The post office door closed in a boisterous squeak as the employees departed sullen and sulky, on the day of the fatalistic closure with no reverse rescue volte face on even the dimmest horizon likely.
They had all been building up to this unsettling climax for aeons backdated to a protracted intimidatory hint from the authorities.
A chilling pall rotated about part time work spaces, limited hours of opening, cut backs in pay, even lack of confidence in customer numbers.
But still even though there were closure deferrals it had this raw bone frosty autumn air of dastardly coda.
The post office that was that vine climber heavenly hub for Halo, an official who swept people off their feet with such magnitude with her infectious orb and gleaming preternatural facial contorted smile that even the most crestfallen would skew the queue for and at times create a blush inducing situation when other employees had to be rerosterd.
“Would anybody rescue this place some day?”
A depressed member of staff once reportedly queried.
Her name was funnily enough Almsma Dawning who cast this desperate plea into the empyrean.
They all morosely marched out in a detached yet lachrymose sequence so despondent.
Halo, she of the deft Sun gleam and beam nails flicked furiously thru the menagerie of stamps at her hub, that gracefully enunciated work station.
Halo, the feisty stamp accumulator.
There used to be that imperishable spark in her eyes when avidly and enthusiastically grasping at the prospect of attending philately carnivals.
However, today it was a stern, dismal disheartened Halo who now floundered and wrestled with her burden.
The spark yet sparkle had vanished like a finger flash magician’s elaborate trick that would mysteriously dupe even the most cynical of otherwise alert audiences.
Halo the philatelist pharaoh and her partner
Hank the Handkerchief man tear shedder of joy or laughter and postman for that antique pillar, monument and fixture, the local post office.
They both had this spellbound diversion of stamp catalogues and antique associated labels.
Allied to the billowing fire in their veins that palpitated.
The warmth they felt for each other was a smoky mirror of their STAMPED bounce.
The occasional cigar even added to their quite outlandish acquaintance which would mouse trap the career nosey breed.
In a bizarre manner, Halo often saw Hank flicking his ashes without reason, clumsily at that which is surprising.
Bizarre...outré aberrant INDEED.
It’s unbelievable that an ex fireman should be highly-strung around furnace type matters yet knowledge thirsty for such a faculties.
They embodied a jubilee of jubilant life in a sympathetic symbiotic sensitive sensory existence.
Halo and her overbold obsession with stamp designs that sculpted a fire brimming firewall in her eyes amidst and among the other multihued and florid decorative motifs.
Despite the shutdown of the post office where Hank and herself became an instantaneous “match”
where headlights swoon and swirled dreamily, they both had that chromium steal clad hobby to cling tenaciously to.
Hank had this emollient veneered etching that was an illuminating scrawl over envelopes that Halo affixed stamps to.
“Ah I feel like a lighter inflamed every time I impress a stamp or squirrel away a thin on the ground design for us both to gloat over in a later treasure seam epoch in our lives.”
To add a spooky dimension to this saga, Hank, appeared almost indistinguishable from many of the facial types in the locality which caused predicaments but eventually was to a certain skewed geometric level resolved.
Hank and Halo would even send and post embossed and embroidered letters to each other with concocted post boxes and extra terrestrial addresses.
But equally Halo had sensed a disturbing disquiet creeping into her life and so did her loyal ever expanding loyal tribe who normally would feed ravenously off her very infectious personality.
People like Hank and halo had this universal piquancy that could be considered in terms of incinerator captivating autumn drawing power.
“Just imaging now my stamps …. that I have accumulated over the years and their golden era …. quirky era almost flourish.”
The flame now being magically struck once more but would in a strange dark veneer plot fashion, one needs to probe and plummet, to uproot its phenomenal secrets, but should one ever risk that danger zone that black comedy whimsy?
“Our love hasn’t in any way been dimmed or doused by intrusions extraneous.”
Halo, being a little grandiloquent language.
They both were in actual fact deluding themselves though faintly perhaps, wether it was addressing each other with very lyrical luxurious soul mate names, romantic reminiscences, or often just in their quests for stamps mainly or things connected to such pursuits.
“Ah when we first met the kindle stick which I call any relationship was instantaneously lit wether it’s a human connection leading to a commitment or any other tender tinder thunderbolt.”
Halo would quite often have discussions that likened their shared hobby or apparently shared interest to,
these blazing trail analogies, these incandescent equivalences.
A match stick box of metaphors if you please.
But betimes these extended discourses which had mutual joy at it’s core evoked another consequence.
Stamps, the word itself had an ominous seal of officialdom.
A chilling imprimatur of finality.
Some fate decided and determined without recourse to a higher court.
As Halo herself often contemplated on foot of her yen for the self adhesive token, the tortuous route a personal letter, parcel or gift would embark on, that striking, graphic, resplendent voyage near and far.
“You do love gazing at your philatelist items. Don’t blame you. I’m a postman after all and before all and I certainly can tap into those surreal embers in your eye.
When you daintily affix that essential surface mark with your smile.”
And these collector’s items that most sought after unicorn that gladdened their expression.
Hank the handkerchief man and deliverer of mail both deeply yearned for and dreaded.
These corner of an envelope forms commenced to peer at him in his sleep, they had this haze ridden curtain drift effect for extended periods over sloped mountains, the way that most enigmatic drapes have of adorning everything it enshrouds.
Faces, images, replicas, heroic figures, squeezed into that most miniature eye straining decoration indispensable on packages.
Inch by inch this thing in the corner of a letter ,say, inveigled itself into the lives of a couple whilst drenching, a fire extinguisher effect on them.
Stamps as collectors item, stamps as badge of honour or merit paid.
“Hank, aren’t you in many ways so fortunate to have encountered such an affectionate and marvellous woman of such colossal enthralling charm.”
Hank, communing with himself.
Yes, he had these rumblings nonetheless of how a seemingly wandwork infused solid rock seam amorous bond was so sustainable,
Within the last 15 years something imperceptible had creeped in as he watched sinewy colour wash smoke from a chimney chute almost creating a wizard’s post pyrotechnic effect.
He, Hank, was often caught scratching his stubbles chin now as a sequence of thoughts somersaulted in his cranium.
“Behind every vintage philatelist’s dream, a viewing exhibition there is a morphing into invisible subgroups and moreover perhaps a hoodwinker’s stratagem of design.”
He was thinking of some of the most iconic stamp and in general overall terms the fascinating backdrop to them.
The worlds that each once occupied, how some things barely and rarely change and how time’s cutting edge sand cuts and carves to such a spacious sweep.
Yet when engrossed in a hobby as such conversations, chats, saunters in scenic glimpses so broad gauged, the albatross of romantic encounter, reliving their initial tryst, and how a thoroughly energized candle quivered and the world became awash with floods, tides of wonder, surging streams oozing light nabbed in a cataract.
The fire metaphor has been referenced but after stamps and partially to humour Hank Halo embarked on an immersion course on matters related to arson, burning, ignition, conflagration, fire and smoke, flames,flare, tinder.
“A shift in its insidious intrepid bug like venality is….what’s happening.
If only I could really put my finger on it.
There is this intimacy that isn’t intimacy but bogus replica.”
Hank reflecting on what might be unfolding.
The warm winter hearth receding element had impacted Halo too.
“Halo, halo, distress, disaster our house is engulfed.
Don’t worry it’s under control …..I think I’ll call the fire brigade.
Gosh, 6 months after the closure of the Post Office.”
Halo, wondered why he mentioned that.
“That does seem dubious, puzzling, perplexing, a riddle.”
She felt something sinister.
Halo, who happened to be “apart” from Hank for an agreed portion of time replied.
“I’ll get a taxi and get back.
You should ring the fire brigade and the municipal authorities without delay.”
Halo, as she perspired and fretted, whilst weeping an entreaty for no fatalities.
And of course the delicate matter of…
“Halo, so pleased to see your treasure troves.
The stamps, the books, the volumes.”
There was this awkward inkling on Halo’s part.
“Is that you Hank…well it looks like.. why is he dashing round the corner.
The fire is subsiding it’s bizarre .. I have this funny feeling.”
Hank, having dumped the stamps collection and things returned seconds later.
“There’s doubt on your face, Halo.
It’s your partner afterall .” Hank quipped!
The chaos subsided and the two on the surface so close were now philosophical.
“We’ll stay with our relatives for awhile before we cash in our insurance.”
Halo was cautious but consented.
“Ok, at least we will both have a COOLING OFF PERIOD !
Before things resume if they do.
And we have dodged a philatelist’s nightmare!
I still have those features no letter can do without!”
And there was even a fire EMBLAZE-ONED stamp … quite a few … some are missing …suspicions aroused again!
The very next day a phone call from a former post office colleague.
“You won’t believe this, a backer whose identity remains anonymous is prepared to back the reopening of the post office.
Suggestions of former employee with a rich sounding GIVING name.
Who could that be?”
Halo shuddered a little but was exhilarated.
Halo and Hank now said
LETTER LATE THAN NEVER!
“By the way, Hank, have I told you
PHI-“LATELY” that I love you.!!
Halo beamed the fire back into her eyes again .. in the right way … And Hank’s too.
Now that’s a feature that should never go out or put out to use the fire person’s term!
A joule (Jewel) of a tern.
But doubts still lurked in Halo’s mind about the Hank she was now speaking to!!!!!