I have been at my new apartment for about two months when I begin to receive mail other than bills and offers to enter prize draws.
One of my first personal envelopes contains a scrawled message from an old acquaintance with whom I was friendly many years ago. I am distressed to read that my friend is deeply unhappy, and I am disturbed further to read that if he receives no reply to the letter I hold in my hands he will feel compelled to chop off one of his fingers with a kitchen knife. Days pass, and life goes on as normal, until a small parcel arrives. The postmark indicates that it is from my friend. Nervously, I open it.
Underneath the brown wrapping paper is a little box which bears the return address of my friend. There is also a stamp on the box, but other than this the package proves to be empty. I open up the box, but the space within is also vacant. I sigh breifly with relief, and my days once more resume rather comfortably.
One week later, another identical parcel arrives. It too is empty, and I insist to myself that I will write to my friend. Time drifts past, and eventually I have ten empty parcels. It is on a friday that I realize what I have to do.
With what I feel is the admirable thing to do I use my left hand to chop three fingers from my right. With the remaining two, I hack off all the fingers of my left hand. In considerable pain I place the fingers in eight of the parcels. There is a lot of blood, and this makes taping up the packages somewhat difficult. With eight parcels wrapped, I hold the knife in my right thumb and forefinger. I look at the last two boxes.
Just then the phone rings. The voice on the other end turns out to be none another than my sorrowful old friend who had somehow managed to find my number. He apologized for all the parcels he had been sending, but that his wife had recently left him and he had been in a deep state of depression for some time. However, he assured me that he had been getting professional help and had learned that when one loses something of great importance, they eventually have to move on...
I With tears beginning to swell up in my eyes, I slowly hang up the phone and decide that I had better find something to clean up the dreadful mess.
One of my first personal envelopes contains a scrawled message from an old acquaintance with whom I was friendly many years ago. I am distressed to read that my friend is deeply unhappy, and I am disturbed further to read that if he receives no reply to the letter I hold in my hands he will feel compelled to chop off one of his fingers with a kitchen knife. Days pass, and life goes on as normal, until a small parcel arrives. The postmark indicates that it is from my friend. Nervously, I open it.
Underneath the brown wrapping paper is a little box which bears the return address of my friend. There is also a stamp on the box, but other than this the package proves to be empty. I open up the box, but the space within is also vacant. I sigh breifly with relief, and my days once more resume rather comfortably.
One week later, another identical parcel arrives. It too is empty, and I insist to myself that I will write to my friend. Time drifts past, and eventually I have ten empty parcels. It is on a friday that I realize what I have to do.
With what I feel is the admirable thing to do I use my left hand to chop three fingers from my right. With the remaining two, I hack off all the fingers of my left hand. In considerable pain I place the fingers in eight of the parcels. There is a lot of blood, and this makes taping up the packages somewhat difficult. With eight parcels wrapped, I hold the knife in my right thumb and forefinger. I look at the last two boxes.
Just then the phone rings. The voice on the other end turns out to be none another than my sorrowful old friend who had somehow managed to find my number. He apologized for all the parcels he had been sending, but that his wife had recently left him and he had been in a deep state of depression for some time. However, he assured me that he had been getting professional help and had learned that when one loses something of great importance, they eventually have to move on...
I With tears beginning to swell up in my eyes, I slowly hang up the phone and decide that I had better find something to clean up the dreadful mess.