the courier

content warning: death, violence, cursing.


“You’re the one they sent?” Words drip with skepticism. The man, well into his sixties, shifts in his old folding chair, gives the kid a once over while attempting to find a more comfortable position. “You ain’t very impressive."

Lucas straddles the seat of a rusty bicycle, one lean eyebrow raised dubiously. “What were you expecting?”

“Someone a little less...” Both hands gesture to the entirety of Lucas. The younger man has height, but it’s the only feature of note. He is stick thin, lacking any real muscle. A gaunt body, nothing more than gangly arms arms and legs, a rawboned thing capable of being snapped in two if the breeze blew the wrong way.

A pitiful sight, to say the least.

“Look, man, you asked for someone to deliver your shit, and they sent me. Sorry I don’t meet your standards of beauty.”

“Don’t get smart with me, boy,” he warns, finger angrily stabbing empty air.

“Sorry, sir,” he replies plainly, uncertain whether he could ever possibly lace something with any less enthusiasm.

“I just want to make sure I’ve got the right guy before I send somethin’ so valuable of mine off, you get me?”

He does.

“You think I’m gonna take your shit and run.”

It isn’t a question, but the man nods anyway.

The reasoning is easy enough to understand. Most in lower Ziara have shared the sentiment at one point or another, the feeling of unease brought on by the probability of loss; Lucas is no exception.

As a child, issues perpetually permeate his environment: food, money, housing, health -- all are in short supply.

But they manage.

Until they don’t.

Often it boils down to making decisions -- choosing what they can live without and what they can’t. For his family, it comes to deciding between putting food in their stomachs or paying medical bills.

In some instances, his family chooses wrong.

First, it is his father, life cut short by gruesome men who pluck the liver right from his body. There is no hope for survival when lacking such a vital organ, so there he rests, mangled body a sickening surprise left behind in the bedroom for mother and son to discover upon arriving home.

Years later, it is his mother, lost to an illness she is too stubborn to get treated. This, at least, is no surprise. Lucas pleads with her to seek help, to take a loan out with Paeon and get the organ she needs, but she refuses. Regardless if it is months or years down the road, her death is inevitable, so, vehemently, she declines going to the company who killed her husband. She will not be put on ghastly display as her husband was. At least, she tells her son, she knows death is coming for her, so she is able to prepare Lucas for the brunt of the consequences.

As if it’s any consolation.

He is sent to an uncle’s house after she passes, where the familiar cycle begins once more. This time, the gruesome men barge in during the middle of dinner, a cruel joke in which only the collectors find humor. It is a stomach for which they come -- the previous had been riddled with cancer. It was promised the new one would relieve him of the illness entirely if payments were made on time.

They weren’t.

Ultimately, at one point or another, everyone in his life has been torn from the world prematurely. He has known loss, the challenge of making burdensome decisions. And the message he takes away from it?

He could be next.

So, truly, the elaborate idea of posing as a courier and escaping down an alley with precious supplies is not as outlandish as it may seem. In fact, it’s altogether enticing, but Lucas knows not to take what isn’t his.

It isn’t sustainable.

(Or, worse: the gruesome men will track him down, too. Rip the beating heart from his body. Tear the lungs from his chest. All for taking what doesn’t belong to him. No, the nightmares that plague his cowardly mind are reminder enough not to double-cross, to betray. It would, simply, mean the end of him, and despite how he protests, whines, and makes a fuss over things, he would very much rather stay alive, regardless of less than favorable living conditions.)

“Look, bud,” he finally says, “If I take your shit, I’ll be out of a job and dead by next week. No fuckin’ way am I risking that over whatever the fuck is in here.”

The man considers, but Lucas is impatient.

He prompts, “What’s it gonna be, old man?”

Despite the vulgarity, Lucas’s words seem to be enough. Gingerly, he hands the younger man the package.

Fuckin' finally, he thinks, eyes falling to the object as relief floods him. The weight of the parcel is real. Reassuring.

Carefully, he stuffs it into the ratty pack slung over his shoulders and, with purpose restored, feet push off cracked cement. The old bike carries him toward new destination.

Lucas doesn’t know what’s inside the package, what'll be done with the contents when it reaches its intended recipient.

It doesn’t matter.

All it means is that he’ll be able to put food on the table for a day or two.

For now, it’s enough.






art by KEI