Consensus, Day 2-1: Package

“Honey, I think I heard the mailman arrive at the door. Could you see if my package arrived?”

Why don’t you see for yourself, lazy ass? Was what Mae wanted to respond with. She literally dealt with mail and packages for her job, was her husband seriously making her deal with them on her day off?

Their relationship was tenuous, to say the least. He was the ultimate breadwinner of the house, making more money through day trading and mortgage speculation. To Mae, that just meant that his lazy ass got to sit on the computer all day while she had to physically exert herself for ten hours six days of the week.

Was she jealous? Definitely. Was her jealousy warranted? Probably. Darius had picked the perfect time to buy and sell, preparing to ride out this wave of increasing value. Sure, the bubble would eventually burst, but by then he’d already be on to the next big overinflated scam. The market simply worked like that.

Biting the bullet, she opened the door and did as her husband asked her.

“Alright, Darius. Here’s your newest package,” Mae said, dropping the large cardboard box by his computer desk.

Thanks, babe. This should be—oof!” Darius’ train of thought was suddenly interrupted as he attempted to lift the package closer towards him. “Damn, this thing’s heavy! How did you lift it all the way here?”

Once more, Mae had a response she wanted to say, and a response she actually ended up relaying to her husband. Well, maybe if you actually looked away from that fucking screen once in a while you’d notice my new musculature!

Her actual response, while less of a clapback, didn’t shy away from the shade thrown at her husband. “Hmm, it’s almost like my job is to lift packages or something.”

“Heh, fair enough,” Darius responded, never once taking his eyes off of the screen. “I think we could do without that snark, though.”

Boiling rage built up from behind Mae’s eyes. Do without the fucking snark? Imagine having this fragile of an ego!

What was happening to her? Why was her husband suddenly making her so angry? It was as if… something was changing within her. Not just physically, but mentally. All her life, Mae had been taught to roll with the punches dealt to her. “You’re a woman,” her mother told her rather bluntly one day. “You’ll have to let the men have their way with you or else you could end up dead.”

Mae wasn’t sure she fully believed that, but she had most certainly internalized it. She wasn’t eager to start a fight with her husband, even though in a physical encounter, she would certainly win.

“I’m going to the store,” was all that left Mae’s mouth, against her better judgment. Yes, all she needed was a little drive to herself. That way, she could blow off all the steam she needed.

“Sure thing, babe. I’ll see you later then,” Darius said rather bluntly.

Grabbing the shopping list, her car keys and her shoes, she started the hopefully calming trek towards the grocery store. Her hands tensely gripped the steering wheel, leaving indents within the leather as her overwhelming new strength slipped her mind.

But as she took to the road—as the carefree nature of the world zipped past her and the tunes of her XM radio invited her to a happier place—the anxieties of her house life faded. She took a long, deep breath of the outside air which blew away the negative clouds within her brain. The interstate was empty at this hour and pleasing to the eyes

This is a good world. Mae reminded herself, a reserved smile breaching her once-stoic lips. Its simple pleasures are good.

And then, a car came out of nowhere, rear-ending her vehicle and sending her careening off the road into a ditch. Mae violently rocked about in her seat as the world outside her windshield did a full 360 in perspective. Bramble and rocks attacked her from all sides, yet never penetrated nor even scratched the car itself.

She maintained her iron grip on the steering wheel long after the world stopped jerking her about and her ride had come to a complete stop. Sure, she was completely unharmed, but a frazzled mentality was a frazzled mentality.

Once the shock eventually wore off, Mae’s mind was immediately overwhelmed with a Genesis-level flood of thoughts. Car payments, insurance, time management, injuries, the inevitable court date. The last thing she needed was more shit to add to her already bloated schedule.

Thoroughly razzled without any of the injuries to typically accompany it, Mae resembled an unfeeling ghost as she slowly and silently exited her vehicle. The interstate’s skidmarks and a decimated hole through the side rails suggested that her car would be as damaged as her assailant’s was.

It wasn’t.

If Mae’s expression wasn’t locked into one of stunted shock, she would have raised a sculpted eyebrow in confusion. Somehow, her car didn’t have a scratch on it.The windshields were all intact, the tires weren’t yanked off the axles or popped. There wasn’t even any dirt or grass stains on the surface. It looked as if the vehicle was placed there for an ad campaign about drunk driving but they hadn’t put any special effects onto the car yet.

“What… the hell?” was all Mae could bring her lips to say. And she thought her body suddenly becoming prettier yesterday was strange!

This is… this is a good thing. Your car isn’t damaged at all. You won’t have to worry about paying a premium on insurance. The mailwoman thought to herself, only for her eyes to widen at a realization. Shit, shit! There’s no way I’m going to be able to get this car out of this ditch! The tow truck man is totally going to rat me out! God, I wish I could just lift the car up and drive away from all this!

And then, another realization came over her—Mae was super strong now! Sure, she had never tried her strength on anything other than a couple heavy packages, but those had felt practically weightless in her hands! If she could flee the scene before the tow truck came, it would be like she was never there! Her car and unblemished body certainly wouldn’t reflect it, anyways.

She dug her hands underneath the car, settling on a vantage point as close to the middle of it as she could. Remembering her training, Mae took a deep breath and exhaled as she attempted to lift the imposing object with her knees. The metal creased under her force and while she was able to witness the wheels leave the ground, that was where her confidence ceased. Sure, if she pushed a bit harder, maybe she’d be able to lift it all off the ground—but the massive metal box was unwieldy and awkward. Mae was beginning to doubt if she’d be able to carry it up the sharp incline from where she was positioned. This was looking bad for her.

But a bad situation could always get worse.

“You wannabe courtesan!” came an all-too-familiar voice at the top of the hill. “Look what you’ve done to my car! You’re lucky I wasn’t killed!”

Mae’s lip trembled at the sound of the man’s voice. She couldn’t see him due to her placement under the car, but she knew who it was. As if there was a twisted hand controlling fate itself, Mae had just so happened to get rear-ended by Howard Grove of all people.

Mae released the car from her grip and peered over it to sneak a peek at her aggressor. After dropping that package on his foot yesterday, Howard was probably furious with her. This would likely make things worse.

Instinctively, Mae went on the defensive. “Look, I-I’m sorry things spiraled out of control. Why don’t we just calm down and exchange insurance information, then we can-”

“Calm? You want me to be calm!?” Howard shot back, jumping up and down now that he had a good look at Mae. “My car was totaled by some she-bitch and now the very same she-bitch asks me to be calm? This is why women shouldn’t drive!”

He seemed to be so mad he didn’t recognize Mae as his mailwoman, which of course Mae was silently thankful for. Even though Howard was clearly in the wrong and, in fact, had been driving erratically due to his damaged windshield from yesterday which led him to be the cause of the collision, he wasn’t about to take any sort of responsibility for events unfolding the way they did.

Mae tried again to be cordial, but Howard wasn’t having it. He kept interrupting her and shouting at her with sexist insults that sounded more fitting in Shakespeare's work instead of a livid dispute over a car accident.

The mailwoman found her desire to be cordial fading more and more with every putrid word thrown her way. She was committed to the life of entrusting that which needed safe travel would arrive safely, yet all she wanted to do was ensure that Howard Grove would not have an easy time reaching his ultimate destination.

“Are you even listening to me, whore?”

“No, I stopped listening to you ages ago,” Mae responded flatly, barely acknowledging Howard at this point.

“Ugh, you bitch! I’ll see you in court!” Howard spat in return, pulling out his phone to call someone, likely the police.

“No, I think we’ll settle this out of court. Right here, right now.”

She walked up the hill, gravity and poor footholds not daring to slow her down. As she approached Howard, she took a hard left, closing in on his car. The worst of the damage was the front bumper, scrunched in like a dog’s snout recoiling. Nothing a few buffs and a replaced bumper couldn’t fix.

When Mae would be finished with this car, philosophers were going to debate if it could even still be classified as one.

Her rage reaching its peak and her body fueled by Howard’s insults for a second time, Mae lifted the entire car off of the ground without breaking a sweat. Howard’s gruff jaw dropped as he witnessed the surreal sight of a 5’11 woman lifting a car—his car—over her head with just one hand.

“This is what I think of your car, asshole!”

Treating the metal and mechanisms of the complex machine as if it were no more special than a loose leaf sheet of paper, Mae began compacting the vehicle in on itself. The metal’s whines fell on deaf ears as her sculpted handprints effortlessly molded it to her liking. Gas and oil began to spill from cracks in the foundation, one misstep and the ball could explode.

Tossing the volatile “vehicle” into the air, Mae then ripped out one of the steel beams from the side rails, her slim fingers crudely fashioning it into a bat of sorts.

As the ball came back down, she swung at it with all her might, landing a home run on the compressed car that would put Babe Ruth to shame. It was sent flying into the trees, causing a few birds to visibly fly up from the treeline in the distance to mark where it had landed.

“There you go, now bigfoot can enjoy that car. I’m sure he’s a better driver than you are,” Mae snarkily remarked as she went back down to the ditch to retrieve her car. Now Howard was the one left stunned in silence as his feeble mind struggled to make sense of what he had just seen.

“Good luck proving I was even here, you old bastard. Unlike yours, my car doesn’t even have a scratch on it.”

As Mae said this, she walked around his stunned body with her car casually slung over her shoulder as if it were a sleeping bag. Placing the vehicle down on the road, she simply sat down in the driver’s seat and zoomed off as if nothing had ever happened.

Just then, a group of tow trucks and police cars came around the horizon. Howard would frantically attempt to explain how he had just been in a crash with a woman, but his complaints would fall on deaf ears as all the men on the scene would sooner believe that his rambles were that of an insane man. After all, it was easier for them to believe that Howard had gone senile.

As Mae arrived at the supermarket, she paused briefly to adjust her mirrors. What should have been a process lasting no longer than ten seconds stalled out into several minutes as Mae found herself intensely captivated by the face—no, the body looking back at her.

She had just gotten used to the beauty from yesterday—now, she had even more of a hurdle to overcome. Even from the rear-view mirror’s poor feedback, she looked downright superhuman. Running her soft fingertips over her sleek curves, her divine lips formed a sumptuous smile as she touched her new smolderingly sexy shape for the first time. There had never been legs as endless nor as shapely as hers. There had never been breasts as heavenly as the gravity-defying orbs upon her chest as they begged to be free from the confines of her button-down shirt. There had never been a physique as chiseled, a body as ravishingly sensual as hers had become.

There had never been a woman as powerful as Mae the Mailwoman.

~

Little did Mae know, her unique power was the ability to extend her developing invulnerability to objects around her, hence why her car was undamaged from the crash. It likely stemmed from her dedication to ensuring package safety as a mailwoman, but that is only a likely theory. Of course, my theories have a tendency to be correct.

Christina continued to muse to herself as she attached a rather shoddy photo of Mae to a corkboard full of undercover snapshots held up by pushpins, colorful yarn linking them all together in an elaborate web of connections.

“Alright, so that’s three known people that Howard’s words have enhanced, including me.” Christina then added a confident selfie she had taken in the mirror, next to photos of Carri, Mae and Mabel. “I think that might be all of them. Granted, I had a blind spot this morning, so I’m not sure if I missed anything before that.”

She made a note on one of many clipboards dotted around the place: Blind spot between 9:30pm yesterday to 8:30am today. Observe morning ritual earlier tomorrow.

“Pssh, surely I’m not missing anyone. After all, who would have the misfortune of having to interact with a man that bitter and assholish before breakfast? Heh, I wouldn’t be surprised if the three adjacent houses on either side of his are straight-up abandoned.”

Oh well, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to check.