Special Delivery (A Novelette)

I finished reading them a few days ago and coming back (and after re-reading The Fabulous Life) you have a knack of writing backstory and details that makes these characters and world lived-in. While I realize you thematically linked it with opulence and indulgence, I liked how you included Deon's struggle with dieting. Because it gives your characters extra flavor and makes them more real and more 3-dimensional, as opposed to cardboard cutouts where horrible shit is going to happen to them. Same with Debra in Special Delivery with her aching joints and backstory in baseball. Also wanted to say that I have trouble with intrusive thoughts so that story hit much more closer to me. I don't know if you took inspiration from Stephen King (it's been a while since I read it), but I feel like that's something he would do. And honestly, I'm glad you do that, because it makes your world of Peachwood much more vivid.

*Spoilers* We back in Peachwood! Continuing with this theme of hunger and meals, but a book is doing the eating this time around. Instead of a book going from extracting borrower to extracting borrower, this book takes from its beholder. I think of how people's tragedies become black markings on a page or screen for someone to gawk at, go "dang that's crazy," then forget as soon as they look away. They are moments flattened to, or consumed by, pages for someone's entertainment or warning, and only have any worth in the brief moments someone pours over it. I find it intriguing that the sense of protection Debra received from church turned out to be harmful, because it dulled the curiosity she needed to return to Gladys and keep researching. Other standout moments for me were on page 16: "My mom's gonna kill me" was a nice touch given the danger Debra presents to her son, and I liked the paragraph where the sentences quickly flick between her fumbling with the package and her furious thoughts growing increasingly murderous.  This horror hinges on the disintegration of Debra's mind and social ties. Starting with Debra's mind, her regular internal world, likes, and motivations before this distress are important to establish. I'm assuming her intrusive thoughts started when she encountered the package 6 months ago. Have they gradually intensified over time or was it a sudden onslaught that she immediately recognized was out of the ordinary? We get clues about her self-neglected intuition, her superstitions, her meekness, her agreeableness, her missed hoop dreams, and longing. This insight gives a personality basis to contrast the disturbing thoughts. It helps characterize the voice and directives of the package differently from Debra's normal head voice and motivations. Now, on to Debra's social ties. I wish there were more interactions between Debra and the community that was introduced to us in the beginning. I want to know how her relationships tint her internal world, and the value she places on these people which make the thought of her killing them especially devastating (beyond the basic understanding that killing is wrong). What about these bonds make confiding, seeking help, or being fully transparent to someone in her life not an option? She is a connective tissue in the community and yet is very lonely. She knows everybody, and everyone's burdens pass through her hands and satchel, yet she constantly wears a mask of normalcy, anxiously lying to everyone about being "ok." This mysterious parcel could very well be a manifestation of how being tapped into everybody's energy, everybody's things --especially the wrong things-- can eventually take a toll on you when it's only one-way. I had questions about their ages. Emmanuel is 9, and he's small enough to be placed on a hip (p 12)? He seemed younger to me. How old is Debra and Cliff? She got pregnant toward the end of high school and has been dutifully delivering mail for over a decade, so she must be approaching 30 now? The package, its identity and mechanisms (which sort of remind me of the entity from It), and 1408 Cherry remain vague. Does the package possess people and infuse them with murderous desires, or does it exploit and amplify underlying instabilities and predispositions already in a person? Is it symbolic of intrusive thoughts, the way it randomly pops up and casts a shadow on everything? How does it choose its victims? What was Debra's initial intention with the gun before she caught Cliff and snapped? How does Emmanuel's dream tie into all of this? What is the significance of teeth? What is the rhyme and reason for the dialogue spacing? How are the dead black girls on the news related to this? I believe the tales of Peachwood interconnect and all these questions will be answered in a  collection one day. But as a standalone short story, too many unanswered questions and loose ends left me feeling confused and unsatisfied. I'm not saying everything needs to be spelled out, but I finished the story feeling like I got a series of occurrences and predictable death, while the crux of the mystery was withheld. The ending felt hurried and I think this draft could benefit from some thoughtful and illustrative bulking, of which you are more than capable. Thank you for sharing.

I just finished reading Special Delivery and loved it. Kept me anticipating what was going to happen until the very end. I'm gonna check out the other stories now!

Im so excited!!

I must have missed Hunger, but I really did enjoy The Fabulous Life, so I'm definitely going to read those!