I really should have looked when I signed my employment contract with what I believed was the well known United Parcel Services, UPS for short. Turns out Universal Parcel Services exists, and despite the similar name and job, they don't have the same clients. At all.
I'm pretty sure my colleagues of the regular UPS all have unwittingly delivered drugs, that's par for the course. Here at the other UPS, "we specialize in the unusual" as our marketing team drilled us to answer to any potential customer. Well, unusual is a very "marketing" way to describe what we do. I'm pretty sure 90% of the parcels I deliver are at least technically illegal.
I mean, I don't really know if souls are illegal to carry and deliver, and that's a huge payload for my company, like perhaps half of my deliveries are of a soul in some kind of container. Mostly blood-signed contracts that I am forbidden to read, but I've had boxes that let out the cries of the damned, and a few scotch-wrapped long parcels that were very obviously human humeruses.
Well, at least those parcels are mostly inert. Wiggling things inside of boxes make them very awkward to handle, and I'm pretty sure I've carried boxes containing humanoids before. I mean, if the pay wasn't so good and the retaliation threats for opening any parcel so ominous, I'd probably have listened to their pleas for help.
But if you think the contents of the parcels are what makes my job really weird, you'd be... not wrong-wrong, but you'd miss the most sizable chunk of all the craziness at my job. See, when they say "Universal Parcel Services", they really mean the Universal part.
I've had to deliver to the lairs of various creatures, the Underworld, the Higher and Lower planes, to other planets and even to places outside of the spacetime continuum. Commuting is a bitch to and from there.
Now that I have my regular row, the weirdness has calmed down a bit, or maybe I got used to it. Like that boarding school for any magically gifted teen that don't fit into your traditional sorcerer or mutant categories.
At first I was completely out of my depths when I came to deliver anything there, but I think I'm starting to get the hang of it. Maybe. I mean, the students would be your average rabble of teenagers if they didn't sport horns (mostly ram-like, but I've seen all kinds, I swear that girl had like a narwhal tusk in the middle of her forehead, she was berating what looked like a pile of rags for "never having seen a unicorn"), wings (bat-like, bird-like, butterfly-like, (other)-insect-like, mechanical, clockwork, you get your pick, it's like a good third of the students are winged, and those that aren't have other means to fly) or if they weren't ranging in size from the minute (fairies may seem cute, but they're a pain to the honest worker with their incessant practical jokes, particularly if you're carrying something heavy, fragile or awkward, which is basically everyday) to the gigantic (I don't often deliver to the Eldritch wing, but they have guys that "unload" your truck just by taking the ISO container from the flatbed in one hand and carrying several tons like I would carry takeaway. And apparently they're runts, forced by the bigger guys to do the menial work).
Well, as I was saying, the kids are in all shapes and forms, but they're still awkward teenagers. And it's fun to come back at recess time every other day. I see the cliques fluctuate in quasi real time. I have no idea what happened, but it seems most of the fairies have left the company of the long-eared skinny folks to join the ram-horned ones. And the eagle-winged ones have become chummier with the girls with really tacky clothes since one of the girls has her leg in a cast. But at the same time, there's a group of mixed creatures that spontaneously created itself at the edge of the playground. And I'm pretty sure I've caught an incubus-type demon and a magical girl kissing in a corridor. It's fun to be outside of all of the middle/high school drama and to be able to witness it, without any responsibility. I'm not their teacher, I'm the delivery guy.
Speaking of corridors, the place has a maze. No, the place isn't a maze, it has a maze, "for the development and psychological stability of our guardian-type students" some teacher told me once I complained after getting lost to deliver a truckload of hay bales and a few gigantic axes.
Well, it kind of is a maze as well, at least the places that were designed according to non-euclidian, non-einsteinian architecture that makes you think you're traveling through a MC Escher painting. Those are seriously the worst. Seeing yourself through a window, coming back from the delivery you're about to make, walking upright at a 90° angle in slow motion really messes with your brain.
I much prefer deliveries to the outdoors of the place. The centaurs there have this kind of mix of native American and Mongol culture that suits them well, and they don't usually order bulky stuff, mostly herbs, seeds, arrow tips, a magical wand once in a while. And at least they know you drink regular coffee, not alcohol or any strange mixture. Like that teacher who'd offered me her own blend of herbal tea. I was foolish enough to drink it as spent the next three days high as a kite. They have some strong potions there.
And I'm pretty sure the potion labs I sometimes pass on my way to the dean's office aren't OSHA compliant. Sure, they've got all of those fancy chimneys and the corridors very rarely smell of anything more suspicious than teenager body odor (well, given the variety of species there, it's still a strong smell), but I'm still convinced smoke coming out of the chimneys shouldn't take the shapes of tortured faces or gigantic dragons.
The dean (an OK chap, for a 2m high owl-headed fellow with huge white wings on his back) told me that I didn't have anything to fear on my routes, as the whole faculty took care of clearing my way of threats to a mundane such as myself everytime I came.
I am grateful for them to do that, but that leaves me with two very conflicting emotions. A lot of the things I've already seen there look like they could kill me with very little effort, and that scares the shit out of me, and yet I am deeply fascinated with the place. He's hinting that there's a whole lot of other places to discover there, out of my regular courrier routes. And that gives me an itch to get "lost" and explore the place.
I won't do it soon, but that itch is slowly growing. I know that if (the other) UPS doesn't change my circuit, I will succumb to it. And maybe that's what I want, deep down, to see all of the strangeness...
