Letters from Papersville
Closing out the year with my first foray in the mystery genre.
This story was originally published on Substack.
1. The Letter
It was a cramped space, more of a utility closet than a proper office. And now, amidst a dense city heat, he could scarcely stand to sit in that room for very long. It was time to get back out there into the field. It was time to find a case to get his hands dirty again. But where, thought Detective Suarez. With the air-conditioning in a perpetual state of dysfunctionality, he sat in his chair, sweltering underneath an amber-tinged bath of flickering light. He pored over a leaning tower of correspondences that had gradually piled up over the months since his last case. There were no worthy leads here, he thought. Most of them were just immature teenage boys pulling his leg with vulgar double entendres (“Have you seen the missing sausage?”). Others came from lonely, insecure folks who worried that their significant others didn’t love them anymore ("he never kisses me good morning anymore”).
At last, a letter appeared which caught his eye immediately, for it had no apparent return address. "Who put this there?" he asked out loud.
His secretary replied from the very next room: "Beats me. The mailman dropped it here, the same as the rest!"
The strange message read:
Dearest Detective,
I wish to remain anonymous. Do you know why that is? Upon your arrival in Papersville, you will understand why this case is worth solving. Crimes of a different sort are perpetuated here. They have gone on for far too long, and they must be stopped. However strange this message may seem, please listen to me. Enough blood has been shed, and it must come to an end. Visit the company town of Papersville and see for yourself.
Attached is half the money for the job. The rest is yours when the job is complete.
?
Where the signature would usually be, there was instead only that question mark. He kept scanning, searching for clues, but the paper was clean and bright. The ink was a standard black. There were no watermarks or stains he could delve into. Nevertheless, he was sucked in by the intrigue such an inquiry provided. He decided he should pay a visit to this obscure town known as Papersville.
2. The Town
The trip to his destination required a day’s long drive through the scorching heat of the desert. So hot was this trek that the detective’s ailing, rattling clunker of a car could barely hold up without sweating a drop or two. Whether he was in the city or hundreds of miles away from it, he could never seem to escape the ravages of the heat. It was always following him wherever he went. There was no palm tree shade for him to duck under, for all outside; in the panoramic view of his dusty windshield, there was an abundant graveyard of burnt-up, chopped-up stumps where trees used to be.
When he finally arrived at Papersville, he was taken aback by its unusual appearance. Papersville was a quaint, sleepy, very tight-knit town. Yet, despite this, Detective Suarez quickly surmised they were well-funded. With a population of just a few hundred, barely a head more than Mayberry, somehow the streets looked newly paved and affixed with the bleeding edge in municipal amenities, including street crossing signs that popped rhythmically and spoke with an unfeeling monotone–
“Wait… wait… wait…” the masculine robotic voice repeated until a bright red hand became a bright white stick figure, the street lantern’s way of letting one know it was ok to cross these streets, where seemingly no traffic seemed ever to pass.
How strange, the detective thought. How does a small town with such minimal traffic afford such pricy tech?
Markers of economic prosperity were plain to see in all corners: their public facilities were architectural feats, and their public spaces boasted the most extravagant, yet tasteful, of sculpted art. The high school football stadium was massive, rivaling those of Division One universities. Yet it was all empty, all unused. It just stood there like a ghost arena. The billboards were essentially giant TV screens promoting Papersville's primary business. Paper, of course. "You've never seen paper whiter than ours," the slogan read under a big blue banner for Hughes & Koch's Supreme Paper Company.
The detective recognized the name, of course. H&K was a popular brand known for producing a mesmerizingly bright sheet of high-quality paper that reflected a vibrant contrast even when written in with the dullest pencil lead. A household name, it was a brand favored by schoolteachers across America. More importantly, H&K was an internationally distributed product with exclusive contracts across an endless stream of mega conglomerates and international governments. Theirs was a trusted brand.
He recalled life as a young immigrant kindergartener in the public school system, how his peers used to tease him and mock him because, while they all enjoyed drawing their crayon rabbits and handprint birdies on the beautiful texture of H&K paper, little Suarez’s parents could barely afford to buy him the generic, dull-colored brand from the dollar store. He remembered now, growing up, watching cowboy shows on the television set, how that H&K commercials jingle used to rattle within the confines of his brain:
🎶 H and K Paper Co.,
the greatest sheet
there’s ever been!
Pure as snow,
Don’t you know
we’re family-owned?
So grab a pen
and tic that toe!
Sheets so bright,
Antarctic white,
stationary geniuses,
trusted by big businesses.
We’re the best in stock,
undefeated, not even by rock!
Easy to write on,
breezy to draw on–
H and K, paper mill:
it’s the quality you can feel! 🎶 Detective Suarez went about town, going from business to business, trying to see what he could gather from its residents. "H&K Paper paid for all this?" he asked a lowly barber, waiting for customers to arrive on a slow business day. "Paid for it? Heck, they created the darn place! ‘Scuse my French.” The barber looked around suspiciously, trying to see if anybody was listening. "Uh, well, actually..." Then, quickly, he tried to change the subject. An air of suspicion underscored their conversation. The detective noticed this instantly and wanted to press further, but the palpable rings of anxiety dilating from the barber's pupils let him know there was no point in asking further. The barber would not budge.
And he continued down the street. Shop owner after shop owner, everyone seemed to be hiding something. "That's strange," the detective thought, but that still didn’t mean there was a case. As far as he could tell, there was no crime being committed. There is, after all, no law against a city being weird. Otherwise, he could have thrown the whole book at Portland years ago. “I don't even know what it is supposed to be that I'm investigating,” he said to himself. Suarez almost drove his way out of town, yet there was an eerie feeling that compelled him to keep searching. He knew something was awry. Something was being withheld. He just couldn’t put his finger down as to what or why. All that deep thought made him suddenly aware that he had skipped breakfast, so he went to the nearest restaurant for a quick bite.
3. The Socialite
Within the walls of a charming bistro, Detective Suarez had himself a meal. As he sipped his club soda and ate his rare steak, he couldn’t help but eavesdrop on a quartet of elderly socialites just a few tables away, indulging in some inane conversation between scoops of caviar.
“My husband was so jealous when he heard I was having a girl’s night out,” said one friend.
“What does a man have anything to feel jealous about these old gals?” said the other friend.
“Cause while I’m out here having fun, he’s back home stuck with the dogs.”
“Oh, the mastiffs, those rambunctious things. Does your cook know any good recipes to keep them happy?” chirped the third friend.
“Why would I have the cook make them food?”
“Your cook doesn’t prepare the dogs a special food?”
“Why would he? They’re dogs. We’ve got a whole pantry full of very expensive dry food they can eat.”
“They don’t get tired eating the same food every day? I know I would.”
The second one chimed, “My cat’s been eating the same brand of kibble for the last ten years. She doesn’t care.” She shrugged, “What they don’t know, right?”
“What they can’t say…” the third one trailed off with a lingering pity in her heart.
The fourth friend was the most regal and composed of them all. She barely spoke a word but nodded softly and kindly as she hung out with her spoiled lady friends. It was with this woman that Suarez met eyes.
Her eyes were piercing pools of bright azure, as stunning as they were filled with melancholic dew. He couldn’t quite explain why he was so compelled by the gaze of this senior citizen old enough to be his abuelita. Perhaps it was because it was clear that even at her advanced age, she truly must been quite a looker back in her day. Her aged face revealed a spirited vigor that she had retained throughout her years. Her eyes seemed desperate to evoke something in him, something he just couldn’t read. Though this woman was clearly of an elite class, it was also clear to him that she did not fully belong with this group.
When the detective finished his meal, he scoffed at his check before leaving some cash and a paltry tip. And as he got up, he decided that he must use the bathroom before leaving. The napkins in there for drying his hands were the cleanest he’d ever seen. He inspected them up close, reveling in their thick but soft texture. Each one was embossed with an H&K monogram. He didn’t realize this company made such fine toiletries as well.
When he stepped out, he ran into that very same sophisticated old woman he had met eyes with just moments before.
“This used to be such a place of beauty,” she said with a hushed tone.
“It’s beautiful now,” the detective replied.
“Only if you consider the accumulation of things a subject worthy of beauty,” she muttered. She puffed her filtered cigarette and blew out a prominent cloud. “Best of luck on your journey. I hope you find the answers you seek.” She flashed a smile before reuniting with the rest of her retinue. She departed in a chauffeured car of immaculate luxury.
Suarez couldn’t make heads or tails of what she meant. In his continuing search for information, he took a walking tour of the city's history.
4. The Tour
The tour was led by an overenthusiastic history buff dressed in tacky pastel button-downs and khakis. His head was gelled up in a pompadour and complete with a pencil-thin mustache. He would spend all day in his office waiting for someone to give him something to do. When the detective sauntered through his office, though surprised, he was quite eager to get going with his job.
"Welcome to the historical walking tour of Papersville, home of the world-famous H&K Paper Mill, no one's sheets are whiter than ours." The detective noticed that he spoke with a used car salesman's pitch and timbre, overly excited and theatrical, as he was led from one supposedly important site to the next.
“Tell me,” said Suarez, “you’re such an expert. What makes H&K paper the best?”
“Well, I think Koch said it best: “Our paper is so fine. If it had been made before time, it’d have been God’s choice to inscribe the holy book.”
"When can I see the factory?"
"Excuse me?" asked the tour guide.
"The factory? Do you offer tours of it? It says so in the brochure."
"Well, you're quite right; it does, huh?” He scratched his head, “Well, you see, mister, your arrival to our town today was quite unexpected.”
“You need time to tidy it up?”
The tour guide let out a nervy laugh.
It was at that instance that the tour guide's phone rang. Immediately, he answered, his hand visibly shaking, as did his trembling voice, when he asked: "yes sir?" The detective wondered who might be on the other line.
"I understand; I'll tell him, yes, right away, sir." He put the phone down and looked at the detective with a look that conveyed confusion and relief. "It appears that the Mayor of Papersville would like to speak with you."
"A random Joe like me?" the detective said with shock. Surely he has more pressing matters to attend to—how did he, how did he–?” But before he could inquire further, Detective Suarez realized it would be best to keep his mouth shut and see how far he could get.
5. The Mayor
And so the detective found himself in an old but splendid town hall filled with artifacts of paper production. A gaunt old man of a mayor greeted him. "So you're investigating?" the mayor asked him in his luxurious office.
"What makes you say that?"
"Please, Mr. Suarez, I know everything. And if I don't right away, the truth finds me anyway."
"If you must know, yes.
"Who sent you?" the mayor asked.
“I’m not at liberty to say."
Displeased by that response, the Mayor walked over to the end of his office, admiring his town, so small yet so industrious despite its size. "Do you know why, detective, why it is our sheets are the whitest in the biz?"
"Edify me."
"Truth is, it’s a tightly kept family secret. H&K has never filed a patent for our paper-making process. Therefore, the secret to our sauce remains well hidden from the public. In all honesty, it’s not the material or how we prepare our paper that makes it great– it’s in the hands that make it.” At this part, the mayor wrapped his frail, skeletal hands around the detective’s thick, beefy mitts. “The people of this town, all our proud workers. They’re what make us. Because our workers are clean. Our workers are pure and good, and that shows in our paper. Not a speck of dirt is in these loving hands that make our fine, trusted product. The Hughes and Koch brand remains untainted by blood.” And then he squeezed the detective’s hands with surprising strength for such an elderly individual. “That is our promise to you."
"Quite a pitch, Mr. Mayor," he said while calmly backing away from the mayor’s grasp.
"I wouldn’t expect an outsider to understand– what it takes to be the best."
"I wasn’t being condescending, mister mayor. My astonishment is genuine.”
The mayor grinned, and when he did, a chill went back the detective's spine. It was a grin that bared all his teeth, top to bottom, as though the Mayor were ready to pounce and gnaw off his face like a rabid beast.
Detective Suarez remained unintimidated and undeterred: "May I meet your employees?"
"Excuse me?" the mayor asked, his smile quickly dissipating. One half of his face twitched while the other remained frozen.
Suarez knew he had struck a sour chord from the instantly frosty response. “I want to meet the proud faces behind your trusted product. See if they have anything to add. If I may, sir.”
6. The Legend
Ultimately, the mayor agreed to let Suarez meet the workers. On their way to the factory, they rode in the back of a luxury SUV. For a while, they barely spoke a word. As he rode in the back of The Mayor’s chauffeured vehicle, he couldn't help but feel unnerved. He had nothing concrete to go off of, only a haunting feeling in the pit of his gut. He studied the glum mayor’s face. Those hollow cheeks, those sunken eyes, and dark purple veins that ran through them like streams of a river. The flesh around his eyes was cavernous and purple as grapes, endowing this beady-yellow-eyed man with a skeletal countenance.
“Tell me about yourself. How did you get elected to office?”
“Oh, same way anybody else gets elected. I put on a good campaign. The people chose me.”
“That’s not really how people get power where I come from.”
Cheekily, the mayor winked back. “I’ve always been quite popular around these parts. When I was young, I distinguished myself in the early days of the paper mill’s formation. I was a loyal worker. Very, very loyal. Seeing these frail old skull and bones clicking and clacking at you may surprise you. But years ago, I was quite hench.” With this last comment, he let out a soft chuckle. “Yes, but I wasn’t just strong of flesh; I had the fortitude of the mind as well–” he pointed at his head, “and more importantly, here…” he pointed lastly at his heart.
“What made you want to become mayor?”
The Mayor shrugged. “I don’t know. Tell me, when you were a boy, did you dream, in between bites of your spicy enchiladas, of growing up to become a detective? While the other schoolchildren dreamed of becoming astronauts, firemen, useful professions, did you aspire to snoop in the business of others?”
“I suppose a lot of bad decisions led me down this path.”
“Right, right. So you see, we don’t always get to choose the life we lead. Fate decides that for us.”
Before Detective Suarez could probe further, they had already arrived at their destination.
From the window, Suarez could see huge chimney flues protruding from this vast manufacturing beast. Pitch-black smoke billowed from their widened apertures. "Hear how she growls," the mayor said with amusement. The front of the factory was decorated with the letters H&K emblazoned in a massive assemblage of dazzling lights that seemed borrowed from the by-gone architectures of Vegas casinos and Piccadilly marquees.
The detective was led to the entrance lobby. Behind all those well-insulated walls, he could feel the loud vibrations of the paper mill machinery. But before he could see it all for himself, he was taken to a hall and led into a darkened theater.
The mayor sat with him in a little screening room. "Enjoy the show, “the mayor said. And then the screen glowed brightly. An educational film began to play from a projector hooked to a standard-definition DVD player. It told the history of the town. Or, perhaps more accurately, the legend.
It told how, long before Papersville was even on the map and long before its H&K pioneers had broken ground, nothing but undeveloped land and destitute people roamed about, lined from top to bottom in boring, useless trees. It was nothing but a wasteland of unprofitability. The residents lived unambitious lives of boredom, uneventful occurrences, and useless existences in an unincorporated municipality– til one day, two wisemen graced the stage. Their names were Milton Hughes and Milo Koch. They stumbled upon the trees and the simple folks living among them. They saw the potential there was to turn these trees into something commercial. “From these stilted trees, we can plant the seeds of a beautiful, abundant paper, the highest caliber you’ve ever seen!” said Hughes in a scratchy piece of archival footage. Giant logging machines cut these sleeping titans to size, tumbling down with a thundering industrialized roar until nothing was left but a grave of stumps.
And that was the story of how H&K was born. What began with a few humble shipments of brilliantly shone paper soon grew this desolate little town into one of the most prosperous towns in the country. Pictures of happy neighbors and normal townsfolk graced the silver screen.
Then the film ended, and they could finally come out and tour the facility.
7. The Factory
“Detective,” the mayor began, “it is my distinct pleasure to welcome you to our lifeblood. May I introduce to you… the workforce of our H&K paper mill.” The mayor opened a large door that revealed the entire production line.
When he could finally see it, he couldn't believe his eyes. It was the complex apparatus that made this whole operation possible. The thumping heart that breathed the sigh of life into this quirky little town. The battery behind its economic dominance. Like something out of a dream, there were parcels of paper traveling high and low, like a complex system of interwoven interstate highways; overlapping conveyor belts ran in all different directions, some settling into hatches labeled America’s Schools, while others were destined for hatches labeled Business and Commerce. Here, he could hear the machines blasting on all cylinders, running full speed, and printing paper. The place was, for all intents and purposes, a mint. So profitable that from every sturdy stamp off the hydraulic presses, they may as well have been printing stacks of cold hard cash. In those air-conditioned halls, so many workers in jumpsuits were carefully running their stations. All were at their bases, obediently making products out of chopped logs. It was beautiful, watching tree bark melt into a great steel vat, and at the other end came that milky, frothy pulp, which, when placed onto trays, was taken to be dried and cut up beneath a scorching hot furnace. And thus, a great product was formed. A product by which politicians would draft their bills and stenographers would jot down their notes. Soon, the press would use these pearly white sheets to print yellow lies and other sensationalized headlines. Within a short time, beret-wearing beatniks would be using this paper to etch their inane verse before reading it aloud in a rustic cafe filled with others like them.
At the delivery room, where the quality assurance folk went through every batch, making sure everything was up to snuff, the mayor grabbed a single, beautiful sheet and handed it to Suarez.
“Behold the miracle paper behind your favorite best-seller.”
Suarez, never one to pass up an opportunity to be annoying, replied with a quick jab: “Truthfully, I’m more of an e-reader man myself.”
“An environmentalist, are we?” snarled the mayor.
“No,” Suarez replied emphatically, “it just takes up less space. But I admire what you got going here. You’re keeping the spirit of Made in America alive and well.”
After that, they continued with the tour. They walked past a door, which was ajar, with a sign overhead that read: DISCARDED DEFECTS.
As they made their way past it, he could glimpse a pair of frightened eyes looking back at him. Before he could fully process what he was seeing, the mayor quickly nudged him further along the path.
He looked around. The workers seemed tense and distraught. Though their suits were clean and their faces were alright, their eyes told different stories. Stories that he could not tell but whose blank expressions had something waiting to be deciphered. He couldn't figure it out. There was something very wrong with their robotic motions; they were so strained and lifeless. The fruits of their labor seemed to suddenly take on a spoiled air. It left a bitter aftertaste in the bud of his awe-inspired mind. Suarez could not shake it, this sinister undercurrent that had suddenly chipped away at his sense of wonder.
"Come on, detective. You don't want to see any of that. That's where all our rejects go."
"Rejects?"
"Yes, broken parts, misprints, all the merchandise that isn't up to our rigorous standard."
"Where are H&K?"
"Hughes and Koch? They passed ages ago."
"No descendents?”
Suarez felt a light breeze across his cheek. Through the periphery of his eye, he noticed something land at the tip of the mayor’s shiny leather shoes. It was a paper plane, shoddily made, as if in a hurry, with minimal aerodynamic properties. The mayor quickly crouched down to pick it up, at great expense to his feeble joints. With a grunt, he unwrapped it and scanned its message. Whatever was written on that paper plane, it was plain to see that the mayor intensely disliked it. He made a face of utmost revulsion, completely contained but enraged all the same. A muffled purr of percolating fury emanated from the saggy fold of his rubbery chin.
Though he could not read it from where he stood, Detective Suarez made some small observations of how it shone under the bright fluorescent lights. Noticeably, it was made with an uncharacteristically dull sheet of paper. It was faint, and its white tint closely resembled the shade of a sun-bleached paper bag. Surely, the work of a lesser brand, one you could more easily find stocked in the aisles of a bargain bin office supply shop, than one that could bear the proud trademark of H&K.
“Well, well. I do hope you’ve enjoyed your visit, Detective. May you take our town’s openness and cooperation with your investigation as a clear sign that we have nothing to hide. My associate John here will guide you to your ride.”
A man of significant build walked up to the mayor’s side, his imposing presence transmitting an instant message of extreme caution to the detective’s survival instinct. The detective was brave in many respects, but this bravery did not make him a fool. He knew when to choose his battles and, most importantly, when to avoid ones with a clear outcome of defeat.
“That’s alright; I was just on my way out. I just remembered I had another great American town to survey. Good day,” the detective said with a slight voice crack before slowly backing away to the factory’s exit.
The mayor waved him goodbye. “Tell those fine city folks to pay us a visit. We love visitors… when they’re not nosy, that is…”
8. The Code
When he came back to his desk in that dimly lit office, he studied the strange letter again, trying to see if he could uncover why he cared so much about this case and why he was so emotionally attached in the first place. He wondered if any of this was worth his time. It was something he suppressed: the reason why he was so drawn to this paper. Its magnificent sheen, with a moonlight glimmer, was the same he'd seen eons ago when he was a vulnerable young man in love, holding the dense heft of a 'Dear John' letter in his trembling hands, the devastating confession from the woman he loved telling him it was all over and done with.
Since then he had grown a deep aversion to all things bright and shiny. He understood that the most sparkling items can sometimes cut the deepest incisions. It was as though he had some personal vendetta against this well-loved paper. A personal wrong that had to be corrected.
The words the mayor had used to disparage him began to ring in his ears. The mayor's snide, racially charged remark about enchiladas was the primary clue he needed to know that this man was not the upstanding elected official he presented himself as.
It was true; he had dreamt of being a detective since he was a little boy, walking around in a trench coat with a magnifying glass, searching for clues. It was a fantasy life, and he never outgrew for something more tactical and sensible, like a career in law or medicine. And though he was a grown man now, he realized that the detective’s life was more full of boozy beverages and unanswered calls than it was of intriguing mysteries.
The primary motivation of a detective is that unscratchable itch that permeates their brain, an itch without a hand to soothe their discontent. And though solving crimes is their bread and butter, the detective's life is always in a jam, for there is always more crime being committed, one after the other. A detective dedicates their life to solving puzzles, except their own. Their situation remains a jumble of jigsaws as they sink into their labor.
So he examined the letter. His attention ran back towards the question mark, which was written in place of a signature. It seemed deliberately crooked in its calligraphy as if trying to draw attention to something. He could gleam something suddenly. A small, barely visible trail of subtle creases appeared in little traces across the top parts of every sentence as though trying to hint at something. He read that letter, and he re-read it, too. Then he read it a third time, imagining that each sentence was stacked one over the other.
Dearest Detective,
I wish to remain…
Do you know why…?
Upon your arrival…
Crimes of a different sort…
They have gone on…
However strange…
Enough blood has…
Visit the company…
Attached is half…
The rest is yours…
?Now, he could see. When the first letter of each line was read from top to bottom, a cryptic message revealed itself–
DID U C THE VAT?Of course, the vat, that vast cylindrical belly of industrial metal. What secrets did that vat behold? He was so pleased that he had cracked this unusual code.
At that instant, he arrived at two important conclusions. Firstly, he must finally determine who among the citizens of Papersville was the one who had sent that anonymous tip. Secondly, he would have to see what was up with this ‘vat.’
Both would require him to stretch his imaginative prowess to its utmost degree, for he clearly understood that after the stir he’d caused with his first visit, returning there would be no walk in the park. He was sure he would not be greeted with the same openness and hospitality. So he concocted a plan. He would have to don a disguise.
9. The Station
As he approached his destination, he decided he would have to find an alternate path back into the town beyond the potentially hostile city square. So, some fifty miles out of Papersville, Juarez decided to make a pit stop at a nearly deserted station, where the pumps still looked like antique pieces from a Route 66 museum. At the cash register, Suarez asked if he could acquire some maps of the area.
“Maps? Don’t you have a phone?”
Again, seeing an opportunity to be annoying, the detective replied, “I prefer the feel of paper.”
The cashier walked back to a dusty, seldom-visited corner of his inventory. In a dusty cardboard cylinder, he suddenly found, rolled up and degrading with age, some old maps he hadn’t sold.
“How much?” Suarez asked.
The cashier insisted he take them for free.
While filling up his tank, Suarez began studying the maps. There were four maps in total. Each map was from a different decade and told a different story about the place he was headed to.
He saw that early in the twentieth century, where Papersville currently stood, there was no such town. He noticed a region rich with green vegetation (denoted by little trees in the map’s legend). The place was known as Treesport, and it seemed to be expansive and even more significant than Papersville.
Detective Suarez flipped to the following map, printed a decade after the first. The H&K Paper Mill suddenly appeared as a notable local landmark in this one. He also noticed that the legend indicated significantly fewer trees than in the previous era.
Then he turned to the third map, which was several decades into the future of the last, and here he saw something shocking indeed. Papersville suddenly became a bustling town, overtaking significant real estate over Treesport’s previous domain. Now, there were even fewer trees denoted by the legend and significantly more symbols indicating an abundance of commercial things like shops and restaurants.
Finally, he pulled out the fourth and newest map, though it was still a few years old and faded with time. Now, Papersville had become the proper town he had witnessed for himself. As for Treesport, nearly all remnants of it had been completely wiped off the map. All but for one little body of water called Treesport Creek, next to a little place called The Skirts. Detective Suarez immediately knew that this was where he would next have to go.
10. The Archive
It didn’t feel right, but it was undeniable. Betsy had woken up one day an old woman– and though she retained that same kindly spirit from her youth, she now very closely resembled the portrait of her long-gone grandmother hanging by the fireplace of her stately home. The grandmother, who, in her youth, grew up in rural, dirt poor, poverty, no stranger to hunger and scarcity, went on to become an insatiably power-driven woman, pressuring the young Betsy into a marriage of convenience with a man whom she did not love. It had been seventy years since she first said ‘I do’ to those frightful eyes, the eyes of that man who was now mayor of Papersville.
And though stately her mansion was, with all its winding stairways and long corridors, she would often retreat into her private little sanctuary, in a secret door tucked away in her spacious walk-through closet, behind clusters of last season’s Chanel coats and Gucci bags. She had acquired these things only to keep up appearances, for this was what was expected of the first lady of Papersville. Beyond this secret door was a tight crawling space, which ultimately led to a hidden room that even the Mayor–who seemingly knew all the town’s secrets–was not privy to. It was her best-kept secret, which she had preserved for generations.
In stark contrast to the propagandistic museum, films, and walking tours provided by the town, here perhaps was the only remnant of authentic Papersville history and the community that once thrived there. Back then, the town was not yet known as Papersville. It was a haven for immigrants and people of color who wanted merely to live off the land in simplicity, an ideal configuration for what life all across America could be. Now, that was a forsaken vision, a memory upheld only within the confines of this tiny space. Jaundiced photographs attested to the holistic, communal spirit of the Treesport environment before, slowly, the ravages of industry took over the community. They made it into something more dependent on H&K’s mill business. When H&K first came onto the scene, it was a small operation, even sustainable. But the work was brutal and often deadly. Betsy witnessed firsthand how her father and his business partner desecrated the land so that they could break ground on their massive factory. She often cursed herself for belonging to this crooked family of hers, feeling complicit in the destruction they wrought. But perhaps more, she never forgave herself for agreeing to marry that young man who would grow up to be mayor.
When Betsy first met him, he was a humorless, severe young man with a military hairstyle and a constant scowl. The man she remembered the most fondly from those days was her cherished Ernesto, a handsome young migrant worker who labored intensely under the sweltering pressure of those early paper-pressing machines.
It was a clandestine affair– the daughter of Milo Koch himself was in love with one of his dark-skinned immigrant workers. And yet theirs was a romance so intense. They expressed their love through secret letters to each other, written on defective H&K paper, which she still kept. In the middle of the night, they would meet out behind the factory, in secret, between the warehouse and the worker’s dormitories– hoping others could not see them. But they were indeed caught by one young man in particular.
Though once a lowly factory worker like all the rest, the young man who would become mayor first gained favor among the important family by revealing a group of conspirators within the workforce. Some of them had been attempting to form a union, and he had all the evidence of meeting minutes and protest badges to back up this claim. He gave all the names necessary, including that of Ernesto. Some were fired, many just up and disappeared, like Ernesto. Always an optimist, Betsy hoped that Ernesto was merely deported. But she knew the likelihood of that was very low indeed.
With their marriage intact, he strategically usurped all control of the company from her family. It was not until the mayor had control of the town, and thus the company itself, that he could take H&K’s abhorrent schemes to nightmarish new heights.
She knew one day the secret would have to come out– when she saw Detective Suarez’ headshot in the Yellow Pages under Private Investigators, it was as though she looked into the eyes of her one true love once again, all these years later. And then, when she saw him again at that restaurant, she could only hold herself from collapsing entirely. His competency as a detective never crossed her mind. If any soul was worthy of breaking open this town’s secret to the world, she saw it fit to be Suarez. Hopefully, he would break the code and discover it for all the world. Hopefully, he would be the one to see the vat.
11. The Skirts
The detective looked upon the horizon, where the sunset sparkled behind the factory, miles off in the distance, as it set behind the mountains. Detective Suarez arrived at the scene, the last remaining testament of a place called Treesport. What he found there had dire implications. Around it, the land had been completely depleted of its forest and trees that all used to thrive there. There was barely a creek; it had been so overwhelmed with litter that a mountainous formation had almost calcified to the natural landscape. It was a disastrous heap of trash typically reserved for the pages of a National Geographic issue. But here it was on Western soil, a once lush and fertile ground reduced to a pile of accumulated garbage. Beyond the trash was an unrelenting desert of the most arid and pale-colored soil. Whilst looking around for signs of life, he eventually stumbled upon a community of rural people hiding behind a cluster of dehydrated bushes. They had planted brightly-colored camping tents for shelter; some had even built slipshod shanty homes of any materials they could scavenge from these desolate parts. It was like the depression had never left this community.
“What happened here?” the detective asked the community elder.
“Papersville happened, that’s what,” said the ancient, bearded man in dirty overalls with bright bowls of milk in his thousand-yard stare.
“I arrived here from the city and am trying to learn more. I went through the archives and museums of Papersville, and not a trace of you people is there.”
“The oppressor does not typically keep receipts of their misdeeds.”
“Are you aware of any crimes being committed in that town?”
“Papersville is the biggest crime of them all. Are you looking for someone to arrest and take you to court, detective? Then arrest that entire town, for they are all in on it. Every last one of them.”
12. The Muscle
The burly man sniffed with downtrodden eyes. It was another day, and John had to clean up a big, huge mess. In a steamy boiler room, where cogs and pipes made noises into boisterous symphonies, this man, drenched with sweat, covered with stress marks on his face, barely concealed by his magnificently thick facial hair and blonde mullet, listened intently up at that scheming mayor.
"Somebody tipped off this dick. Now, he's breathing down our necks. You understand why this shit needs to be contained, don't you?" asked the mayor.
"Of course I do," the man replied cheekily. "He offended you. He offended the company. Therefore, he offended me, and that will not do."
The mayor hissed, "So can you fix this shit?"
"When I’m through with him, I’m gonna crush him into a powder so fine, people are gonna think he’s Colombian."
“For all I know, he might be. The fact is, his defeat is not the only task at hand. I need you to find the one who alerted him."
“Already on it.”
“This came flying in from the rejects’ door.” The mayor pulled the unwrapped paper plane from his pocket and handed it to John. John wrapped it and read it–
THE MAYOR IS A RAT TURD
John accidentally laughed, but seeing the sinister growl on the mayor’s face, he quickly fixed it.
“I will find the sorry son-of-a-bitch that did this.”
The burly man went out to the manufacturing floor. He surveyed the room, examining the workers, wondering who appeared the most traitorous among them. John’s detective skills were woefully unrefined. But that didn’t matter at all. He was, in fact, very good at finding scapegoats, whether they had anything to do with the crime or not. He remembered that, working in quality assurance, there was Larry, the weakest, most impressionable, and the most pathetically people-pleasing person in the workforce. He approached Larry with the steadfast coolness of a freshly rinsed cucumber.
"Howdy, Larry,” said John with a friendly disposition.
Larry, ever the nervous wreck, swallowed a lump in his throat. He wiped a drop of sweat from his brow and replied:
"Hiya, John.”
"How are the kids?
"The kids? They're well."
"Well-fed?"
"Yes, they are."
"Clothed?"
"Y-yes."
"Sheltered?"
"Yes, John, they are."
"And who do you have to thank for that?"
"The... the company?"
"Is that a question or an answer?"
"The company," Larry stated half-emphatically.
"Do you believe that, or do you just think that's what I want you to say?"
"With every ounce of me, I fully believe it. Is… is everything alright?”
The stutter in Larry’s voice was not lost on John. “Well, Larry, if you must know, in fact, no, everything's not alright. It seems someone in this factory has been running their mouths.”
“Is that so? W-well, I hope they find out who it is.”
“You and I got that in common. So if by chance you might have some knowledge about said individual, with said loose lips–”
“Oh absolutely, you know– that, if I knew, well… I would.”
“Oh, do I? Do I know that though?
“I mean…”
“Cause I mean, we’ve worked together all these years, but my so-called friend, I don’t believe I’ve ever spent any quality time with you. You’ve never invited me to your home. We’ve never gone out fishing.”
“Well, I happen to be vegetarian.”
“And now you’re here, talking to me, like we’re the bestest of pals, gaslighting me into trusting you more than I should.
“Trust me, I wasn’t gaslighting you. I don’t even know what that means.”
“Listen to me. I need you to follow me back into the little room.”
Larry started to grow worried; he shook his head rapidly from side to side. “Not the little room.”
“Yes, the little room.”
“No, please, no. I swear. I know nothing, I know nothing, goddamit!”
“Using profanity? I’m gonna have to write you up for that one. Come, follow me to the little room.”
At this point, Larry fell to his knees, screamed, and pleaded for mercy. “No! I won’t go! I won’t! I won’t!
"You blabbermouth. Explain yourself, damn you."
“I’m not the one.”
That’s when John took him into a headlock and dragged him across the production floor, in plain view of all the staff. Though there were many witnesses, no one flinched, and no one moved a single muscle.
13. The Intruder
Detective Suarez returned to the factory disguised as a garbage man. He was wearing a gray jumpsuit borrowed from one of the Treesport residents. To further his disguise, he wore sunglasses over his face and walked around with a cigarette in his mouth. A low-level employee approached him as he backed up the garbage truck into one of the loading docks.
“Thought you weren’t coming til tomorrow.”
“I had some time left over, so I figured I’d come earlier. Can I come through?”
“Come through?”
Realizing how unusual this must have sounded, Suarez quickly devised an excuse for why he, as a garbage man, needed to enter the factory and explore the perimeter.
“Yeah come through and, er, collect all the garbage bags.”
The employee was so confused.
“Ah, come on pal,” Suarez continued, with an exaggerated east coast drawl, “You bozos always mix up the trash, putting all sortsa indispensables and recyclables in with the usual refuse. Let me just come in there and sort the crap out myself.”
“Is that something you typically do as a trashman?”
“It is when you’re dealing with a bunch of numbnuts as I do here. Trust me, I’m just trying to make sure my job gets done right. Now take me to your litter.”
Evidently, that was all the convincing this employee needed to let Suarez into the facility.
When he finally got back inside, he looked around and saw that everywhere, there were posters plastered with pictures of him–
WARNING!
IF YOU SEE THIS MAN
ALERT A HIGHER-UP
IMMEDIATELY
To avoid unwanted attention, Suarez crouched down and walked lightly through the facility. He was amazed to see that barely any workers were there to notice them. It appeared that way inside the factory, and there was some tense and dramatic confrontation between a foreman and one of the employees that was keeping them all distracted. As he went through the place, hiding behind pillars and scurrying towards one shiny tube to the next, he finally reached what he was looking for.
Standing mightily at the center of it all, a giant vat was being fed some mysterious material by a long conveyor belt. Suarez was determined to see what was in it. So he climbed the nearest ladder that led up to it. It was a long climb that took him almost two minutes, especially since he was not trying to attract any attention. When he finally reached the top, he stood on a platform and approached the lip of the vat. And what he saw was so disturbing, so grotesque, he could not help but gasp in terror.
It was the gasp heard ‘round the world.
Now, suddenly, the entire company was distracted from Larry and John. Even Larry looked up and made eye contact with the shell-shocked Suarez. He was the first to try to save himself and blurt out: “Look! It’s him! The one you’re looking for. Not me! Him! Him!”
A few men were quick to climb up that ladder and tie the detective up.
14. The Vat
Suarez was tied to a chair and beaten to a pulp. A worker held him down while John smacked him left and punched him right until his face was swollen, barely recognizable mess of black and blue bruises.
They had taken him to the little room he had seen before called DISCARDED DEFECTS. It was the room where all the broken merchandise went, but it was also where all the bad apples went. All the unruly, rebellious workers who didn’t want to stand in line and kowtow to authority. But it was also a room where innocents were taken. Innocents like Larry, for though he was the first to call out the detective’s presence, John still needed a fall guy for the crime of the insulting paper plane. John beat Larry even harder than he beat Suarez, for even though Suarez’s crime against the town was the greatest, John always had a particular dislike for Larry’s annoying face.
Suarez rolled with the punches for what felt like an eternity. Eventually, he lost consciousness. When he awoke, the terror had compounded significantly. He was still in that chair, tied up. But now he was on that conveyor belt waiting to be fed into the vat. Seeing no way out, Suarez desperately tried to accept his fate with dignity. He could not hold back the tears and the shaky energy running through his body.
It became exceedingly clear to him that although he had, at last, solved the case of Papersville, he would not be receiving the other half of his pay for solving such a crime. As he reached the edge of the belt and fell, diving into that steaming hot bath of deadly vat water, Detective Suarez attempted to take his mind off that horrific reality just milliseconds away. As he fell, he sang with anguished howls, a sweet little jingle he had known by heart since he was a child, forgetting the words as fate grew dim—
🎶 H and K Pap
the sheet
Pure snow
you know
we’re ?
tic that toeee—His last notes went out with a wailing howl and splashing bubbles. And with the rest of the skeletons already there, they boiled his bones. And when they were fully cooked and soft as donuts, they crushed him and used the white color of his calcium-rich marrow; they dyed those sheets of paper so that the resulting paper would be very white indeed. And it was that very same paper which was to inscribe these words you read.
15. The End
Betsy and the Mayor went out to celebrate his birthday. They dined at the same restaurant where she and her friends had previously gone. The lighting was romantic, and the environment was quiet. The Mayor was delighted with himself for having defeated another adversary. As they clinked their glasses of champagne, he waxed poetic about his glory days.
“Well, Betsy, honey. We truly are the fortunate ones, aren’t we?”
Betsy forced a smile.
“Aw, what’s wrong? Aren’t you happy it’s my birthday?” He cackled.
She, for one, could barely hide her disdain for him. Then the waiter came by, shaking as he carried a platter.
“Uh, I have dessert here for you two.” The nervous waiter made eyes with Betsy. “Are you sure you want me to serve this to him?”
Betsy nodded, a wry smile appearing, “yes, of course. Let him see his present.”
“Ah,” the mayor said excitedly. “A present?”
“It’s your cake.”
The waiter put the platter on the table and lifted the lid with great uncertainty. The Mayor looked with glee at his platter, which quickly went away.
It was a delicious birthday cake, with a fondant paper plane and a message written in colorful frosting:
TAKE A TRIP TO HELL!And that’s when a fleet of law enforcement men in suits came into the room and stormed the entire restaurant. All the guests there gasped in shock. The Mayor, for one, was utterly confused.
“What the hell’s going on here?”
Wearing dark sunglasses and a shiny jacket bearing a three-letter acronym, the head of the sting operation quickly pulled out a blank sheet of paper and placed it on the table.
“You recognize this?”
“Why, yes, of course I do. That’s a classic sheet of H&K paper. Why do you ask?”
“We received an anonymous tip about what you’ve been doing here. This paper right here? It has genetic material with a DNA sequence that matches perfectly with that of Detective Suarez, who went missing just weeks ago. Does that name ring a bell, Mister Mayor?”
The Mayor sat there slack-jawed as though every muscle in his face had suddenly decided to go on strike. The sudden, unexpected confrontation with such a damning piece of evidence was something that his internal organs could not process, for they were severely unprepared for it. There just wasn’t ample enough time. It was too late. His silence was a confession in itself. Internally, he was screaming as though he were bearing witness to the most extreme horrors of his internal empire, as though it were an actual, physical place going up in smoke before his very eyes. His whole world was suddenly tumbling down in a glorious blaze of apocalyptic fury, one that, were it not confined to his imagination, would rival the collapse of Rome in terms of sheer disaster. He was suddenly detached and dissociated from his body, embodying a frightening apocalyptic land of imagined but tumultuous earthquakes. The blazing inferno running through his soul brought his safety and comfort to an abrupt and violent stop. Though it felt like an eternity, in fact, he had only sat there a few seconds before he could finally muster the ability to utter a single, incoherent syllable of attempted thought. A confused and frightened “uhhhhhh…” erupted weakly from his trembling lips, his mangled throat suddenly ululating like the flap of a rooster’s wattle at the crack of dawn.
As he struggled to process his situation, the other officers had already started to put him in handcuffs.
The Mayor glanced at his wife of seven decades. She looked up at him with those piercing blue eyes, and with joy written across her face, she said, “Happy birthday, Mr. Mayor.”