Paper Boy

It was a sunny morning, as always, in Fazbear Hills. A pleasant breeze cavorted through the meadows, carrying the smell of flowers along with it as it went. The night before had been cool, but the cozy kind of cool that left one burrowed into their bedsheets in full relaxation. As the sun peeked over the horizon and shone its rays across the land, that cool was replaced by a comfortable warmth, the kind that begged for someone to lay in the grass for a nap. Everyone greeted the day more-or-less with the rise of the sun, stretching stiff joints and rubbing sleep from their eyes. Everyone, that is, except for one Mechrab.

In this instance, the Mechrab had been up long before the sun, readying himself for the day ahead. Neither snow nor rain nor glitch could stop this Mechrab, so determined was he. And so, when the rest of the residents of Fazbear Hills were just getting up, the Mechrab was heading through his door. A hat was perched atop his pointed shell, and a satchel full of letters was dragged behind him.

Thus, the postmaster started his day.

Mechrab wandered vaguely southward. His post office was north of the Hills’ village, where the trees were sparse it was a bit of a walk, but Mechrab never minded it. After all, delivering mail was one of the most important jobs around.

The first stop was Gearrat’s burrow. Mechrab dragged his satchel up to the entryway, raised a spindly leg, and knocked on the door. A brief commotion responded; the clatter of something falling to the floor, other things being pushed aside, and a voice too muffled to make out any words but not muffled enough to hide the fact that it was complaining about something.

A small latch at the bottom of the door clicked and then the door cracked open. Gearrat stuck his snout through the small gap, sniffing a bit. “Who’s dat, now?” His nose twitched this way and that, locking on to Mechrab as the rat got his scent. The door swung further open, revealing a rathead atop a mechanical gear and piles of hoarded aeronautical memorabilia stacked precariously around the place. “Mechrab!” Gearrat squeaked, sounding absolutely delighted. “I was hoping you’d show today. Oh, do come in, let me get you something to drink. And, please excuse the mess.”

“Sorry, can’t dilly-dally today,” Mechrab said. “Plenty of mail needs delivered.” As if to prove this point, Mechrab absend-mindedly reached behind himself with one leg, rooting around in his satchel briefly before extracting a small package wrapped in brown paper. “Speaking of, delivery for you.”

Gearrat took the package gently into his mouth. “Fank yew,” he mumbled. Then, without even giving a chance to let Mechrab a chance to turn around, the rat tore into the package, paper flying everywhere. Within moments, the scattered remains of brown paper littered the floor, and in front of Gearrat laid a red-and-white parachute. “Ooh, it looks even better than it did in the catalog!” Gearrat squealed. “Thank you, again!”

Mechrab tipped his shell and turned to leave, once more dragging his satchel behind him. Gearrat’s gear spun, closing the door and pushing the latch back into place.

The village proper, and most of Mechrab’s remaining deliveries, was only a short way further south, but Mechrab didn’t head there yet. Rather, he hung a left, looping around a copse of trees. There was a meadow on the far side of it, a large, open expanse of green that stretched quite a way. Mechrab slowly scuttled across, his ever-present satchel dragging on the ground behind him.

In the middle of the meadow there was what looked to be a garden. Grasses and weeds and flowers gave way to tilled dirt, freshly upturned with plants growing periodically and regularly from it. Mechrab carefully walked between them, making sure not to tread on any of the growing plants, before finally coming to a stop in front of what appeared to be an onion.

Mechrab grabbed a letter from his bag. He looked at the onion doubtfully, then down to the address on the letter, then back down to the onion. He cleared his throat. “Mister Bouncepot?”

The dirt exploded upwards, and Mechrab was forced to pull his eyes beneath his shell to avoid the subsequent soil shower. When it was over, he peeked back out. An onion with a face grinned back at him, bouncing on a green spring which led back into the ground. “Howdy! You called?”

Mechrab wordlessly handed Bouncepot the letter, a bit put out. Bouncepot snatched it with a long vine, tearing open the envelope in order to read it. His eyes scanned across the page, buck-toothed grin growing wider with every word. Mechrab awkwardly shifted his weight from one side to the other. “Well, if that’ll be everything-“

“Now hold on a minute, pardner,” Bouncepot interrupted, eyes still scanning the letter. “While you’re here I might as well give you the reply.”

“I won’t be able to deliver it until tomorrow. Post policy. Is that alright?”

Bouncepot hummed. “Yeah, should be okay. Wait one second.” Bouncepot turned around and yelled. “Hey cuz, thanks for the letter!”

Another Bouncepot burst from the ground a short distance away. “Aww, shucks, just wanted ya to know I was thinking ‘bout you,” it yelled back.

“Wait, your cousin went all the way to my post office to have me deliver a letter to you, when you live within shouting distance of them?” Mechrab had seen a lot during his stint as postmaster, but this may very well have been the most headache-inducing thing this week; last week’s Calamari Incident was much worse, but this was still new.

“Ayup,” Bouncepot replied, drawing out the first syllable. “Anyways, here ya go,” Bouncepot shoved a letter into Mechrab’s face, one he hadn’t even caught the onion write. The scrawl was messy and full of errors, although to be fair Mechrab wasn’t really sure how to spell Allioideae anyways. “Make sure you get that to mah cuz tomorrow, okay?”

Mechrab’s sigh was weary and heavy. “Yeah, sure thing.”

Bouncepot was still waving when Mechrab crested a hill heading towards the village. Honestly, the sooner he could put that behind him the better. The postmaster was definitely not looking forward to returning the next day.

The village of Fazbear Hills wasn’t so much an official settlement as it was a haphazard collection of buildings. It started when a few friends wanted to live close by to one another. A few of those friends’ friends moved in shortly thereafter. An enterprising business set up shop soon after, and before anybody knew it Fazbear Hills was a somewhat thriving village.

It was exactly that enterprising business that was Mechrab’s next destination. Lolbit’s Byte Store was an interesting little stall. A wooden sign proudly proclaimed the name, painted on sloppily as it was, a service bell hung from the sign on a rope, and the wooden counter was crammed with an obscene amount of miscellaneous knick-knacks. Even more obscene were the massive sacks, each as large as Mechrab himself, bulging with Faz tokens. There was a saying in Fazbear Hills: If you could buy it, Lolbit was selling it. That the saying was started by Lolbit herself and never caught on despite how hard she tried to push it was beside the point, although it did lead to another common saying: The hicks of Fazbear Hills have no taste in slogans.

Mechrab walked up to the stall and politely tapped a leg against it. Nothing. He waited for a moment, then repeated himself. Still nothing. “Hello,” he ventured. “Miss Lolbit?”

Silence.

One more attempt at knocking on the stall itself led to the same outcome as before. Mechrab stretched his eyes out and peeked around behind the stall. Nobody was there. His eyes went up to the bell hanging from a rope. Mechrab stretched his legs and arched his back, grunting slightly with the effort, until his shell was just barely able to brush against the bell. A quiet “ding” was the reward for his efforts, so soft that he could barely hear it.

“Hello, valued customer!”

Mechrab screamed and scurried back. As if she had teleported there, Lolbit was now stood behind the counter, grinning the grin of someone who knew you wanted to buy something even before you did.

“Erm, hello ma’am,” Mechrab finally spoke up lamely. “I’ve got a special delivery for you.”

“And what’s that, now?” Lolbit asked. Her grin faltered a bit and she tapped an expertly manicured claw against her counter. “C’mon now, time is money.”

“Yes, well,” Mechrab cleared his throat and searched through his satchel. It was a bit harder to find this particular letter, and the crab could feel the fox behind him glaring a hole in his shell as she waited. “Aha!” When Mechrab at last extracted the letter and turned around to hand it to her, however, her winning smile was firmly back in place.

Lolbit graciously accepted the letter. “Thank you very much. Now, could I interest you in something from my stall?”

“Oh, I just couldn’t,” Mechrab demurred. “I still have deliveries to make and I would hate to be late for any of them.”

A predatory gleam entered Lolbit’s eye at that. “Oh, is that so? But I insist, my shop has anything you could ever want.”

The two went back and forth for a distressingly long amount of time before Mechrab finally left ten tokens lighter and the brand-new owner of a small red wagon. It wasn’t too bad, thought; Mechrab was able to put his mail satchel in the wagon, and suddenly it was much easier to pull along and get places.

Besides, the joke was really on Lolbit in the end. Mechrab knew the letter he’d given her had been concerning unpaid taxes.

Thanks to the wagon on hand, Mechrab was able to blaze through the houses of the village without issue. This late into the morning the residents were all out and about: the Chicas were all packed together in a huddle, gossiping outside of a small café one of them ran, and one member of the group spared Mechrab a wave as he walked past. None of the other residents were home with the exception of Foxy, who was too busy working on his plane to even notice the post arriving.

The sun had passed its highest point and was beginning to sink towards the horizon when Mechrab finally left the village. The trees and rolling meadows of Fazbear Hills swiftly fell away, replaced by stumps and fog. One last letter to deliver and then he’d be done for the day. This last one was always a doozy to deliver to, though. Neither snow nor rain nor glitch, that was the post office’s motto, and so Mechrab steeled himself and walked through a tree.

The colors of the world shifted for a brief instant. It was always curious walking through things which normally couldn’t be walked through. There was a trick to it, one that required the ability to walk face-first into a log with such confidence that the log assumes that it must not actually be there after all. That assumption was followed by a very brief instant of the tree doubting itself out of existence, and Mechrab was well-versed in taking advantage of slipping into the gap it left behind before the log’s self-confidence returned.

Then, Mechrab was in a strange place.

The ground was pure black. The trees were red. The sky was a void; it was not simply black or white, it simply wasn’t there, and looking at where it should have been made Mechrab dizzy, so he locked his eyes closer to the ground.

There was a red figure fishing in a red pond, and Mechrab wandered up to them. “Afternoon, Mister C. Well, maybe afternoon. I can never really tell the time of day over here. Anyways, I’ve got a letter for you from SC himself.” Mechrab went to dig around in his satchel, only to stop as he noticed the letter already lying on the ground next to its intended recipient. “Oh, I see you’ve got it already. Well, I hope you have a good day. Hopefully you’ll get a good catch.”

“I’ll send you on home, then,” Mister C said softly, not moving from his spot on the pond’s edge. Mechrab felt suddenly felt dizzy. The world warped around him, taking on colors and shapes it didn’t have before. Everything was all at once thunderously silent and suffocatingly loud.

The moon was high in the sky. Mechrab stood outside his post office. He shook his head. He always felt groggy after meeting with Mister C, like he had just woken up from a dream. Mechrab scurried up to the post office’s door, briefly taking note of the deposit box full of letters and packages to be delivered the next day. He hung his hat upon a rack, wheeled his new wagon into one corner of the room, and went to bed.

Just another day for the post office.