The Little Girl and the Postman

Areana sighed as she looked out into the rain. A small girl, she sat with her arms propped against the thick oak windowsill. With another sigh, she pushed herself away from her vantage of the dark clouds and stared towards the kitchen, where the postman’s body lay.

She opened the kitchen door and surveyed the scene. The postman, envelope knife still quivering at the base if his throat, labored for breath where he lay, sprawled across the white tiles that were quickly reddening with his blood.

Areana chewed her lower lip, dismayed. It had been nearly two hours since she had surprised the man at her door, and he was still struggling for life.

The small girl sighed again, beginning to pout. Things were not going well at all. After the foolish man had fallen to the kitchen floor, clutching at the wound in his chest (she had missed his heart, she decided. That, or the slender knife was too short.), he had begun to scream, loudly enough to prompt old Mrs. Nelson to place a call, inquiring on the situation. Areana had hastily plunged the knife into the postman’s throat, quelling the noise, and explained to Ms. Nelson that she had merely been playacting with her friends.

She had soon become bored, watching the tall man die, as all that he seemed to do was twitch his fingers and let out long sputtering sobs in between shallow, inward gasps that seemed to make him shudder to his very bones.

She had left the man to his devices, choosing instead to watch the rain, and to think.

Now she stood and observed the man with renewed interest, noticing how the thick, wet gasps slowed as the man slipped from consciousness. Suddenly impatient, Areana stepped carefully over the slippery tiles and wrenched the thin shaft of the envelope knife from the dying man’s throat, nimbly avoiding the spurt of black blood that followed the knife’s exit. The stream slowed and then stopped as the postman’s heart finally failed, letting one final pulse of blood exit the body, where it dripped slowly to the kitchen tile.

Areana smiled, satisfied, noting with pleasure that not a drop of red marred her white dress. Her mother had admonished against wearing her Sunday best on a daily basis, and Areana dutifully agreed, dressing in plain play clothes until her parents left for work at the University. Then, careful to wait until the black car disappeared down the road, she would climb the stairs up to her room and put on the white, lacy dress that made her feel more like a woman than a ten year old girl.

Now, in her lacy white Sunday clothes, Areana stood smiling over the tortured body of the postman, wondering what to do next. A sudden thought struck her, and she skipped to the kitchen drawer, where a long silver pair of scissors sat. She grabbed the heavy tool and, careful to hold them with the point down as they had taught her in primary school, she walked over to the body. His hair was too long, she decided, staring at the shoulder length black hair that sat soaking in the blood that had pooled around the postman’s head.

Suddenly, she grasped the man’s hair and chopped off a large lock right behind his ear. She continued in this manner, oblivious to the blood that coated her hands that was making it increasingly difficult to grip the scissors. When she had finished, she stepped back to admire her work, noting how the dead man’s new haircut was even all around, as she’d hoped.

Areana stayed still for several minutes, eyes resting on the thin, almost non-existant black line in the man’s throat right under his Adam’s apple. It was beautiful, in a way, a dark line with long streaks on both sides traveling down the curve of his neck, stopping at the point where the drops had left his skin in favor of the floor.

Abruptly, she laughed and started to hum, finally breaking out into song at the middle of the nursery rhyme: “A tiskit, a tasket, we all fall down!”

She stopped, enjoying the sudden silence broken only by the sound of rain on the windows and roof. Areana quietly walked over to the sink and washed the scissors and her hands until no blood remained on either.

Upon putting the scissors back into the drawer, she picked up a rag doll that had been sitting on the table near the window and hugged it close.

The man’s body could not stay on her kitchen floor. This much she knew, but she had no idea as where to put it. Areana stepped to the kitchen window, noting that the rain had stopped. She looked out at the landscape - flat, grassy plains that led to the bright blue expanse of the ocean, waves white-capped with the storm. And there, ten meters from the back of her house was her answer: a small, squat box with a light wooden cover marked the opening of the septic tank that her father drained into the ocean every month. Areana had watched him do it once, flipping a large switch that caused the tank to open to the ocean, inciting a feeding frenzy of carnivorous fish that could be seen even from her second story bedroom window.

Areana laughed - a musical twinkling - and turned around. With a little effort, she could divide the dead man’s body into pieces small enough to stuff into the tank, where fish would dine on the evidence.

Humming happily, she skipped to her father’s wood-working room and used a stepladder to pick tools off the wall, as well as three large rolls of paper towels.

By the time she stepped back into the kitchen, the sun was shining brightly through the window. She placed her bundle on the floor, took up the short wood saw and started to work, but not before she tied a large white apron to herself.


After all, she was wearing her best dress.