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This had to be the fourth time Stan had to drop a package at this same exact apartment over the last two weeks.
Like, yeah, people bought a lot online nowadays, but this just felt excessive to Stan. Even the most agoraphobic person on the planet wouldn’t order this much shit off of Amazon at one time.
Okay, maybe that was a stretch, but back to the point-- Stan was getting sick of going up to this guy’s apartment. He always managed to get this guy’s packages on his route.
The man’s name was Craig Tucker. He always bought smaller stuff, so it wasn’t like Stan had to carry six foot, 400-pound boxes up to Craig’s apartment on the third-floor every time he ordered something, but it still felt like a tedious task. Craig was the only patron he delivered to in this entire apartment building. Not to mention, every time he knocked on Craig’s door, the dude was always there to answer. It was like he never left his apartment (Maybe he actually was some weird agoraphobe).
The first time it happened, Stan didn’t think anything of it. Plenty of people answered their door, definitely not a cause for concern.
It was the third time that freaked him out, considering it was well into the day, when any productive citizen of society would be at work. However, Craig had almost immediately opened the door, as if he was expecting Stan.
“I’m back,” Stan joked dryly.
“What?” Craig said, not even batting an eye.
“I’m always dropping off your packages, dude, didn’t you notice?”
“Oh, yeah. Sure. Where do I sign?”
Stan couldn’t believe he just brushed him off like that. How could you get your shit delivered by the same guy for two weeks in a row, make face-to-face contact with him, and then act like you’ve never even acknowledged his existence? To say the least, it made Stan a little irked, though he couldn’t understand why. Maybe the guy was just asocial. At least Stan could respect that. That’s wasn't how Craig came off, though. Craig had this all-knowing, superior type of air about him, which was saying a lot considering it seemed he didn’t even seem to have a job. Craig was curt, never made conversation, and didn’t even give a Thanks!, or Have a nice day! to Stan like almost every other person he had met while being a postman.
Stan had asked his coworkers if they had been to the infamous Tucker residence, but all of them denied it. He’d figured out that Craig had just moved into the city not too long ago. In fact, not too long before he started having Stan deliver all of this random crap to his apartment. Was he piecemealing silverware from where he used to live to his new apartment?
That being said, it had been a little bit since Craig’s last package. Stan figured that he had finally gotten done ordering whatever kind of shit he needed, and that was the last he would ever see of Tucker again.
Or so he thought.
Stan groaned as he looked back at the last package in his postal carrier. It was enormous .
Okay, not enormous, but it was still big enough to be an inconvenience. It was at least five feet tall, three feet wide, but it hardly weighed anything. He groaned aloud when he read the familiar address When Stan shook it around, he heard that it rattled, implying that it was a metal cage of some sort. He knew he shouldn’t be checking out other people’s mail like this, but he couldn’t help himself. He was undeniably curious what Craig would have possibly needed a five-foot-long cage for. It certainly wasn’t for a dog, it was too weirdly shaped to be for a dog, but Stan had the sneaking suspicion it was definitely for an animal of some sort.
Finally determined to find out what the hell was up with this Mister Craig Tucker, Stan walked back to the front of the vehicle and made his way downtown to the apartment building he had come to frequent even more than his own apartment.
It had been a bitch to get up there, considering the awkward shape of the box, and that for the first time since he started going there the elevator was out (way to go, Vern). Stan was well annoyed at that point. Craig lived on the third floor, for God’s sake. Whatever the hell was in this box, Stan hoped it was worth bringing up here instead of just leaving it down by the front office.
He knocked on the door, and as if he was being expected, the sound of footsteps made their way to the door.
“Hello?” Craig had the door open only enough to stick his head out and see who was the one who was knocking.
“I’m back,” Stan tried again.
“What?” Craig responded, again .
“Okay, dude, enough of this. Why are you constantly ordering shit from Amazon?” Stan decided to get straight to the point.
Craig snorted, playing off Stan’s sour tone. “I thought this was America.”
“You know what I mean, dude,” Stan said narrowing his eyes. “I have been coming up to your apartment for weeks dropping off all this random ass shit, and I just had to lug this thing --” He pointed down at the box. “--up the stairs, because the ‘elevator was out of order’. Care to explain what you’re buying?”
Craig scowled, putting on a demeaning smirk. “How should I know what people they’re going to send to deliver my shit? That really isn’t any of your business.”
Stan gritted his teeth. Craig was right, and Stan hated it.
“I’m just curious, is all,” Stan defended, raising his arms in a surrendering-type fashion.
“Then you can stay that way. Just tell me where to sign,” Craig responded without a beat.
Stan frowned. “C’mon dude, I know it probably has something to do with animals. Can I see? I love animals,” Stan conceded, smiling softly again at the notion of animals.
“Hell no, you can’t see. I don’t feel like getting murdered today. Give me my box.”
“I’m not a murderer! I’ve been a postal worker for two years!” Stan defended, trying desperately to get on Craig’s good-side. He really didn’t know why he was trying this hard.
“That’s sad, give me my box.”
Stan huffed. He crossed his arms. “Please?”
“No. I’ll call the cops, dude, I swear to God,” Craig warned.
“No! Please, at least let me help you take it in?”
“I know that a hamster cage doesn’t take two people to carry.”
“A-ha!” Stan exclaimed, suddenly very proud of himself. “I knew it had something to do with animals!”
Craig scoffed. “I didn’t say I was using it for it’s intended purpose.”
Stan pretended he had finally broken through Craig’s tough exterior, leaning on the box into Craig’s space more. “How many do you have? Probably a lot, considering you got an enclosure this big. Are they hampsters, or something else? I love hamsters.”
Craig seemed offended by this sudden rush of inquiries, stepping back into his apartment to get Stan out of his intrusion on his personal bubble.
“God, be quiet. Just bring the box in,” Craig said, moving further into his own apartment.
Score! Stan had finally broken Craig. He enthusiastically picked up the boxed cage and pushed open the apartment door.
“They’re guinea pigs, by the way, not hampsters,” Craig’s nasally voice sounded from somewhere inside the apartment.
Stan closed the door with his foot and followed an entrance hallway into a living room. Immediately, Stan saw the very guinea pigs Craig was talking about. He quickly set the package down somewhere out of the way and walked over to the rodents. He smiled happily down at the two, the pigs staring back up at him. He wanted to slip his finger in between the bars of the enclosure, but he wasn’t too sure if Craig would’ve liked that. One of the guinea pigs had splotches of white, orange, and dark brown, while the other was just a solid brown for the most part, save for the slivers of white here or there. The solid brown one was obviously the younger of the two, it being much smaller than the other.
Stan heard Craig’s bare feet walk up next to him, causing him to look up. Craig was peering down into the cage as well, his strong resting bitch face softening just so at the sight of his pets. Cute.
“What are their names?” Stan asked, looking back down at the animals. They had returned to whatever they had been doing before a foreign creature staring down at them had so rudely interrupted them.
Once again, he heard Craig’s footsteps as he walked away, stopping next to where Stan had set down the box. He heard the tell-tale sound of tape being sliced open. “The harlequin-colored one is named Stripe XVII, and the other is named Espresso. I didn’t name him that, a friend insisted,” Craig revealed.
Stan laughed a little at the names, but ultimately decided they were cute and fit them perfectly. He watched them walk around in their, albeit small, cage. Stan understood now why Craig had opted to get the bigger one. Daring to stick his finger in through one of the openings, and softly stroked Espresso with it. He didn’t stay for pets, but Stripe the Seventeenth gladly took his spot.
“The seventeenth, huh?” Stan said, looking over his shoulder. Craig was reading the instruction manual that was sitting on top of the cage parts.
“Stripe is a good name for a guinea pig. Why pick a new one,” he responded simply, not looking up from the manual.
Stan removed his fingers and stood up to look around the room, examining Craig’s apartment. It was clean. Which, that could mean that Craig either had very clean living habits, had just moved in, or didn’t own that much stuff. He didn’t even have a TV in his living room.
“Did you just move in?” Stan decided to ask, walking around the room, shamelessly observing all of the stuff that was set up. There was a bookshelf, though it mostly had movies and games in it. Mostly action and thriller, but there was an entire shelf dedicated to a series called Red Racer . Interesting.
“Hey, I said you could just look at my guinea pigs, now get out,” Craig said, not making any kind of move to throw Stan out.
“You didn’t even say anything about looking at them,” Stan shot back, playing Craig’s game.
“Awesome. You’re breaking and entering, then. Get out.” Craig started to pull the pieces of the cage out gently and set them down beside the box.
“Oh, cool, Deadpool !” Stan exclaimed, pulling the DVD case out from its place in the “D” section. “I love this movie.”
“It’s hilarious, and very well done. I honestly wasn’t expecting much, considering most hero movies out nowadays suck. Stop going through my stuff,” Craig said, no real heat behind his warning. He walked up next to Stan, snatching the case away and putting it back where it belonged.
“Right?” Stan nearly exclaimed. He ignored Craig’s warning, unabashedly looking through the rest of the movies. He noticed a lot of the same movies he himself either owned or love. Who would’ve thought he and Craig would like similar movies?
Craig walked back over to where he had abandoned the cage set, sitting down on the floor, looking like he was about to start putting the thing together.
“The exit is also how you entered,” he said, picking up two pieces of the cage after carefully analyzing the manual.
Stan ignored him again, choosing to look around the living room again. He stopped by the coffee table, see a picture. He picked up the framed picture and studied it. It was a picture of Craig. He looked young in this picture, wearing a dumb blue chullo hat, with his arm around another boy with a shock of blonde hair.
“This your ‘friend’?”
Craig snorted. “Yeah.”
Stan hummed, setting the picture down. “How come he got to pick out a name instead of it just being dubbed ‘Stripe the Eighteenth’?”
Craig eyed the manual again. “Espresso originally wasn’t mine, but I bought him. Therefore I got custody of him after Tweek and I broke up,” Craig explained, then shortly added: “I don’t have the heart to change his name.”
“Aw, dude, that sucks. I’m sorry,” Stan said empathetically. “I went through something like that with my last girlfriend. She took my dog!”
Craig snorted again, but this time it felt forced. “It’s fine… It’s not like this doesn’t happen often. Tweek had his little freakout, yells at me to get out of dodge, then comes crawling back to me after weeks of acting all passive aggressive with me,” Craig stated. “But… this time I got the fuck out of dodge for good.” His voice was pained. “Could you get out of my apartment now?”
Stan gave Craig a look of concern. He walked over to Craig and plopped down across from his workspace. Craig didn’t meet his eyes. He reached his arm over, patting him on the shoulder in what Stan hoped was comforting. Craig just gave him a quizzical look.
“Can I help with this?” Stan asked, gesturing to the cage’s pile.
“It’s really not that hard to put four pieces of metal together, dude,” Craig scoffed.
“You just seem lonely,” Stan said.
Craig shook his head, but there was a smile. He didn’t protest when Stan picked up two of the pieces the manual said went together and started to help Craig anyways.