Hermes by Thomas Morgan
You sit at your computer, and you wait. It’s your day off today. You could still be in bed, but instead, you sit at your computer and wait for those concert tickets to go on sale.
They’re not for you; they’re for your father. You don’t have the same taste in music as your father, but you’re willing to sacrifice your time and money to go with him. You’re doing it for his birthday – the big five-O.
The tickets are just about to go on general sale. You hope that you can get them. After all, you only want two.
One for you. One for your father.
But you know they’ll sell out fast – maybe within the first thirty seconds – so you need to stay alert to make sure you get what you want.
You hear a knock at the door. You ignore it at first because you have to get the tickets.
That’s the most important thing to you. But then you hear the knocking again, followed by a beeping sound.
Beep, beep, beep, it goes.
Whatever it is, it’ll have to wait because the tickets have just gone on general sale. You click on the link, and they put you on a waiting list. You hope you’ve done enough to get them.
You hear it again – the knocking and the beeping – so you go down the stairs and open the door. In front of you, you see a short man in silver-rimmed aviator glasses, wearing a New York Yankees baseball hat. On his shoulder, you notice that he’s carrying a small man bag. And on his right breast, you spot a logo stitched onto his grey polo shirt.
It says, in bold capitals: HERMES. Is that his name? Or is that the company he works for? The man is holding a scanning device in his right hand and a parcel in his left hand.
“Yes, yes,” you hear him mutter to himself as he scans the parcel. But it’s not working.
Does this man even know what he’s doing?
It’s taking him far too long to do what he needs to do here. You could probably finish an entire apple – pips and all – in the time that it takes him to work it all out. You worry about the tickets as you watch this man scan the parcel again. It still doesn’t seem to work for him; nothing seems to work for him.
“I don’t know what to do, really,” you hear him say. “I don’t know what to do.”
You tell him it’s okay and that you’ll phone customer services and reschedule the delivery for a later date. You say it’s no trouble.
“Yes, yes,” you hear him say. “That would be a good idea, I think. That would be a good idea.”
You say goodbye to the man and close the front door. You think about this strange encounter as you run back upstairs – back to your computer.
When you get to your room, you find out that you’ve managed to secure two tickets. One for you. One for your father.
Your father will be so surprised. He won’t know what to do with himself! He won’t know what to do! You laugh out loud at the thought of this.
You check your emails. There’s a message from the ticket company. You scan-read the email, the gist of it being that your tickets will be arriving in two to three days via a
courier, and you’ll need to sign for them.
A couple of days later, you hear a knock at the door. It must be the tickets, you think.
It must be the tickets.
As you run down the stairs, you picture your father’s face when he opens his
birthday card to find the tickets inside. You imagine his reaction. It puts a big smile on your face.
But when you get to the bottom of the stairs, you hear a familiar sound.
Beep, beep, beep, it goes. You open the door.
Thomas Morgan is a writer from Worthing in West Sussex. He’s been published in Dream Catcher Magazine, STORGY, Bandit Fiction, Nymphs, Tether’s End, The Mark Literary Review, Rhodora Magazine, and Truffle Magazine. Twitter: @tommorgan97