Little Mysteries

Today I noticed someone had written my name, Nicolette Wong, on the white label on my mailbox downstairs. The handwriting is just a little girlish, but not decisively so. You can take a look at how the mailboxes look here. None of them is mine, though.

It's been two months since I moved in and I couldn't bother to put my name there--I didn't want everybody to see it--or change the mailing address for some of my mails. The postman couldn't have done this prank since none of the mails I've got so far has 'Nicolette' on it. My landlord doesn't know I'm Nicolette either. A handful of my friends have been to my place, but those guys, with one exception, wouldn't remember the address. The one who would remember, well, I doubt they would have taken the time and interest to pull this little trick on me.

I don't think I'd find out who did it. Hopefully it doesn't matter. Years ago when I lived in public housing, someone who called themselves 'Mike' left me notes asking me to call them. Creepy notes written in slightly ungrammatical English, obviously by a very young girl. Yes, that's my story 'The Voyeur', which some of you have read.

***

I have a flash story, 'The Warrior', up at Apocrypha and Abstractions. This one must make me look a bit like a gothic underground lover, and I wrote it in a rather peculiar state of mind. For a year or so I had this image of this dead man lying in a dark space, and he would come back to life if someone managed to breathe life into him by sucking out the blood that had clogged his throat, or something. 

The night I sat down to write it, I was listening to some electronica on Youtube--not the kiddy type you'd hear blasting in some car or club down the street, but the alternative type. Still, the playlist wasn't great and soon it was getting on my nerves. To shield myself from that discomfort, I focused extra hard on imagining the story, down to the glow of that straw. Now I can't re-read this story without finding it a little 'painful', even though I don't think others would feel the same.