THE HUNDRED-AND-TWENTY-SECOND PAGE

Ordinarily, I went to the post office with a happy heart in anticipation of the wonders that might await me. After the siege began, I arrived at the post office later and later each day and then less and less frequently. The clerks sensed that something was wrong because they came to realize that the less constant trips meant larger loads for them to lug over the counter when I picked up the mail. Little did they know what horrors might have lurked in those packages. Rats, mice, roaches, lice, polluted plasma, nothing nice. You didn’t need to see “The Ten Commandments” to know what might be on my assailant’s agenda.

I scurried in and out of the post office as quickly as possible in fear that dreadful contents might spill out over the counter and into the waiting patrons. Pigeon, putrid and unpickled, anyone?

When the arrival of suspicious parcels dwindled to an apparent nothing, I was not heartened; rather, I was more frightened. So far, My Editor was taking his cues from my work. It was unlikely he would be sending weapons through the mails. I felt secure in his computer incapability’s, so he probably wouldn’t infect my programs. Besides, I’d not been using it since the siege. He’d need a different tack, and there was no way of anticipating what it might be or where it might come from.