The Illustrated Encyclopedia of an Imaginary Universe

I slipped the smallest key from my key ring into the lock, gave the pathetic tumblers a turn, and opened the small door only to see that I had no mail. After closing the door, using the key in the lock as a handle of sorts, I noticed someone had defaced one of the mailboxes below mine.

The work was done with a key, perhaps, or another instrument capable of scratching thin, angular lines into semi-soft metal. It read:

‘Whore’ and ‘He’s married’

I marvelled at it for a few moments before walking away as if I had seen nothing but my head was alive with ideas. What could have occurred that prompted this bit of defacing? Someone was obviously angry but the situation seemed so contrived and ludicrous that it possibly couldn’t have happened outside the realm of daytime talk show television. Yet there it was, a crude yellow star, a letter in red, weighty and embarrassing.

As I drove away, joining the flow of traffic, I thought about the girl guilty of the graffiti. Obviously it wasn’t the adulterer’s wife. The minimal wording seemed to reflect, should I dare to read so deeply into it, a third party interest: perhaps a close friend of the distraught wife. Someone who either hated the mistress for reasons other than this or perhaps someone who was jealous that it was the owner of the now-defaced mailbox doing the dirty deed rather than the defacer.

Also, I thought about how the mistress must have felt when she checked her mail the following morning, to have seen that on the face of her mailbox. Did she pause, key partially in the lock, and then look around to see if anyone was watching? How did she feel to know that she was caught?

What unimaginable drama and misery it must be to live like that. I know someone who is in that exact situation and things are spiralling out of control. I’ve never heard of a love triangle such as this ever coming to any sort of happy conclusion; someone always ends up miserable. If the husband leaves his wife for the mistress, then his now ex-wife is miserable. And can the mistress be happy forever with having her adulterer as her one and only? Possibly not because if he’s willing to leave his wife for his mistress, he’ll be willing to leave his mistress for another.

How far is it to call the mistress a whore? Who’s to say she initiated the liaisons? Even if she did, is he blameless? Could he not control himself?

At this point, I had reached the red light at the intersection near my apartment complex and became distracted by thirst.