Getting one of those doorbell cameras was one of the best investments I made since
moving into my new house. If something happens outside your house, you catch
it. I was one of those skeptics who thought it'd be useful to track
package deliveries and ward off porch pirates, especially since I'm not home much because
of work. But this has made me privy the little mysteries I wouldn't have
figured out otherwise, like why was my sprinkler floating half my yard in the
morning. Well, a neighborhood kid knocked it over on his bike on a
late night ride. I even got a clip of one of the local kids
taking a hilarious spill on the curb outside my house, which I gladly shared
around the office. But some mysteries are too much for one person, and
I wrestled with a moby dick of problems. I got pinged with a notification
of motion captured by my doorbell, and when the c started, I saw
a man waltz up to my post box. He was gleeful with his movement,
a semi prince glide with a wide toothy grin for him. He was
a kid on Christmas and my post box was the toy he'd wanted all year.
He reached in and pulled out one of my white envelopes, and immediately
I was raging that someone was stealing my mail, not a package which would
have had value, but one of my nondescript bills. I prayed he wasn't
doing this to steal my personal information, but that notion was quickly thrown out
with what he did next. He slipped as much paper would fit into his
mouth, bit down and yanked sideways, ripping the letter in half, envelope
and all. He chewed like he was eating a five waggy beef, and
swallowed with glee. Then he glided away with a jovial step, eating the
rest. The emotions I felt couldn't be quantified with a straightforward word. I
was angry, confused, shocked, and a mix of many more swirling thoughts.
Did a man really just eat one of my letters? It didn't make
any sense. I was so taken aback that I didn't know how to respond.
How do you report something like this? He didn't seem to rifle through
the letters looking for anything in particular. He seemingly took one at random.
When I went home, I checked my mailbox and all my usual letters were
there, but as a one off incident, I wasn't too pressed about it.
Most likely nothing of value was taken, since the only letters I received
were bills or spam, so I easily chogged it down to a junk that
wondered to the nice side of town. Sadly, no matter how much I
believed it was a one off incident, it didn't make it a reality because
it happened again. I was at work typing away when my phone pinged.
We're allowed to check our phones while on the clock in case it's about work,
but when I saw the doorbell motion notification, I figured it wouldn't hurt
to check. When I pulled up the clip, I was dismayed when I
saw him again. He glided with more glee, this time down the street
towards my house, before stopping at my mailbox. He reached in and grabbed
a couple of letters. This time, he cartoonishly licked his chops like a
Looney Tunes character about to eat a freshly made pie. He ate each less
differently, like a kid playing with his food. He slotted the first letter
in his mouth, but he didn't rip it this time just chewed for a
while, then sucked in the rest. He nibbled bits of the second letter
like a hamster, before getting impatient and shoveling the rest. The third was
almost like a magic trick. He tilted his head back and with a smile,
slotted it down slowly like a sword swallower putting on a show, and
swallowed it whole. Then, with a satisfied smile, pranced off down the
street. I was livid. It wasn't big enough emergency to leave work early.
I'm sure my company would choose profits over me heroically saving my junk mail.
But I was seething while on shift, thinking a million miles per hour,
scheming ways to stop this nonsense. When I finally got home, I
tried to settle down. However, after the anger subsided, I started feeling
uncomfortable. The context of the whole situation began to sink in. For a
start, I no longer felt that this was a one off incident. This
man had visited twice, which only led me to think he'd come more.
Also, every time I watched the footage, he never touched any of the
other houses in the neighborhood, only mine. This meant he was specifically targeting
me, though I couldn't think of why, I started feeling paranoid. Despite
my doorbell camera not being hidden, he never seemed to look for it in
any of the saved clips, which meant he wasn't hiding in any way.
But if he was targeting me and wanted to be seen, what if he
was doing things he didn't want to be seen? I suddenly felt very watched.
Invasive thoughts of him peering through my windows flashed in my head each time
I passed by one. Naturally, I closed every curtain in the house and
tripple checked that all my doors were locked, but I never truly felt safe
for the whole night. A few days after I'd finished adding a few new
dead bolts on my door, I even added some on the interior doors in
case I needed more layers of security. My mind was rampant with scenarios of
being closed in on by whatever it was that was eating my damn mail.
My heart would drop whenever I got a notification about motion from my doorbell.
Though it had pained me to click the pop up, I always felt an
urgency that made me need to know what was seen. Each time, it'd
be someone passing by, or the package deliveries for the dead Bae and various
tools I needed. But with these innocuous results, a haunting feeling each time
never lessened. The male in my neighborhood doesn't come at precise times. I'm
guessing I'm further into the mailman's root, so whatever the various delays he has
during his shift means the time he comes veries drastically, And it was always
after I'd left for work. So when I was pinged that there was movement
while I'm shifted, I dreaded watching what was picked up. It was him
again, with twirls and leaps, he lightfooted, he glided towards my mailbox,
which contained a fresh batch of letters. He was at an all you
can eat buffet. It was less theater this time, as he scarfed letter
after letter, not stopping until my mailbox was empty. I was dismayed.
Before there was a chance he'd just eaten a spam letter or two and left
at least some of the important ones. But this time it was everything.
I couldn't process what to do. I just closed the app and finished my
day at work, hoping i'd come up with something before he came back.
I ended up calling my nephew, who recommended I get the camera doorbell in
the first place. To say he was confused was an understatement, and though
his tone definitely let off that he didn't believe me, he gave me a
piece of advice, try talking through the camera. I didn't know this,
but there was a feature that allowed me to talk to anyone outside the door
via a speaker technology. He isn't one of my strong suits. To my
amazement at this revelation deflected off my nephew, but to me, I was
armed with the ability to try socially dissuay this visitor verbally. I save at
the moment when motion was pinged, I opened the app and saw him.
He did his usual prance towards my mailbox. As soon as he opened the
hatch, I clicked the mic setting and started screaming at him to stop.
I was so loud that I could hear my voice reverberating back, so I
knew he could definitely hear me, and hear me he did. He lifted
his head and finally acknowledged the camera. He just stared for a few seconds,
a smile still on his face, and somehow he smiled more. The
sides of his mouth twisted upwards in a sickening way, contrasting the emotion he
was trying to portray. The jovial smile twisted to a grin that exuded malicious
intent. He must have been painful to have his skin that tought. I
don't think I could have achieved such a face without pulling hard with my hands
or wires. However, he managed to do it naturally with no assistance.
He grabbed all the letters from the box, pulled his mouth open to a
gaping maw, and shoveled the whole batch in. I don't think he even
chewed this time, as he consumed them all and waltzed away. Because of
my outburst, I was called into the manager's office. Apparently my expletives were
heard over the phone by an important client. In my emotional eye, I
used some rather colorful language. My explanation probably got me in more trouble than
a thinly veiled lie, because I was suspended without pay for a week.
At any other time I would have been dismayed at this. My track record
at the company had been spotless for years, but as it settled in I
realized I could be home when he next visited, and I'd be able to
catch him in the act. I head up the shopping mall and picked up
some goodies. I bought a metal baseball bat from a sports store to help
if things got close range. I bought some pepper spray to turn a possible
confrontation in my favor. I bought a sling shot with thick metal ball bearings
to attack at range if needed. However, after firing a few shots at
some tree branches, I realized I'd be more likely to break a neighbor's window
than hit him. Watching Batman cartoons while growing up walked my perception of how
easy little gadgets were to use, so I left it boxed up in the
closet. Each morning, I set a chair up in the hallway of the
front door. I left only one dead bolt latched, set the bat of
my lap, and waited patiently. Each morning a notification with ping, and
I'd burst out, scaring the mailman each time. He must have thought I
was a nut job with how paranoid I looked. But there was never a
second ping, the one that tells me he's here. But when it reached
the early afternoon, a time later than he'd ever arrived. I'd go out
and check the mailbox, and all I'd see was an empty box, maybe
a few scraps with teeth marks that was still damp. How was he doing
this? Before I knew it? A week was up, I was scheduled
to have a meeting at work to discuss my employment, but all I could
think about was the man eating my mail. During the meeting, my phone
buzzed. I slipped it out discreetly and checked the notification. Motion was detected.
I didn't watch it, knowing I'd probably lose my chop if I did,
and my head with how red my boss was getting. But I knew
what i'd see once I opened the notification. When I was finally out of
the meeting, it was exactly what I thought it was. He came up,
ate every letter and left. I was at a loss if there was
a way to stop this. I didn't have a clue what it was.
I just worked the rest of the day getting emails about failed payments of my
various credits. I relied on monthly bills to keep track of them, and
realized I'd missed a lot of important payments lately. When I got home,
I walked up to my mailbox and stopped. I contemplated the whole situation,
running every detail through my head over and over. Staring at the mailbox,
I realized that though we had no physical interaction, this was the only thing
that connected us. I slipped a piece of paper out of my coat,
pulled out my pen, and wrote a simple note, please leave me alone,
a request felt deep down in my heart, condensed to four words.
I went home, bolted every door and closed every curtain, trying to continue
on as normal. By the time I got the notification at work the next
day, I was desensitized. At home, I was still paranoid about an
intruder, but watching him eat my mail each day was tiresome. But still
I decided to watch as he finished his delectable meal, lapping it up like
a hungry dog. Something was different. He pulled out the note I left
and gently scanned it with his eyes. Then he looked at the camera the
same way he had before, despite me not using the mic, he smiled
that same unnatural smile and stared for a few beats. After an uncomfortable silence,
he slipped out a letter of his own from his back waistband. The
letter looked unlike any letter I'd normally receive. A contrast to the stark white
or manilla brown envelope. This letter was a layer of jet black paper.
Its edges were trimmed in a gold leaf that shimmered through the low quality of
the doorbell camera. I was enamored at this. Whatever the letter was,
it was meant for me, because he slipped it into my box and slinked
away. All through work I was consumed with thoughts of this, wondering what
it might be. Could it be a response to the note I left?
Not likely he had it ready, not knowing what I'd have written. This
was a pre arranged event. Could he have been waged for me to leave
a note, or had an arbitrary amount of time passed? This got me
excited that it was a farewell, a note to tell me he was moving
on. But the hope in my heart twisted with darker thoughts. Could it
be an automatum, an offer to get him to stop but at a cost.
The worst thought was that it was a threat. Could he have seen
my note as a provocation, something he had ready to respond to with mental
warfare or was it an invitation to something bigger? After all? I felt
like I was being tested. My thoughts bounced around like a game of ping
pong in my head until it was time to leave, and I rushed back
as fast as I could, breaking a few traffic laws on the way.
I turned in my drive so fast my head nearly hit the window. I
rushed over to the mailbox and yanked it open, praying the letter wasn't gone,
or that it wasn't some manifestation of my fraying sanity. But there it
was. The black was a juicier darkness than I'd anticipated, and it made
the gold trimming pop even in the mailbox's shade. I gently pulled it out
its presentation, subconsciously creating a perceived value that I was respecting. There was
more to it than I'd seen in the glimpses. On its face was a
word so ornately written that I had to stare at it to figure out what
it said. It was in the old timey cursive you'd see in a European
museum, but I worked out what it said. It was my name.
I looked around me, thought he was lingering nearby to watch me. Open
it, or worse, use it as a distraction to sneak up on me.
So I took a solid few minutes to scan my surroundings. I stared
at trees and bushes for an uncomfortable amount of time, enough that if someone
was hiding, they'd have twitched a little. But there was nothing. I
was utterly alone on the street. Not even the neighbors seemed to be in
After finally satisfying my justified paranoia, I turned my attention back to the letter.
Inspecting it up close did not give me any indication of what it contained.
In fact, I was even more confused by what it contained. But
I could no longer delay it. The time for thinking was over. Now
was the time for action. I gently lifted it, scrunched it all into
my mouth, and ate it.