In the era of instantaneous communication, you would think that the practice of having pen pals had gone the way of the Passenger Pigeon. That was what I had thought all my life, until the first of those fateful, oil-stained letters appeared in my mailbox five years ago.
I responded at first out of sheer curiosity, intrigued by the enigmatic sender’s forwardness and their antiquated forms of address.
Over time, they became a regular fixture of my life, always willing to lend a reliable ear and to dispense advice that bordered on prophetic.
Despite our literary closeness, my knowledge of the person on the other side of the paper remained as dim as ever. Increasingly, I came to suspect that whom I was addressing was not wholly human in nature, but those doubts were as spurious as they were inconsequential, until today.
As sudden as the arrival of the first letter, they announced their intentions to come and visit, claiming they had “something we wished to share that could be shown by neither photograph nor parcel”. I had no reason to refuse, given our long-standing rapport and their upstanding, if eccentric, character.
The next day started as normal as it could be when one was going to see their enigmatic friend in the flesh for the first time. I deposited the letter stating my acceptance at the post office while returning from my morning jog, and thought about how much cleaning I would need to do to make my flat presentable.
Despite knowing every corner of my modest home like the skin on the back of my hand, I had somehow stumbled into the countertops while preparing breakfast. There was not enough time for me to have my moment of distress over spilt cereal and milk, too overwhelmed was I by shock when the pattern they had formed took root in my mind:
“We have arrived”
The mess dissolved back into incoherence as quickly as the words had appeared. A second hammer-blow was dealt to my grasp of reality when the spilt breakfast began to coalesce and flow into the air. Its contents leaped above the countertop and into the bowl, in casual defiance of the normal passage of time.
I turned to find my breakfast exactly as I had prepared it. Not one stray flake or milk drop to be found.
I was no longer sure whether to be reassured or to be terrified at the soft, inhuman knocking at the front door.
Peering through the peephole revealed nothing. Mind grasping at straws, I hoped it was merely one of the stray cats that frequently visited the neighborhood.
When I saw the blur of beige fur licking its paws at my feet when I opened the door, I let out a sigh of relief.
Then it began to speak.
“Hello Darcy, it’s a pleasure to meet you. May I come in?”
It was like someone, something had tried to form coherent sentences by splicing together nothing but cat noises, including those I didn’t think cats could make.
By now, it was abundantly clear that the being at the other end of the mailbox was no mere human, nor a poltergeist in the conventional sense. Shutting the front door wasn’t going to accomplish much (not to mention suicidally rude), so that left me with only one option.
“Of course, come in and make yourself comfortable.” With a push, the door opened further to emphasize the point.
I swear I saw the light fade from the puppeteered cat’s eyes for the briefest moment before its instincts reasserted themselves. It hissed at the yawning entrance, before running off.
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Closing the door behind myself, it was not immediately evident that my correspondent had entered my abode. Perhaps the concept of “entering” had a different meaning to the entity with whom I confided in so much.
My doubts were dispelled by bright flashes from my computer monitors, accompanied by that horrible feedback noise, loud enough to echo off the walls. Half-remembered images flickered across the monitor while the screeching of the speakers blended into a coarse weave of singular tones.
“There’s no need to be worried, I am now living in your walls”
If the attempt at humor was supposed to assuage my fraying psyche, it was a very poor attempt. It took every ounce of will not to collapse into the fetal position and fervently deny that the events of the last few minutes were anything but a mad fever dream.
“Oh, my sincerest apologies, we didn’t mean to alarm you.”
I was dragged out of my reverie by the words projected from the diminutive maelstrom of dust and lint that raged above the dining table. I didn’t care that it was right above the rewound bowl of cereal; I had long lost my appetite by now.
“I believe you had been fussing about cleaning the place up before our arrival. In recompense for my lack of decorum, allow us.”
My living room filled with bubbles of scintillating light as my guest set about their work. Dust and stains disappeared in their wake, even from the fabric couch that I long written off cleaning in its entirety. Misplaced cutlery and stationery danced on tabletops into mesmerizing spiral arrangements. The shuffling of paper erupted from my desk, and I stared, dumbfounded, at the small pile of letters violently rearranging itself, coming to rest in a flawlessly straight-edged stack. Next to that, the small filing cabinet appeared to have sunk halfway into the wall, along with an impossibly large volume of loose folders and knick-knacks; My eyes had ached when curiosity drove me to steal a quick glance inside the drawers.
After the whirlwind within my home subsided, a small patch of foaming chaos remained, frothing and fizzing with the sound of dead channels. Reeling from the repeated assault on my mental faculties, I could only make out a few words from the mumbling static; among them “much better”, “unsightly”, and “extra space”.
With sudden and unwise impetuousness, I blurted out a request for clarification:
“Come again?”
The world dissolved into a swirl of unnamed colors.
I should be thankful that my mind could not fully interpret my senses in that moment, that I lacked the conceptual fortitude to fully comprehend the space beyond spaces that I had been transported to. I began to think that I was finally inoculated to this maddening predicament, hoping that the faint static buzzing between my ears would dull the impact of any further revelations.
Then it began to speak.
“Pardon the change of scenery and the… intimate method of communication. I perceived that you were becoming distressed, and we hope this would be more comfortable for you.”
The choir of a thousand whispers echoed in my mind, each dredged from the depths of my memories.
“Apologies, Darcy. I… We are not used to acting in so few dimensions. Anything larger than a pen still proves especially troublesome for me to manipulate. ”
The voices’ rambling continued, outpacing my comprehension before I could even begin to formulate a response.
“I was hoping you could assist us with this predicament. This aspect of ourself will observe, practice, and learn to do so with your feedback. They will also be our new means of correspondence.”
Before I could respond, a pinprick in reality blinked into existence in front of my eyes. With a small pop, it ballooned into a sphere the size of a bowling ball, drifting down towards my feet.
By instinct or compulsion, I reached out my arms to catch the object, only half-surprised by its weightlessness; light seemed to slide off it, scattered into unknowable dimensions. Despite its utter darkness, the surface shimmered like an oil slick; the only signs of whatever alien intellect(s) lay within.
Before I could further examine the gift that was foisted upon me, I was whisked back to the confines of my home, left alone with my thoughts. The weightless pressure in my hands was gone, replaced with the familiar sensation of paper brushing against my fingertips.
The sphere had nestled itself nicely on one of the tidied bookcases; I couldn’t have picked a better spot if I tried. In my hands, an all too familiar letter had taken its place. This one was much shorter than the winding correspondences I used to receive, and served only to inform me of the changes that had transpired in our arrangement.
They were right, this was going to be much easier than writing letters.