There it was.. a fish in her own mailbox. Olga stood shaking, wanting to flee, but knowing that it must be disposed of. A shivering nausea consumed her as the stench on her eyeballs streaked in her tears, and an ominous wind spun the fumes ever near. What have I become, she wondered, and wondered what she'd done.
It was a day that began like any other. She approached the same mailbox with all the same caution, sampling the flag for its color and quality. She listened for ticking and checked it for wires, and shook it for hints as to what was inside it. She reached from behind to open, then close it, with lightning quick timing, to test her opponent. She repeated this measure of door function testing again from the right, and twice from the left, until she felt ready to face it maturely. Her nerves holding steady, her heart beating pure, she opened it slow as her brain could infer.
..One photon a moment did enter to show her the contents an atom per second, or slower (the safest known method to inspect one's postage in this generation of instant disclosures).
The moment she saw it, it was too late. The light hit a scale with such concentration, it instantly boiled the slime on its plate. The beam that reflected was sharp as a tac, a devious prick that was hot on her path. Before she could process the horror unfolding, the beam struck her pore like a needle exploding. The force of it caused her to flinch in surprise, and drop the box door she was skillfully prying. It swung on its hinges, and wafted an oven of oceanside dumpsters in tropical sun. In midst of confusion and gastral distress, she looked at the fish, and projectile retched.
If she had to guess at the reason it died, it was likely infection induced suicide. The fins were like cabbage, but long after dilling, and long after maggots would call it appealing. Its body was bursting with volcanic pustules erupting with septic tank lava and mussels. Parasite armies were feuding for weapons to use on themselves to sooner their exit. Its gills were a venting of chemical warfare, gaping with bubbling trenches of wart hairs that thwarted her senses, and robbed her of air, and shrunk both the breasts that she often would wear.
She wanted to wake up, but at the same time Olga struggled to keep conscious in the nightmare that was now her life. She hunched uneasily next to the box, and with it being the only object in reach, she braced herself against nothing, because nothing was clean. She'd heard about this type of thing happening to other girls. Fish. But Olga wasn't other girls, other girls were average. "How could this have happened?," her inner voice did ask, as she coughed a putrid breath that she wished would be her last. "What kind of person.. ? What monster.. ? What stupid.. !! Would send this refuse of the sea to a human?!!"
Maybe she wasn't human anymore. She didn't feel very sure that she was. Everything that once defined her was now smothered in her own sick. "A fish! A fish?!!!" A rage of helpless hatred frantically ignited. A rage that flickered with a hope that it might make her blind.
It couldn't be unseen. She would never be the same. Her thoughts were losing meaning as she fought her need to scream. She couldn't let her neighbors notice what had been delivered. "What would Mrs. Whatsherface think if I were a fisher?"
Olga dizzily glanced around, and found no Mrs. Whatsherfaces. Just when she might have been a small bit relieved, the mailman materialized from off of the street.
"Good morning," he smiled, tugging the shoulder strap of his bag, which was stocked to the top with more post-mortem fish. "Oh, great! I see you got that last one ok," he said, without taking note of her flagrant dismay. "Isn't it your lucky day? All of these are yours, my lady! ..One is from me," the mailman added, bashfully patting a baiter he packaged.
Olga was taken so aback, she staggered, gagging greens and reds. "Why would I want that?? You've got to be kidding! In what kind of twisted fish world are you living??," she spat just as soon as her airway provided.
With a curious smirk, he said, "I thought you'd like it."
The tint in her vision was actually blood, that comes from your eyes when you reverse your lungs. They hung from her teeth, but somehow she still used them to lunge at the mailman in aim to subdue him. She strangled him wildly, to his utter shock. She shrieked and she sobbed, and went madder each drop.
She choked him, and it was quite likely he struck her, but drowning in grossness had proven to numb her.
Nothing was left of her life but to kill him, and the desire to not die first, but neither fate would come to fulfillment prior the passerbyer.
A random kind stranger, enjoying the weather, stopped to admire her bile-thin sweater. Then said, "Hi there, pretty," in avid smooth talk, and began to remove his own fish from his pocket.
Olga let go of the mailman's dumb throat, to turn to the stranger and wail, "God, please don't!!"
"What's that about? Why can't you say hi?," the offended stranger intently replied.
Olga bit through the skin of her ejected organs. "Say hi to you?!! And your fish?!!! That's important!!!"
"You don't have to be rude. I'm just being nice," he matter of factly, and justly advised.
She bled from more places, and messed in her tights, and writhed in the pain of a festering psyche. "I think you're confused as to what rude and nice is," her rasping voice spewed a loose set of incisors.
"I said you were pretty, that's very polite," the nice passerbyer so kindly reminded.
"Are those the same manners they taught you in grade school? Please, and you're welcome, you're pretty, and thank you? The difference between what is nice, and what isn't, is nothing's polite when you're holding a fish!"
He frowned at the logic her argument lacked. "It's just part of nature. I don't understand."
"It's hardly mitosis! Let go of it, man!"
"Did you want to hold it?," he chanced that she might.
Olga went limp, and collapsed, seeing light. "You crap .. ," was all that survived of her language. She cackled it, violently clawing the pavement.
The mailman shrugged upon leaving. "Best get back to work."
Olga cackled after him, desperate he be hurt.
The stranger shook his head as she dry heaved on his sneakers. "I'm trying to be friendly! Why are you so mean?"
