Midnight Mailbox
In the bushes, in the mailbox is where I stay for the time being. It’s like something out of a cartoon; all four legs sunk in the dirt like a plumber. The key is snapped off in the key hole on the front, no way of opening the front. USPS had something to say when a couple packages went missing. I’m no thief but I wasn’t leaving, so I make a deal with them. They mark my shelter in the system as abandoned and if any packages come my way, I bring them to the post office. It took a while to get adjusted, it is a mailbox after all. I went through a phase of stupid kids dropping fire crackers in here, had to go bald for a while. It was time to start digging, dig deeper than a groundhog. Sometimes it felt like I was hiding and someone was seeking but that was never the case. Dig deep enough to where you can’t even hear the echoes of my conversations. Those firecrackers did nothing to be now; I put down a sheet pan right above where the rope ladder is. I tricked out the rope ladder so only I know which step to take, it’s like Universal’s Dueling Dragons but with the delicacy of curtains. It feels like vietnam all over again but without the intentional traps. Legally these are unintentional traps, this lair was suited for me and by me. I never had any intentions for guests to be invited in, I just needed a place to stay for the time being. Even I get bamboozled by the specific routine to get in an out at times. I’m no cave dweller of course, I do have to get out for a bit during the day. I’m homeless but i’m a productive homeless man. I got to take the bus to work like the rest of society, the difference is that I take a couple of donuts from work for the hole. There’s no food in the hole, I think it would be too tricky to bring down a week’s worth of groceries in there. I try to eat above the surface with the civilians, make sure i’m not hungry when I get down there. Sometimes I have a backpack full of snacks to bring down there but I usually try not to eat in there, It’s already dirty as it is and it’s dirt after all. It’s basically a dirty bunker, you try to put down tarp for wallpaper and flooring but the wormies find a way out. Another reason not to eat in there is because I try not to make stool in here. I do the trucker method when I really have too; bucket filled with cat litter. I’m scared to keep making holes to use the bathroom like we are in El Salvador, I don’t want to mess with the structural integrity. It’s like causing the worst avalanche by screaming bloody sabbath because the years of crack rock abuse has turned into a mineral that is going shoulder down out your weenie. I like to get the daily news paper, any bullshit I don’t agree with gets ripped out and used to clean up actual shit. Finding some lounge area that allows for charging electronics or the sharing of wifi is great, there is no wifi down in the hole. If there is stuff I have to do that involves wifi then I’d do it while on the outside world. I report back to the mailbox with what knowledge I got from that day and try to see what I could do about it or with it. I of course have like 22 charged dvd players that I can run through out the night if I really wanted too, I might be the only person keeping dvd sales at the dying mall alive. When I get too dependent on them, I switch over to physical literature. I got a collection of mad magazines and madlibs that I have yet to get too. I’m too busy with these lego books, I own no legos in the hole but the many different ways a lego frog has been used is enough motivation for me to go climb out of this hole and go for a jog. This mailbox is relatively unknown, people who walk by it don’t care much for it but I still get paranoid for it. I have all my mail sent to my brother’s house so I don’t have my cover blown. This is from retrospective viewpoint unfortunately; my cover did eventually get blown. Blown off it did, by a drunk driver. Just rammed into a bush thinking all will be well but a midnight blue mailbox was too hard to see in the midnight. I didn’t know if the driver died but I had to hightail it out like a cockroach, can’t let the cops sent me to where they might take my actual hole.