Little Post Office of Horrors -- Fetch Quest
Well, well, well... You fucked up and you know it. You let something big ship via the USPS and the twat contractor speed running thru the mail delivery job in their second hand smoke fumigated hatchback decided to not bring your package. She was never going to bring it to your door even if you met all the post office requirements. She'll laugh at you like one of her species, the Hutt even if you meet her at the box.
"Stupid hooman, mee didn't koose do package.
Heh. Heh. Heh."
When you see the pink slip in your mailbox delivered to you by Jabba's cousin, it's as bad as a federal jury duty summons.
The second you walk in the double doors and enter the void, the world fades to sepia and the pink slip ink bleeds in your sweaty palm marking you as all warmth and happiness drains away. Your eyes do that 1980's style forced perspective zoom tracing the length of the line from their dirty pickup window as it snakes along the stinkwalkers. You ask yourself, is this the waiting room in the afterlife in Beetlejuice? You answer your own question, "No, they had chairs in purgatory."
Married with Children bits play out where the angel of death Sam Kinison is high-fiving some junkie about his methadone shipment. Keep panning past the neckbeard who is protecting his faded limited edition Rei Ayanami waifu pillow tucked under his Katana arm. The stinkwalker-in-chief with smeared lipstick on a rictus grin loudly proclaims to no one that she had a tube of Crest for breakfast like randomly played NPC background dialog. By the time you finally find the end of the line in the nosebleed section of the shadow realm, you know that you're in for the long haul as you take your place with the damned. In murmured chorus, you hear mumbled and flat, "One of us..."
You watch the sun make its way across the horizon out the plate glass windows. Seasons change. People fall out of line since they can't hold their piss begging for someone to hold their place in line. The lead stinkwalker with a boss bar beneath them says matter of factly, "You will never get your place in line back." Elementary school children come with their parents and leave, you then see them return in high school, then they are off on their way to college. Then off to the AI robot drone wars, where their ashy remains are shipped back home to their parents in a flat rate box that was too big to fit into the parcel locker and they end up at the back of the line with their pink slip. It starts again -- silent -- endless -- an ouroboros where the only currency is pink slips. An old woman finally approaches the doors of Durin. She rubs her rosary, hands trembling, eyes hollow as the shadow realm, her voice cracks pleading for her package of cat food and clown cough drops. The olds are eating well tonight, but this is where her ouroboros ends.
You finally make the last bend of the snake and can see the what looks like the Doors of Durin but are covered in grubby sausage finger prints, grime, and adorn with HR enchantments. You feel a sense of joy now that you don't have to look at a propaganda grade sign that the post office forged that says, "Hero's work here" looming over you like a Shepard Fairey OBEY poster under the buzzing fluorescent lighting. You continue to watch the process that only the machinations of government could create. The slumped shoulder employee in an epitome of sadness uniform takes the person's pink slip.
When your stars align and you make it with the appropriate number of pieces of flair, they sigh and their shirt collar goes even limper as they shuffle back to The Hoard. It's a huge dragon's hoard of packages piled in the middle of their building where they dumped the packages in a precarious pile that would make Dr. Seuss' illustrator blush. Perhaps there are ancient runes etched on the dirty floor. Surely there is some sort of organization system in place to efficiently find the package out of thousands? Perhaps sorting them by last name or business name into piles they could at least focus on the sorted piles? Nah, F-that. Not here at this post office. You get the F-out of here with that witchcraftian logic that would require the staff to know their letters. No -- it's far better to circle the hoard for ten minutes, finger F-ing packages. If you offer to help, he'll scoff and say, "Don't make me tap the heros' sign," while guarding his pile of Amazon smile train boxes like Smaug the dragon in the dimly lit fluorescent light tube cavern. Eventually he'll shuffle back and ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and tell you he can't find it. "Guess it's lost!" If we find it we'll send you another pink slip and you can play again.
Sometimes you do get lucky and they find it by accident. Then you realize Amazon shipped a thumb drive in a box big enough for a microwave sending you on this fetch quest.
Then you realize you should have just bought it locally and skipped this entire mess. read more
