The letters started coming on his twenty-fifth birthday. Otis was troubled at first, but the letters were special. They were not invitations, nor were they congratulatory, or even remotely hateful in any way. They warmed Otis’s heart, and receiving one every day for a year had eased the strain on his heart, giving him something to look forward too. You see, the letters were that of love.

They were simple at first, single colors and with barely any words to speak of aside from the text that came already printed upon the cards. Otis was mortified that anyone would be a secret admirer. He had never courted anyone, much less anyone doing the actual approaching. He was the one getting rejected. Always.

Slowly, however, the cards became more and more complicated, with intricate patterns drawn upon them and long depictions of praise, whisking Otis from the blackened tarry pits of his mind and into the candy blue lakes and rivers of fantasy. His second favorite card came a week ago, when the poem was in the shape of a rose, the words twisting and curling around the petals like the folds of clean linen. Not that Otis new what clean linens were like. He slept on a couch, with the only clean linens being the ones going on the beds he made day after day.

Otis’s second favorite card was previously his favorite card until the new card had appeared. This card he would cherish forever. It was black with curling gold trim surrounding a cupid bow and arrow embossed in the center of the card. That was gold as well. The card had shown up in the middle of the day, just as his shift at the brothel was ending. His cubby that usually held his uniform was opened slightly, a sign that told Otis that his daily card was there.

It was different. The card did not proclaim undying love or offer praise of the utmost caliber. No, this one asked for a reply. She wished to talk to him, to exchange letters. So off Otis went with a spring in his step to beg for scraps from the local printing press. They scoffed at Otis and turned him away. It was made worse that some recognized him from the brothel, and jeered at him as he left. He slowly went home, the spring cracked and worn, unable to withstand the weight of society.

He stepped into the dilapidated factory that served as his home. It was far from the brothel, but it was dry. He laid down on the battered couch, thinking of ways to get paper, ink and a pen. Prohibitively expensive, but not unreachable. All that was needed was to not eat a meal a day for a month. Otis went to sleep, content with his plan.

He woke the next day to the smell of ink and musty paper. In front of his eyes was a stack of jagged papers, a needle and a half-used bottle of black ink. Otis grinned with joy, for he new who had blessed him with the materials. Who else but her? He scratched out quickly his first written words in nearly a decade and clumsily drew a rose. It was malformed but looked eerily similar to the one in his second favorite letter. It was good enough for today.

He left the dilapidated factory and went to work. It took an hour, but he was used to the journey every day. It was a small price to pay for a job. He left his letter in his cubby and left to go clean the vile rooms. He did all he could, but he never was able to rid it of the putrid odor of business. He was exhausted from his journey and soon sat down to sleep against a wall near his cubby. A knob jabbed into his back, but he was too tired to care. He fell to sleep like a dropped stone.

When he woke, it was night again. He had slept too long. He stood up shakily and walked over to the slightly ajar cubby door. Inside, his letter is missing, and a crimson one in its place. Its edges are jagged, like the one he used today. There is nothing on the front, but it is still a letter. He opens it and reads. He laughs, his first laugh in a long while. Perhaps a decade, even. It felt good. He closed the letter and put it in his breast pocket. Nobody would know what was said, not even God. He left for home, a smile cracking away the stress lines that had held his face hostage for so long. He went to sleep content, even without having eaten dinner. That could wait.

When he woke he wrote another letter, folded it away in his pocket and left the building. For some reason, he looked back today, gazing at the dirty windows and powdered bricks lining the cracked foundation. In the cleanest window a pair of brown eyes framed by wild curly hair gazed back from the bottom left hand corner. Otis froze. It was his room, his window that the girl was looking out of. He turned and sprinted back, the girl disappearing from the window and into the early morning coal dust of London. Cursing his rashness, he went to work, confused. Had that girl been the letter sender? Did he scare her off? He shook his head and decided to just ask his admirer about it. She would know what to do.

There was no letter today. Or the day after. Or for a week after. Then a month. Otis almost jumped off the Westminster Bridge and drowned himself several times. But he stayed. Staying for the letter. The possibility of a letter was keeping Otis alive and hoping and cursing life and the church and God but most of all himself. He dragged on through the grimy streets of London, watching for the blue eyes, hardly sleeping so as to catch her. But she never came.

Otis finally broke, crying himself to sleep, crying as he changed the linens at the brothel, crying as he walked Westminster bridge, crying as his employer told him to find another job, slowly sinking away from the candy rivers and back into the tar pits in his soul. He had been taught that hard work would make a man respectable. But it was a lie. He was told that he should have gone to the Colonies, but he lied and told them he was happy here. He should have listened.

Otis found himself at Westminster Bridge once again. He had to cross it every day to get back to his rat-infested home, but today he stopped. He gazed out over the Thames, looking at what was supposed to be the greatest city upon the Earth. He walked closer to the edge, leaning against the cool stone guardrail and breathing in the thick stench of the river Thames. He looked down at the water, the brackish water containing the waste of an entire city. He stood there for a long time, through the night and into the early touches of dawn.

The sun reached over the horizon, and Otis stood basking in the warmth and swirling stink climbing up through the morning air. It did not bother him, however. He was thinking about the letter girl. Why had she left him? He did not know. Why did she like him to begin with? He really did not know the answer to that one. So he stood, at the bridge as the sun rose, waiting.

A flash caught his eye, coming from the river. Otis looked down and saw the blue-eyed girl from the window drowning in the Thames. Without hesitation, Otis dove into the Thames, much to the surprise of the other people crossing the bridge. They ran to where he jumped off, some of them screaming to get a rope.

Otis hit the water hard. He had never swum before. But he needed to know who she was. What she was doing in his room. What she was doing in the river, how she had found him, and whether or not she was sending the letters. He tried to swim, but he could barely keep his head above the murky water. Slowly but surely Otis began to slip beneath the waves. He no longer worried about the girl, but of living. He tried harder to swim but he could not figure out where to swim. It was too cloudy, and the horrid water began to slide into his nose and mouth.

As Otis began to slip into the tarry abyss of the river Thames, the blue-eyed girl appeared in front of him, as if and angel had materialized into existence to help him. He stared at her, and she blushed, her hair floating in the river Thames. Otis realized something. She was the letter girl, she was the one from his room, who brought the parchment and ink and meant so much too him. He tried reach for her, but she backed away. Otis felt strained, his lungs crumpling in their demands for air. He ignored his lungs and tried to reach for her again. She smiled sadly, and let Otis’s arms reach around her before they closed around nothing. She had disappeared. He thrashed around, burning for air, and she appeared again.

This time, she looked even sadder. She pointed up, motioning for Otis to go to the surface. Otis just attempted to get closer to her. She began to cry, leaving pure, candy blue tracks of clear water through the Thames. Otis stopped, confused. She began to change, and turned into a man. Older, his hair brown but graying, dirty, and matted with grime. A weathered face which had seen too much and ratty clothes that had been pieced together from rags.  Blue eyes pierced out from the face, crying the same candy blue tears.

Otis stared at himself. He began to cry now, bitter black tears of tar that polluted even the nastiest parts of the Thames. He struggled to the surface, desperate for air. But it was too late. Otis inhaled the water of the river, retching and choking before sinking to the bottom, never again to enjoy the candy blue river that he had grown to love.