The Chain Letter

The Chain Letter

What a gorgeous Sunday morning! Birds singing, spring flowers, blue sky, sunshine. The neighborhood was quiet, cars parked in driveways or along the curbs of Umbarger Lane. I pulled four days of post from the mailbox and and closed the door.

I winnowed the business envelopes from the junk and was left with six pieces of mail. New credit card offer – junk. Political campaign donation – junk. I dropped each into the bin until one remained. The address was penned in neatly written cursive. A woman’s hand by the look of it. Double-stamped – one inverted, the other tilted. Why the overkill? It had a local post mark from two days prior.

I tore it open. It contained a one page, tri-folded letter, written in the same hand as the envelope.

Dear Mister Clutterbuck,

I received this chain letter from the previous person in the chain. You must now select two people to continue the chain, selected at random from a phone book. Write your letters by hand – exact copies of this letter – with changes to only the salutation and signature lines. Finally, mail your two letters and burn this one. All of this must occur within 24 hours of reading this letter, or terrible things will happen!

If you destroy or discard this letter before continuing the chain, be warned – misfortune and calamity will befall you! If you continue the chain, however, you will feel peace and contentment, and something wonderful will happen to you in the coming week.

Sincerely,

Miss Humblebee

How weird was that? I’d heard of chain letters, as well as warnings to not continue them. I thought there might be a law against it, too, to avoid clogging the postal delivery chain with nonsense. Whatever.

“Misfortunes and calamities be damned!” I said, as I crinkled the letter into a tight ball and dropped it into the bin with the other mail.

Something struck the front door with a resounding thud. I hurried over and opened it. What I heard and saw was impossible.

My neighborhood was gone. In its place, a vast wasteland of huge, crumbling, half-burnt-out buildings continued to the horizon. Dozens of black smoke columns rose and merged into a low layer of brown clouds composed of the soot, ash, and chemical fumes from the large-scale combustion. What a dim, forbidding landscape. I stepped just over the threshold and instantly smelled noxious chemical fumes, along with… with… was that burning flesh? My car sat the right distance from my house, but it was a scorched wreck, its windows smashed out.

I stepped further from the house and glanced back at its sooty exterior and what looked like pits from bullet strikes! My metal-tined garden rake was just where I'd left it, though the flower beds were gone. The temperature outside was over a hundred degrees, and winds howled and whistled among the towering, wrecked buildings.

Clicking sounds came from somewhere, growing louder over time. From behind a wrecked battle tank, its turret blown off and lying nearby, a huge shiny black object, no, a creature, trundled across the ground toward me. I guessed it to be ten feet long, with long, whip-like antenna, huge bulbous eyes, and a series of spine-covered legs. My heart pounded, and I was stricken with horror.

If I had to guess, it was some kind of monster cockroach. The beast’s immense mandibles were opening and closing, as if preparing to devour me. I glanced at the sharp points on my metal garden rake, then retreated back inside, rake in hand. I slammed and locked the door and leaned my back against it. Then I waited, anticipating that, at any moment, the massive roach would smash down the front door and enter my house.

But nothing happened. Silence, except for the ticking of my wall-mounted cuckoo clock. I jumped when the refrigerator turned on. Frozen in fear, I stood with my back to the door for perhaps five minutes, then went to the parlor window. Gathering my courage, I threw back the drapes to view the desolate landscape, and –

Everything was normal! The Hendersons were piling into their minivan on their way to church, and the bright sun shown in a clear blue sky! I unlocked the window and lifted the sash. As I did so, a hot, noxious wind blew in. The view through the open window was the same hellish, destroyed cityscape I had seen through the front door. I slammed the sash shut and locked it. Again, the view outside showed only my idyllic, peaceful neighborhood.

I took inventory of my situation. The electric was on, as was the water. I flicked on the TV. Normal. All the usual TV shows as I flipped through the channels. I did the same with the radio. Music stations, talk radio, news, weather – normal. One last thing to check.

I grabbed the phone and held it to my ear. Oh, that sweet, blessed dial tone! I could still contact the outside world! Without delay, I dialed my friend Mitch. My fingers fumbled with the dialer, and it took me three times to get it right, but at last it was ringing.

“Hello?”

It was Mitch! My God, he was still alive! I had to enlist Mitch’s unwitting help. But I had to do it carefully, or he’d think I was off my rocker.

“Hey, have you been outside your house at all this morning?”

“No. Just been watching some kids play street hockey out front while I drink coffee.”

“Since you live only a half mile from me, I’m wondering if anything smells or sounds weird outside, like it does here. Can you just open your front door and step outside? See if you notice anything?”

“Henry, you okay? You sound kind’a nervous.”

“Just humor me, pal. Please?”

“Ummm… Sure. Hang on.”

I heard the clunk of the phone on the table, and, a few seconds later, the opening of a door. I heard no screams or shouts, and, a half minute later, Mitch returned.

“Beautiful out there, buddy. Perfect spring morning. All I smell in the air is spring flowers”

After doing my best to reassure Mitch I wasn’t crazy, we hung up. Then it hit me. I, alone, was completely isolated in his own house. I dare not venture outside, lest I be devoured by giant cockroaches. And what of the chemical fumes? Had there been a nuclear war? Had I already been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation? For all I knew, I might already be what nuclear scientists call a dead man walking!

What about shopping for food? And work? How could I get to the lab to work five days a week through that Apocalypse? How would I even find my workplace? I presumed the world as I knew it was still out there, somewhere. Did a facsimile of my work campus exist in this alternate version of reality, and, if so, could I reach it?

"Calm down, Henry. Just calm down. Let’s think this through."

Was this some grand illusion, or was I viewing my neighborhood sometime in the far future? Like a time-warp? Could the place outside my doors and windows be located on some other world? Or both? If the outside world really was my present-day neighborhood as it exists in the far future, that would make sense. More and more development is the norm in urban areas, such that outlying suburban regions eventually get subsumed by the city. But that would mean some terrible war or alien invasion would occur. One that would decimate civilization as we knew it. Would this happen in two years, or two hundred?

I inventoried my food supply as calmly as I could, though I felt a worsening dread as time went on. I’d recently restocked the meat freezer and pantry, so I was good on food for the next couple months. As long as the water and electricity stayed on, I could cook and drink water for a few more weeks after the food ran out. Then, certain death.

Unless…

Unless someone from outside my house could bring me supplies. And money. Could doctors come here for house calls, so I could remain living here, out of a job but keeping in touch with the outside world? If someone else entered my house, could they leave again, or would they be trapped inside this weird reality warp with me?

I might have enough money from my trust fund, along with all my savings, to live here permanently. Especially if I got financial experts to invest my money and grow my nest egg. Folks could deliver things to my front door and leave with nothing amiss. But I could not let anyone inside the house, lest they be trapped here with me. What of doctors making house calls? I’d have to meet them outside, in that toxic wasteland. To the doctor, everything would appear normal, while I would be dodging all manner of danger.

And what would others think of my strange insistence on having things brought to my house and left just outside my door, while I lived as a shut-in? Would they contact mental health services and have me committed?

It was time for an all-critical test. I looked up the number for Ned’s fish and chips and placed an order for delivery. Then I stood at my front window as life outside went on in perfect normalcy. There was Gladys weeding her flower beds. Ted mowing his lawn. Eventually, a car capped with the plastic Ned’s logo pulled up to my curb, and I rushed to the front door.

As I opened it, I confronted that hot, stinking wind. A massive aircraft of some sort – saucer shaped and firing blinding blue rays at something on the ground, hovered a few miles away. Was that an alien spacecraft? Invaders? At my scorched, pocked curb sat the delivery car, looking quite normal. Soon, Salim, the usual delivery guy, approached me with a grease-stained bag. I stepped just over the threshold to accept it, being careful that he remained completely outside. After a brief exchange of pleasantries, he returned to his car while I closed the door. I hurried to the window and saw him climb in and drive away.

It worked! I opened the bag, and there was a perfect batch of Ned’s signature greasy fish and chips! I sat down in front of the main window and feasted while relishing the normalcy of life throughout the neighborhood – at least from here. A lump formed in my throat as I felt grateful that the world outside was still intact and that Salim wasn’t harmed during the food delivery.

I calmed as I ate, and my mind turned to the bigger question I’d been ignoring thus far. Why had this happened in the first place? What had I done to deserve this calamity, this threat to my very survival? Was there some huge karmic debt I had to re—

The chain letter! That had to be it! It said that if I destroyed or discarded the letter without sending out two more letters, misfortune and calamity would follow! I rushed to the bin and removed the tight ball of paper. I gingerly flattened it out, the best I could, and fetched paper and pen. The phone book wasn’t where I’d thought it was, and it took a frenetic search through my parlor and kitchen until I found it atop the microwave in the kitchen. I’d never been so happy to hold a phone book in my life!

I picked two names at random – Nathan Cunningham and Betty Harrigan. An hour later, both letters were written and signed. I re-read both of them, over and over, making sure they were faithful copies of the original. I had three remaining envelopes in the drawer, so I filled out the addresses on two of them.

Stamps! Stamps – I rummaged through one drawer after another. I found one sheet of holiday greeting stamps with a single stamp remaining. Precious as pure gold, I affixed it to the first envelope. On and on I searched, getting more and more frantic, until I found a full book of stamps I’d forgotten about, in the top desk drawer in my study. Done!

I finished my fish and chips and considered how I might find a mailbox. Postal delivery staff now refused to take outgoing mail from the mailbox, so I'd have to do this myself. But how? And now that I had crinkled and trashed the letter after I had originally read it, would my plan work? Or was I already doomed, with no way to redeem myself?

I had to chance it. If I wanted to keep on living, I had to mail these letters and burn the original in the belief that the world would return to normal for me. The instructions had said I had to burn the original after mailing the two new letters, so I folded up the original and placed it into my pocket, along with a butane lighter that was nearly full. Then I put on my fishing vest.

I slung binoculars around my neck, grabbed the metal tined rake as a self-defense weapon, and tucked the new letters into the breast compartment of my vest.

After a few deep breaths, I opened the door, letting in the hot wind and the sun’s hazy glare. I trained my binocs on the terrain before me. Will post boxes exist in the far future? How about mail, itself, with paper envelopes and stamps?

There was a battle going on somewhere in the city. Two enormous craft hovered in the sky. They looked gray and tan in color – at least from what I could tell through the haze, since they were miles off. But rays occasionally fired from them, and follow-on explosions echoed among the buildings, taking perhaps a half minute to reach my ears with ground shaking thunder.

I knew there’d been a mailbox at Linganore and Bethfield streets. That was two blocks away – a right onto the sidewalk in front of my house, then one block, then a left at Bethfield, and one more block. With the door shut behind me, I set off along my own street – Umbarger, the heavy rake in my hand as I glanced about continuously in every direction for trouble.

The old neighborhood streets were still here, though an extremely tall, narrow building, its glass exterior smashed away, stood at the corner of Umbarger and Bethfield. I made the left and trained my binoculars toward the next intersection. I nearly shouted with joy as the image came into focus!

There was a filthy, battered, old post box standing amid a chaos of scrub! Just where I remembered it! I took off running. Four hundred feet. Three hundred. I heard numerous clicking sounds around me, and my blood ran cold. I slowed down and looked to either side, where several of the enormous cockroaches had caught my scent, or felt my footfalls, or whatever, and they were now marching toward me from both sides! I reached the mailbox, pulled out the envelopes. The nearest roach was only fifty feet away!

Jammed the envelopes in. Re-opened the lid to make sure they’d gone down. I pulled out the original letter. Forty feet away. The beast was hissing, its mandibles clicking. Fumbled in my pocket for the lighter. Started flicking the knob. Again. Again. Thirty feet. It was now close enough to block the sun. A flame sprang up, and the letter ignited. I held it to spread the flames as quickly as possible. The whole page was being consumed, turning black. Twenty feet. I smelled a rotting stench from the bug and closed my eyes.

Then, silence.

The air felt suddenly cool. A pleasant breeze from my right. Birds sang. I opened my eyes and beheld my old neighborhood, just as I had remembered it. A young woman with ear buds jogged past, and she looked at me strangely. The metal rake was at my feet, and I wore oddly mismatched clothes along with my fishing vest, binoculars around my neck.

“Yeah, I’m weird,” I felt like telling her, but didn’t...