He was tired of the mailbox, of writing letters; he was sick of it being such a necessity. More than anything he was weary of the fact that the world still had desperate need of that symbol.
And anymore it was a risk since the area was such a hot spot for the ever-spreading Drac infestation.
But it wasn't a task to be taken lightly; forgetting people was one of the few things his complicated personal code would not allow. The justification was simple; he wouldn't have wanted to be forgotten so it was better to hang on too tightly than it was to let the memories go too soon.
He wasn't so sure, however, that anyone would be writing letters to him when the time came, maybe whatever was left of him when the rest was dust would just have to navigate to the next phase without the guiding words scrawled in ink and stuffed into a desert shrine.
His fingers lingered, pale against the colorfully painted metal, nails hooked under the slot and holding it there, hesitating.
Was it sacrilege to write to people who may not have been ghosts?
He didn't know, those answers didn't come in the 'How to Survive the Zones' guidebook that didn't exist.
But it didn't matter, not really; he had plenty of people to mourn without casting his eyes towards the ivory towers of the city and wondering.....uncertain; thinking of the people that still cast shadows there.
He didn't even have a picture other than the ones buried in his mind; brother, mother, father.
His ghosts, the walking dead; the memories breathing the recycled air and living in false homes he couldn't free them from. They didn't want to be free, they only wanted to exist in the fog of his mind and the sterility of white walls.
The only solace was that they likely thought him dead, if they thought of him at all, and they were free of the questions that kept him company in the deepest hours of the night.
His mother would never need to catch her breath and hold it, whisper-thin and frail, at the thought of her eldest ducking out of the cutting path from a laser. His father would not cast his eyes downward with a shake of his head in equal parts shame of him and knowing that he had also failed his son. And his brother, young and filled with vivid hope, would not be waiting with eyes turned to the outskirts of the city under the expectation of his return some day when the world was less cruel.
He was lost to them because the pills made him a ghost in their eyes as much as the tense freedom of the zones transformed them into the haunting memories burned into his scattered soul.
And now a metal box with rusty hinges was the keeper of tortures spirits and bleeding memories; it was a guide to everyone with no other faith left under the burning sun.
The mailbox stood as a filthy, wrecked sacred place for lost souls to weep and the living to only linger long enough to spare a moment to memory before they fled.
Only staying long enough to pay respects, he melted back into the sandy paths towards what was home now, with ivory towers at his back and ghosts still on his mind.
