The final combination on the massive lock had given way to a resounding clatch as the bolt slid away, revealing all the empty steely walls and racks that the sound was happily ricocheting back and forth upon.  The sight did not even register on his mind, and, staring blankly into the brightly lit vault at the rear of the post office, in a place shielded from the sun’s curious, burning gaze, his silhouette seemed like that of an explorer poised upon some unknown world, standing at the edge of what was known, feet barely planted in reality.

The vault slammed shut.  He blinked, not even realized when his arm jerked to shut the door.  Shaking himself lightly, he checked his faded blue uniform, his name tag which read MICHEL FUGUE, a horribly misspelling of Fuhge that he had simply not had the initiative to file the papers to fix, and finally trotted outside to check that, indeed, he had placed himself into the right edifice.

Which he had.  Its newly-shining white paintjob, courtesy of the recent Hurricane Emma, positively gleamed in the early morning light.  He still got dizzy, on occasion, when the fumes from the paint, in pockets little-known to the everyday post-office guest, were stirred up in his presence.

The sand of the beach whispered, and the grass bowed in the wind.  He stared up at the POST OFFICE sign adorning the building, and, at a time when many were hitting the snooze buttons on their alarm clocks, they all thought, maybe one more time together.  And, so, he headed back into the vault room.

Fingerprint scan.

First combination.

Second.

Third.

Whistle nervously (Unrelated).

Input PIN.

ACCESS GRANTED.

There he stood, one Michel Fuhge, at the edge of the world, once again looking at nothing but vacuum.

I’m so fucked.

...in the post office, in a small town at the farthest edge of habitable coastline.  He came back again and again every day, at 6 in the morning, sunshine or storms.  Oftentimes, as it so happened, he would come back to tatters, shambles of wood and broken boards, and he would begin the tedious work of salvaging his place of employment, shifting this or that, making sure the seal on the parcel-room was still tight.  It happened every so often, at the coast, and in the hurricanes' line of fire.  Often enough, anyway, to justify building a water-tight vault to store everything in at night.  After all, whether sun, storm, or earthquake, the Nation’s Mail had a duty to its citizens.

Maybe not an earthquake.  That, at least, they probably wouldn’t have to deal with here.

Today was just like any other day, except that, today, the mail was gone.

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