Synopsis

THE ENVELOPE

by David Segal Hamilton

A large sign adorned the wall of Max’s tiny office. It was little respite from the bare grey walls that stared back at him from every other turn. In red, bold letters it read - DON’T LOOK IN THE ENVELOPES.  Though he must have read it a hundred times Max still found it unsettling. The fact that the sign knew better than him what was in the envelopes or why he shouldn’t open them didn’t really bother him, it was more that the sign seemed to be watching him. Every day it woke, reconsidered the situation and concluded that he still shouldn’t look inside and every day Max woke, reconsidered and decided that the sign was right. After all, who questions bold red letters when they see them?

Waking was always a surprise to Max, due in the main to the fact he could never quite remember going to sleep. At some point towards the end of what people told him was the day he supposed he got undressed, got into bed and fell asleep but all he remembered was waking up at 5:30 on the dot, every day. The sharp bell of the alarm being not unwelcome, but just one of those inevitabilities.

Max was a plump man, eating being one of those things he found really rather worth doing. Each day he stared at himself in the mirror, watching the rubbery skin on his face stretch around the muscles and bones beneath them. He especially stares at his eyes searching for a sign of life behind the little black circles. After an egg or two Max makes a special point of looking at his postcard. He found it on the street one day, it shows a bright beach with creamy sand and two palm trees. A man lies on a hammock pinned between the two palm trees. He’s drinking out of what looks like a coconut but Max never heard of anyone doing that so he’s still not sure about it. Life has become black and white for Max but he’s not sure if he minds. Two colours are, after all, a lot easier to handle.

It’s still dark when Max goes to work and apart from the summer months it’s still dark when he leaves work. On his journey to the office the streets are always deserted and silent but for the light hum of the city. He sometimes wonders whether maybe everyone else has gone, left for somewhere sunny like on his postcard, but it wouldn’t matter too much to Max. He’d still have to wake up and go to work. There’d still be a pile of unsealed envelopes on his desk when he arrived and a pile of sealed envelopes when he leaves. However much wondering went on in the shadowy streets this was always what he had decided by the time he reached his office. It was a tall grey building with square windows that are always too high to see out of.

His office looked the same. It was down the same endless corridor with endless similar offices. The sign remained watching over proceedings as Max spent the day licking the gum on envelopes, sticking them down and depositing them in the small letterbox in the wall by his desk. A veteran at this deceptively complex art, Max had perfected his technique to the point that he stuck a mean average of 13 envelopes a minute, nearly 780 envelopes an hour and around 8550 envelopes a day. He never counted each one but sometimes timed himself and tried to work it out. In the rare moments when he would lose energy or feel frustrated it was these calculations that would give him the drive to continue, and more so, to do his best. After all, the sign was watching and above anything else, Max didn’t want to disappoint the sign.

Today was different though, his pile was smaller than usual. Much smaller. By lunchtime Max had got through well over half of it and it worried him immensely. What to do if the envelopes ran out was never something he’d had to think about. There was always a comfortable surplus at the end of the day but anxiously fretting over his eggs in the lunch room the image of an empty desk with no unsealed letters kept haunting Max.

When he returned to work he continued as normal, determined not to act strangely in case someone was watching. Every now and then he darted a look at the quickly diminishing pile of envelopes but tried his best to ignore it and imagine that somehow, for one reason or another the problem would be sorted before it came to a head. After a few hours Max could no longer ignore the now rather small pile of letters that remained. He daren’t count it for fear of second guessing how he might stick the lingering envelopes or worse, second guessing the sign. DON’T LOOK IN THE ENVELOPES it read and now it seemed more pertinent than ever, almost as if it was shouting. Working under its hard glare Max was sure that above anything else, he should not look in the envelopes.

As the pile got still smaller Max was forced to work slower than usual, something which he found very uncomfortable. Suddenly under pressure to take more time, Max realised how simple and uncomplicated the procedure was. There were very few, if any, ways that he could conjure to elaborate on the tried and tested grab, lick, stick, deposit technique. He tried picking the envelope up slower than usual or from a purposefully awkward angle. He tried licking the gum more gradually, sticking it down in an assortment of differing ways and even depositing it backwards or sideways but all these things felt unnatural to him. Under the scrutiny of deliberation, the process itself was starting to feel silly to Max. Something which he’d taken for granted since he could remember was suddenly laid naked before his eyes. Sitting in a bare room with a desk and a chair thinking up new and ever stupider ways to stick and envelope Max felt suddenly quite ridiculous. He felt as if he had been caught talking to himself and now that the farce had ended the room seemed awfully quiet and lonely. The only thing in the room apart from envelopes and furniture was the sign. Max started to look at the sign with fresh eyes. More inquisitive eyes.

Though he felt somewhat liberated Max still felt a deep mistrust and fear of the sign and, as far as he could tell, still had little desire to look in the envelopes. What he was determined to do however, was finish the pile. He craved the end of the line, the envelopes now appearing to him as the last few steps at the end of an uphill climb. As he licked and sticked quicker than he ever remembered doing before Max felt like he was reaching the top of the mountain and couldn’t wait to peer over the top to the other side. In a fit of excitement Max stuck the last envelope with gusto and swung over to deposit it in the letter box. Reaching his arm out carelessly and holding the box’s flap with his other hand Max suddenly stopped. The last envelope from the bare room with a desk, a chair and the sign hung suspended in mid-air clenched tightly in Max’s fist.

Something at the back of his head had just clicked. Some fire long dormant in Max’s dull heart had just erupted. He knew tomorrow would be different and that there would be more envelopes than ever. He knew he might never have less envelopes than time ever again. There might never be a special envelope ever again. This was both the first and the last envelope he would ever look at differently and so his hand brought the envelope gently to rest on the desk in front of him. There was only one thing in his way - the sign.

DON’T LOOK IN THE ENVELOPES. He didn’t know who had written it and on reflection he had never considered that it had been authored at all until now. Sitting there with the last ever envelope he’d care about, the sign seemed like nothing but a barrier to him now. He used to think that it had a life of its own. It stood there and defined itself - DON’T LOOK IN THE ENVELOPES. It wouldn’t have said that just for fun, it could have said a million different things but it had seemed to Max right up until this very moment that it simply must have said that for a pretty good reason.

Then again Max thought, maybe it says that because it thinks I want to open the envelope. That seemed a little unlikely seeing as he had never wanted to open the envelopes before but, sitting there now with the envelope poised seductively in front of him he could see that the sign had a point. Maybe the sign telling him not to open the envelope was no more ridiculous that the envelope wanting to be opened. Max felt confused and a little dizzy.

An idea struck him as if by magic. As this happened it occurred to him quite how magic ideas are, occurring as they sometimes do seemingly with no rhyme or reason at all. In the room with the envelope and the sign Max felt like a magician somewhere had put the idea in his head. He stood up, scraping the chair against the hard floor as he did and walked towards the door. Turning back for a last look at the room he saw the letter still laid on the table and the sign still stuck to the wall. Max opened the stiff handle of the door and stepped through to the corridor.

The lift Max got into work was opposite his office so, without really noticing it, Max had done little more than glanced both ways down the corridor without ever actually exploring. Now that he looked properly he realised that the endless corridor was indeed actually endless or at least he could see no end from where he was standing. The walls and door simply carried on into an ever reaching darkness that eventually became too dark and misty to see. Tentatively Max took a few steps forward and stood in front of the door next to his. Putting his shaking hand round the stiff handle he pushed the unwilling door open.

In the room is a man sitting on a chair, at a desk. He is roughly the same height as Max and of roughly the same build. Sitting on his desk is a pile of sealed envelopes that had fallen through from Max’s letterbox next door. He is hurriedly unsealing the envelopes and depositing them in a letterbox in the opposite wall until he looks up and sees Max. He pauses abruptly and is taken aback, opening his mouth to speak but not quite managing to emit. On the wall is a sign - DON’T LOOK IN THE ENVELOPES. Max backs out into the corridor and slams the door in confusion. He stumbles along the corridor reaching his hand out the wall to try and steady himself but the doors and walls are spinning around him. Slowly his heart stops beating so fast and his breathing gets back to normal. He looks around but the lift isn’t within sight. All he  can see either side of him is the corridor filled with doors leading into more corridor filled with more doors. Max has forgotten about the postcard and he starts walking confidently to the next door.