erupting from the mailbox door. Not thinking about the action, he pulled open the door and reached in. Oddly, on this particular day, there was only one envelope residing within. Tom withdrew his hand and looked at the crisp, pristine envelope.

It was a plain business envelope with his name and address centered on the front in an obviously automated cursive script. Tom recognized this from all the fliers sent at least once a month by dish or DIRECTV. He flipped over the envelope but found no return address or any other markings indicative of those persistent sales flyers. Turning and moving slowly back to his modest home, he decided to open the envelope just to make sure before depositing it as usual in the round filing receptacle. A single perfectly folded sheet of paper resided inside, and before unfolding it Tom could tell the paper had little writing or graphics on it. He unfolded the nearly blank page to see a single bold word centered in the middle of the page that read simply: “RUN.”

How ludicrous, Tom thought flipping the otherwise blank paper over. If they want me to run right down and buy whatever they’re selling wouldn’t it be beneficial for them to include what they’re pedaling and provide a way for a gullible customer to procure it? Tom smirked. Heads will roll because of this screw up. He stared at the three letter word for a few moments, flipped over the page to the blank back again, and balled the paper into his fist. Tom glanced over and waved to his neighbor Joe Bob Roll who held a similarly folded page in his hand. Joe Bob looked concerned and distracted, and half waved without looking. Tom glanced down the street to his left and saw single mom Melissa with an open letter that she didn’t look up from.

Tom strode back to the garage, and paused a moment before tossing the paper ball at the trash can. He shrugged and threw the paper ball. It bounced off the can’s lid, then the wall, and fell to the floor. As he eyed the paper ball coming to a rolling stop, his phone buzzed in his pocket, and he yanked it out. It sprang to life with a text�"not from an unknown caller but an unspecified caller�"no name, no address. With a wave of unexplained impending doom, he punched the button. The text amounted to only three letters: “NOW.”

Just then, a heavy dark shadow fell across his back, then his feet, and then the spotlessly clean garage floor darkening the balled up paper lying on it. Tom froze before turning back to see what had completely blocked out the sun.  After the initial shock of what he saw sank in, he realized that Joe Bob and other neighbors were sprinting by his mailbox and away down the street.

Tom Walker ran.              

Reviews

[roarke]

a real suburbia chiller. Keep going with it.

[Marie]

Very good piece of flash fiction. Doesn't give away too much; lets the reader imagine what happened.