Signature Required

Occasionally new inspiration slips through the worries and I get create. Here’s where I found myself today:

Louisa—Lou, if she trusted you enough to use it, which she didn’t, not really, not anymore—had been at war with the postal system for exactly seven days, thirteen hours, and what felt like six hundred soul-crushing minutes.

Each morning she checked the tracking app like a desperate gambler feeding her last coins into a slot machine that only paid out in disappointment: Attempted delivery. Signature required. Sorry we missed you! The exclamation point felt like a personal insult, a cheerful middle finger from the universe.

Her front door faced east. Bright, unforgiving, biblical east. The kind of light that didn’t just illuminate, it hissed when it touched her, sent smoke curling off her skin like she was a piece of bacon some cosmic chef had forgotten on the griddle. The landlord, with his paunch and his polo shirts and his aggressive optimism, called it “a cheerful unit with excellent natural light.” He was wrong on both counts. The unit was a shoe box with pretensions, and the only thing excellent about that light was how excellently it could kill her.

Lou had tried everything. She’d left notes, polite ones, then increasingly unhinged ones. She’d called the customer service line four times and been transferred to hold music that sounded like elevator jazz being played on a dying keyboard. She’d even attempted to shift her sleep schedule, dragging herself to consciousness at 2 PM, only to discover the delivery window was 8 AM to noon, as if the universe itself had conspired against her circadian rhythm.

On day five, desperation drove her to something she’d avoided for three years: the neighbors.

Mrs. Patel in 1C opened her door exactly two inches. Lou could see one suspicious eye, magnified behind thick glasses, and the security chain pulled taut as a garrote wire. She took in Lou’s blackout hoodie, the sunglasses worn indoors, the general aura of someone who’d crawled out of a cave and wasn’t happy about it.

“No,” Mrs. Patel said, the word dropping like a guillotine blade. The door shut before Lou could even finish her sentence.

The guy upstairs, mid-thirties, worked from home doing something with cryptocurrency that he’d tried to explain at the building’s sad excuse for a holiday party, just mumbled through his chain lock, “I don’t sign for strangers, man. Identity theft is, like, a huge thing.” His eyes were bloodshot. His apartment smelled like energy drinks and broken dreams.

By the time Lou made it to the college student next door, the one with the Dead Kennedys poster and the tendency to blast indie rock at 3 AM (which Lou didn’t mind, honestly, because she was usually awake), her smile had calcified into something that looked like a dental ad for hell. All teeth, no warmth, the kind of expression that made children cry and adults check for exits.

“Sorry,” the kid said, backing away slowly. “I’m, uh, not really here? Like, officially? Subletting situation?” He closed the door gently, apologetically, but it still felt like rejection.

That night, Lou went to the post office just before closing, hoping for mercy, for humanity, for literally any scrap of compassion from the federal government. The clerk, early twenties, magnificent in his complete disinterest in her existence, didn’t even look up from his phone, where he appeared to be watching videos of people falling down.

“You’ll have to come back during daylight hours, ma’am,” he said, thumb still scrolling.

“I can’t come during daylight hours,” Lou said, trying to keep the edge out of her voice and failing spectacularly.

“Then you’ll have to arrange for someone else to pick it up. Valid ID. Sorry.” He wasn’t sorry. His tone suggested he’d never been sorry about anything in his entire life.

Lou considered bursting into flames right there out of protest. Would serve them right. The paperwork alone would be magnificent.

That’s when a voice behind her said, “Rough night?”

Lou turned. The woman standing there had that particular brand of librarian energy that Lou had always found inexplicably attractive: cardigan despite the weather, sharp eyes that missed nothing, the kind of late-night patience that suggested she’d seen some things and couldn’t be easily shocked. Her hair was pulled back in a bun that had given up on perfection hours ago, and she held a package slip in one hand like a tiny white flag.

“Casey,” she said, offering her other hand. “And you look like someone who could use a daylight proxy.”

Lou blinked. Stared. “A what?”

“Someone to pick up your package for you. I’m here three times a week anyway, work schedule from hell, always missing deliveries.” Casey tilted her head, studying Lou with the kind of attention usually reserved for interesting books or puzzle boxes. “You’re nocturnal?”

“Something like that.”

“Night shift?”

“Something like that,” Lou repeated, but slower, with more fang.

Casey’s smile didn’t falter. “Coffee? We can compare notes on dealing with the tyranny of daytime commerce?”

Two nights later, Casey stood in Lou’s dim apartment, all blackout curtains and LED strips casting everything in purple twilight, practicing Lou’s signature from the sample she’d provided. “You seriously can’t step out there? Not even for a minute?”

Lou gestured to her arm, where she’d deliberately let a sliver of dawn creep through the blinds as demonstration. The skin was already smoking faintly, red and angry, the air around it shimmering with heat.

“Jesus,” Casey whispered, and then her eyes went wide, realization dawning brighter and more terrible than any sun. “Oh. Oh. You’re—”

“Bad at tanning,” Lou said flatly, pulling her sleeve down. “Vitamin D deficiency. Really tragic.”

Casey’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. “You’re fucking with me.”

“Only a little.”

“You’re a—” Casey lowered her voice to a whisper, like saying it too loud might summon something, or break something, or fundamentally alter her understanding of reality. “You’re a vampire.”

“That’s such a loaded term. I prefer ‘differently circadian.’”

“Oh my god.”

“Not really his biggest fan, honestly.”

Casey laughed, sharp and bright and slightly hysterical. “And you drink…?”

“Coffee. Sometimes people. Depends on the week.” Lou paused, watching Casey’s face carefully. “That was a joke. Mostly. The coffee part is true. I have a whole thing about pour-over versus French press if you want to be bored to death. Or undeath. Whichever.”

“Can you actually—”

“Turn into a bat? No. Mind control? Not reliably. Sparkle? Absolutely not, that’s offensive.” Lou ticked them off on her fingers. “I can’t cross running water without a witch’s charm, which makes the subway interesting. Garlic gives me heartburn but doesn’t kill me. Stakes to the heart would probably kill me, but that’s also true for you, so it’s not exactly a supernatural weakness.”

Casey sat down heavily on the secondhand couch that Lou had bought for $50 on Craigslist. “This is insane.”

“Welcome to my world. It’s dim and the hours are terrible.”

When the delivery guy arrived the next afternoon, Lou could hear his footsteps through the door, hear his heartbeat, quick and caffeinated, Casey took a breath and went to answer. Lou pressed herself against the wall, safely in shadow, listening.

“Package for Louisa Hartwell?”

“That’s me,” Casey lied smoothly, and Lou felt a little flutter of something warm in her chest. Gratitude, maybe. Or the beginning of something more dangerous.

“Sign here, please.”

The scratch of pen on screen. The rustle of cardboard.

“Here you go. Have a great day!”

Casey shut the door, turned around clutching the box like she’d just stolen the Declaration of Independence, and let out a breath she’d been holding since yesterday.

“For all that,” she said, setting it on the coffee table between them, “this better be something incredibly good. Like, ancient cursed artifact good. Magical grimoire good. The preserved heart of your mortal enemy good.”

Lou approached, dropped to her knees in front of the box with an anticipation that made Casey lean forward. She produced a key from around her neck…no, wait, that was just her fingernail, sharpened to a point, slitting through the tape with surgical precision.

Inside, nestled in a sea of those annoying air pillows: a cat tree. Purple. Three tiers. With a dangling feather toy and a scratching post wrapped in sisal rope.

For a moment, there was only silence.

Then Casey laughed. Laughed so hard she snorted, then clapped a hand over her mouth, then laughed harder at her own embarrassment. Lou found herself smiling too, really smiling, fangs and all, the kind of expression she hadn’t worn in front of another person in years.

“Don’t judge,” Lou said, pulling the monstrosity free from its cardboard prison. “He’s an indoor cat. And he’s very particular about his furniture.”

As if summoned by the promise of new territory to claim, a massive orange tabby emerged from the bedroom, moving with the ponderous dignity of a small tiger who knew he was the most important creature in the apartment.

“This is Dracula,” Lou said.

Casey looked at the cat. Looked at Lou. “You named your cat Dracula.”

“He named himself. I’m just the staff.”

Dracula approached Casey, sniffed her shoe with great deliberation, then headbutted her shin with enough force to make her stumble. She reached down automatically to pet him, and he began purring like a small motorcycle.

“He likes you,” Lou said quietly. “He doesn’t like most people.”

“Maybe he can smell that I’m a…” Casey paused, grinning. “What’s the term? A daylight proxy?”

“I was thinking ‘friend,’” Lou said. “But that works too.”

Outside, the sun blazed on, indifferent and hostile. Inside, in the purple-tinged darkness, something new and fragile and strangely hopeful began to take root. Dracula, wise beyond his nine years and many lives, purred his approval and began investigating his new tower.

The postal system had finally met its match. And Lou had found something she’d stopped looking for years ago: someone willing to stand in the light on her behalf.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​