Deliver Us from Evil

Informed by recent news headlines about the U.S. PostalServices ongoing economic crisis, this story details the work-a-day activities in a postal facility, as its workers struggle to provide reliable customer and delivery services in competition with the rise of the Internet. The focus is on one well-meaning postal worker combating a malicious manager's antagonisms, while battling his own inner demon. Hector Soto, a U.S. postal worker with a fifteen-year career as a mail carrier, abruptly fi nds himself dismissed from duties by a manipulative manager rumored to be having an affair with his wife, Myra. When he confronts Myra, a violent exchange ensues and she bans him from their home by court order. Now brooding in his rental apartment, he reminisces throughhis collection of diaries he began as a boy abused by hisdomineering father, when his only friend and confi dant hadbeen a G.I. Joe action fi gure. At first, his G.I. Joe (his alter ego) had spoken to him in his thoughts, until, one day, shockingly it materialized to advise him face to face. Joe faded from Hector's life when he became a teen, but hasreturned, inducing hallucinations and urges of murderous wrath. Soon Joe materializes as a ghostly phantom warrior, tauntingHector with Myra's infidelity and her conspiracy to take hisbeloved daughter from him. Despite Hector's efforts to resist,he finds himself succumbing to Joe's dark counsel.