My phone buzzed on the nightstand like an angry wasp, and at first I thought it was the alarm to get up. I picked up the phone and blinked at it as I realized that it had stopped buzzing and I was supposed to have another hour to sleep. Because it wasn’t the alarm, it was a text notification.
You have a delivery scheduled.
I frowned at the phone as I looked at the sender. It was just series of numbers, letters and symbols that looked like someone had rolled their hand across a keyboard. Certainly not a phone number or an online store that I had ordered something from. Super fucking weird, which meant it was probably a super fucking scam. A foreign prince was going to send me a diamond if I would only send a money first. Sure thing.
Still, there was always the possibility it was legit. I hadn’t ordered anything out of the ordinary, but maybe someone was sending me something as a surprise? My birthday was next month, after all. The chances seemed low, but the idea still had enough inertia that I didn’t delete the message the way I usually did with spam. Instead I closed my phone and drifted back off to sleep.
When I woke to the alarm a bit later, I found myself checking for another message. I felt a bit disappointed when there was none, and that, in turn, made me feel a bit dumb. Shaking my head, I went back and deleted the first message, and by the time I got out of the shower, I’d forgotten about it almost entirely.
That afternoon, I was eating a sandwich at my desk when my phone jumped in my hand. I had been reading on the internet, but now the top of my screen was filled with a new text notification. I tapped it and slowly sat my sandwich down as I read the full message.
You have a delivery scheduled. Delivery time will be at 2:45pm. Please be prepared at that time.
What the fuck? Rereading the message, I pondered it. Who gives that specific a time? And please be prepared for what?
“Hey, Becky.” I knew she was over there. Just like me, she never took a lunch break.
“Yeah?”
I stood up and leaned over the cubicle wall as I held out my phone. “Have you ever gotten a delivery message like this?”
She took my phone and studied it for a moment before looking up at me, her grey eyebrows arched. “No, I don’t think so. Think it’s a hacker or something?”
I shrugged. “Who knows. Probably some kid sending people odd messages as a prank.”
Becky gave a little laugh and went back to looking at her computer as I sat back to stare at my own little screen. The sender name junk was different this time, right? Still a mix of stuff that made no sense, but with more letters than before. Frowning at my phone, I debated just deleting it again.
Still, something in the new message made me feel a little excited. A little worried. No doubt it was just a mistake or an automated phishing scam, but for the moment it was making my day a bit more interesting. So even though I knew it was a waste of time and against my rules on responding to sketchy internet shit, I decided to text back.
Who is this? What is being delivered? I didn’t order anything.
I chewed the rest of my sandwich robotically as I played on my phone, trying to pretend like I wasn’t just distracting myself while I waited for a response. I finished watching a video about an orphaned raccoon or something when I noticed the time. It was already getting close to 1:30. I needed to get back to work, and if something was delivered, I wouldn’t be home until after six anyway. But my guess was I’d be looking at an empty porch when I got there.
My phone buzzed about an hour later. It was my mom asking if I was still coming over this weekend. I was starting to type an answer when my phone shook again. It was a response from the mystery sender.
You will see soon.
Okay, so this is either someone being creepy or someone I know doing some kind of practical…
A shrieking sound began tearing across the office, and for a moment I had the panicked thought that this was what was coming, that this sound was some terrible thing screeching and wailing as it clawed its way toward me. Then I heard Becky’s voice over the noise and I looked up.
“What?”
“It’s the fire alarm! Come on, we have to go down the stairs.”
Glancing back down at my phone, I caught a final glimpse of the last message before my screen went dim. I stuffed the phone in my pocket as I went with Becky and everyone else out of the office and down the stairs to the lobby of our building. It was a slow process made slower because I got in front of Becky in case she stumbled and went to fall. I knew she had trouble on stairs, and I didn’t want her going so fast trying to keep up that she wound up with a broke neck over what was probably a stupid unannounced drill.
But when we stepped out into the lobby, I could already see fire trucks pulling up through the front windows. Something was actually going on after all. I heard anxious murmurs around me as we were ushered by security through the doors and told to cross safely to the other side of the street until they could give us more information.
We did as we were told, and within a couple of minutes we were clustered on the far sidewalk like penguins huddled together on a lonely iceflow. There were probably fifty or sixty people out there, and I realized with some surprise that I didn’t recognize most of them. I’d worked in the building for over five years, and I hardly knew anyone outside of the guards and people on my floor, and most of the ones I did know was only in passing. It made me feel isolated and unfriendly, and in other circumstances I would have encouraged myself to do better and be more sociable. But surrounded by so many people in such close quarters, all I could think was…My phone buzzed.
Delivery completed.
Checking my phone’s clock, I saw that it was exactly 2:45pm. I went over to my email to see if there had been any delivery-related messages, but there was nothing. Looking up, I saw a cop approaching. He looked tired and wary as he drew near the crowd, and I could tell by his expression that something bad must have happened. All he told us was that there had been a fire and that it had been put out, but that there was an ongoing investigation of the scene. Due to this, the office was going to be closed the rest of the day and possibly tomorrow, and we should call our supervisors in the morning for further updates.
“You know, they pulled a few people from the crowd a minute ago.”
I looked around and saw Becky looking at me. “What?”
“Those cops. They pulled a few people out a few minutes ago. You were looking at your phone, but I think they got people from the tenth floor. I bet they’re questioning them about something.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.” Laughing, I added, “Better them than me, right? I’m heading out.”
Nodding distractedly as she looked after the retreating officer, Becky said, “Don’t forget your box.”
I stopped still and turned back to her. “What box?”
She pointed behind me. “That box. Didn’t you bring it down with you? It’s got your name on it.”
“You know I didn’t have any…” She was right. There was a small cardboard box sitting on the sidewalk right behind where I had been standing. “Where did that come from? Did you put that there?”
Becky let out a laugh. “Did you see me with a box on the way down?”
I scowled at her. “Did you see me with one?”
She frowned and shook her head. “No, I guess not. I was paying attention to the stairs mainly, but I don’t remember it. I just noticed it a minute ago. It had your name on it, so I figured I must have just overlooked it.” Her eyes widened. “Think this is your mystery delivery?”
“I…Yeah, maybe so.”
I picked up the box gingerly. It wasn’t heavy, but it definitely had something with weight to it inside. I wanted to open it then and there, but it was taped up and people were already moving toward the nearby parking deck that our office validated. I went along with the herd, hurrying to the third floor deck where I hopped into my car and cut the tape with my house key. The thought that this was a bomb, maybe some extension of some act of terrorism or vandalism in the building, fluttered across my mind, but I pushed it away. Why would someone target me, of all people? And it wasn’t like I wasn’t going to open it. I had to know what was in there, right?
So I opened it. And it wasn’t a bomb. It was a camera.
Small and black, the digital camcorder seemed expensive and nice, though I hadn’t used anything other than my phone to record video since I was in college, so I was no expert. But nice or not, it was a weird gift to send me. I wasn’t some big recording guy, and even if I was, I wouldn’t lug around a camera to do it.
It was then that it struck me that the camera wasn’t in a box or package of its own. It was literally just stuck down in a plain cardboard box. So was it a used gift, or was there something on it already?
I tilted the box back and forth, making sure there was nothing else in there before reaching my hand in. The camera felt cold against my palm, and it took me a minute to find the tiny power button on the side of it. It had one of those tiny flip out screens, and I figured that was the best way to see if it worked and if there were already videos on it.
There was. Just one video, fifty-nine seconds long. It showed a woman going into what looked like a small computer or server room in an office that looked similar to my own. The door was pulled shut behind her by an unseen hand, and when the shot pulled back, it was clear something had been wedged to keep the door from opening again.
If she’d had more time, the woman might have beaten on the door and yelled. If she’d had more time, she might have called for help and said that someone was squirting something under the door, because I was watching the tip of some black container being pushed against the bottom of the door and squeezed repeatedly. If she’d had more time, she might would have begged for them to stop when she heard the snick-snack of the lighter being triggered or smelled the faint traces of copier paper set aflame before being tossed down into the puddle trailing out from the bottom of the server room door.
But she only had fifteen seconds to react to the door being shut and wedged, some accelerant being sprayed into the room, and the room being set alight. After that, she screamed for help for a few more scattered, painful moments of life, but it was too late for help. Too late for anything. The fire was already eating her flesh, eating her words, eating her life.
Oh God. Why would anyone do this? And why would they show it to me?
My phone buzzed on the seat next to me and I let out a startled yell. I didn’t want to pick it up, but I’d need to anyway. I had to call 911. I had to try to help catch whoever did this. Swallowing, I saw it was another text notification, and I forced myself to tap it open.
You have a delivery scheduled.
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Credits
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