I received an email from an old friend from highschool I hadn’t spoken to in years, Robert. I was surprised to suddenly hear from him after so long, but the contents of the email were unbelievable. At first I thought it was some weird prank or something, but now I’m not sure. He wanted me to post it here, so I’ll be posting it here in parts:
I screwed up. I really screwed up.
It’s not my fault. How the hell could I have known? How the hell could anyone in my situation have known?
I don’t know how many more days I have until…
I’m putting this out there because so people know the truth, or as much as I know of it. I don’t care if nobody believes me, I just want someone to know how I’m going to die. There’s no saving me at this point. I guess it’s also a warning: be careful which orders you take on Doordash, or any of those delivery apps, and in general if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.
It all started… how long ago is it now? It must be three months. Maybe four. I got laid off from my job, and after a week of unsuccessful job hunting my already meagre savings were running thin. I decided to install one of those delivery apps. I won’t tell you which one, I don’t want you to fall into the same trap I did. I made an alright amount of money, enough to live on anyway, but I made some dumb decisions and blew some of it away. Rent was coming up, and I had already been late a few times so I really couldn’t afford to not pay it in full that time.
Still, like an idiot I mostly lazed around until the last day possible that I could take orders and get paid in time for rent, where I worked like mad to scrounge up the three hundred I was missing. I only had the last scraps of a sandwich to eat that day, and by the end of it I was starving having to look at all the food I was delivering for other people to eat. It was dark, and that’s when the orders mostly stopped. I was still over two hundred short. I sat around, waiting, only got one other order… and then nothing.
Right when I was about to give up, I think it must have been close to eleven at night, a single order popped up, for someone named “Nick”. Fifty kilometers away, but… I couldn’t believe it when I saw it.
I thought I was just overtired, or the app was glitching or something. It had to be a mistake.One item, a bottle of water from a gas station nearby, and… 800$. There was a note in the drop off instructions that read “A little something to get you on your feet. I hope this opens the door to a wonderful business relationship between us.”
I took the order after only a second’s hesitation, before anyone else could snatch it up. I didn’t think you could even put that much money as a tip, but I didn’t care.
After I picked up the bottle of water, I kept thinking the order would be cancelled at any moment. It had to be a mistake, or a prank, or something. It was way too good to be true. I sped the whole way across the freeway.
I’d never been in the town before. There was nothing to set it apart, and the address was in a neighborhood that was no different from any other suburban bloc.
The thought might have crossed my mind when I first pulled into the empty streets that maybe I was on my way to get robbed or kidnapped or killed. If only the truth was that mundane. There was nothing too strange about the streets being empty, of all the lights being off after midnight on a Sunday night, so I didn’t feel any apprehension beyond that momentary feeling of unease.
The house was painted bright pink, but otherwise no different from the rest of the near copy-paste houses around it. All the lights appeared to be off, and I wondered if anyone was even home when I got out with the water bottle and made my way to the door. The delivery instructions said to ring the doorbell and wait for someone to come. I pressed the button, didn’t hear anything, peered at the windows. No, the lights weren’t off, there was a black tarp over the windows, and…
The door opened. A girl that must have been in her mid-twenties opened the door, blinked at me.“Uh, here’s your water.”
She was a little disheveled, like she had just woken up, her hair was messy and she was a little zoned out. She stared at me blankly for a second before recollection flashed in her eyes, “Oooohhh, he said you’d be here soon, ok…” she cupped both her hands together, held them out and waited expectantly. I awkwardly dropped the bottle in her hands, and she just kind of stood there.
“Alright, well… thanks for the big tip!”
She sniffed, laughed.
“Ok… goodnight…”
She watched me leave, I didn’t see her go back in as I pulled away.
It was a little strange, sure, but the payment went through. It had honestly seemed like she was drugged out or something, maybe it really had been done in error… but I was so strapped for cash I didn’t care.
I put in some more work the next couple of days. I was kind of worried that the 800$ would be cancelled at any moment, that I wouldn’t actually get it, but when pay day came along I was paid in full.
I kept hoping I would get another order from “Nick” in the next few days, but nothing came along at first.
My landlord was pleasantly surprised that I actually paid on time.
Then, on the day after my rent, right before bed I checked the app. There it was. “Only” 500$ that time, but it was still for the same thing, only a bottle of water.
There was no note or comment on the order, they just wanted it by the door. I instantly took it, glad nobody else saw it before me.
The same guy was working at the gas station that night, Andrew. He tried to chat with me but I was eager to get out of there and make as much money as I would on a perfect week in one night.When I got to the pink house, there was a light on upstairs. I couldn’t see through the window, but I heard something like muffled hip hop music coming from up top. I left the bottle on the front step, took the picture to confirm the delivery and then left.
The next night, there was another order from Nick waiting for me at 11. 500$ again. I was glad nobody took it before me again. A bottle, and a new item that time. Just a question mark. A glitch? It didn’t matter, I’d find out. A note on the order said “I hope now you can trust me.”
The same clerk at the gas station gave me a bottle and a small paper bag. The delivery instructions said to knock three times and leave it by the front step.
That night, nobody appeared to be there, the bottom floor windows were still covered with tarp. I knocked, waited a bit to see if someone would come. I wanted to thank Nick, ask him why the heck he was giving such big tips. Nobody came. Why did they ask me to knock? I shrugged, took the pic, drove away.
The next night was more or less the same, a note on the order said “Glad I can rely on you. You can rely on me for the future :)”, water and another question mark item in a paper bag, same clerk, knock three times.
When I pulled away that night, the door opened and a hand reached out to grab the bag. A man’s hand. Nick? They left the water outside.
Same deal the next night, except they dropped the water from the order.
It went on the same way for the next week. On payday I made more in one week than I usually did in a month.
Obviously the whole time I was still a little apprehensive, but the cash quenched my doubt and unease.
Why was nobody else taking the orders?
Just what exactly was I delivering in the bag? I figured it must be drugs or something kind of shady. But I’ll be honest, I didn’t care at the time. The money was good. Too good. They could buy drugs or whatever, I was on cloud nine with all that cash, and nothing had gone wrong up until that point. I just didn’t want it to ever stop.
The house would usually be quiet or empty, but sometimes I could hear someone moving inside, muffled TV noises or music. Two different people usually came to the door, the girl who was always zoned out, and a laid-back guy that must have been around thirty.
The only question I ever asked the guy was, “You Nick?”
He laughed, “Nah man, I’m Nick’s…” he looked off in the distance, looking for the right word, his mouth dropped open and the pause went on for an uncomfortably long time, “Buddy… Yeah,” he chuckled, “Buddy. Name’s Matt.”
I didn’t press further, “Alright, well next time you see Nick, thank him for me.”
“Thank him? He should be thanking you!” he laughed uproariously and closed the door after wishing me goodnight.
The day after or the next, the order had a comment that said, “Proud of you ;) we can keep this going as long as you keep me proud :)”
Sounded good to me.
Now, by that point, my curiosity was beginning to overwhelm me. What the hell was in that bag? I tried to ignore it, but it finally started to gnaw at me, and when i pulled over off the exit ramp, I couldn’t not know anymore. I opened the bag up, discreetly.
The first thing that caught my eye was something metallic. There was a small bundle of parchment paper underneath it. I took the metal thing out… it looked like one of those medallions they gave out at school sports. On the front, there was a picture. A face.
There was nothing strange about the picture, and that’s exactly what made it seem so weird. It was a guy, maybe in his mid-twenties, clean shaven, short black hair. It looked like a photo from a yearbook.What the heck even was it? Why would anybody be paying me 500$ to deliver something like this? Were all the orders like that? No, they had to be something else. But what the heck even…
I laughed, unsure of what to think, relieved it wasn’t some drugs or who knows what, when I caught something poking out of the bundle of parchment paper.
This voice deep inside of me was begging me to just put the medal back in, close the bag back up and carry on like normal.
But… I gently opened the paper a tiny bit, and my whole body went cold, like all the blood had been drained out of me in an instant. A fingernail poked out of the paper, and… I gagged… the very tip of a finger, the fingernail pried off of it. Moving automatically, driven by morbid curiosity, I revealed four more sets of fingernails and fingertips. There wasn’t much blood, it seemed to have been sterilized. I sat there without moving, without breathing, without my heart beating for I don’t know how long.
Then, I screamed.
What the fuck was it?
What did it mean? Those fingers, they had to belong to that guy on the medallion, right? Was he dead? Or worse than dead?
Then… was that what I was delivering every night? How many? How many fingers? Body parts? How many… how many people were dead or worse?
I felt culpable, and then that’s when the attempts at rationalization flooded in.
A joke. It had to be a joke. It was fake!
I felt the fingertips.
They were real.
Nobody would pay me 500$ a night for a joke.
It was fucking real. It was all too good to be true after all.
I looked into the neutral expression of the man on the medallion, horror in my eyes. How had he died? Why? What had caused him to have this happen to him?
A car passed by slowly, the high-beams rolling through my windows. I ducked down, placed the medallion pack in the bag and shut it tight when the car was gone.
I stared at it like it was an armed bomb. And I guess it may as well have been.
What had I been assisting in? Was it the mob? Some fucking cult or something?
The face of the probably dead man stared at me in my mind’s eye.
And… what was I going to do?
I sat there shivering for at least another ten minutes, then I decided. I’d deliver it that night, then delete the fucking app, and never look back. I should have called the police then and there, but I wasn’t thinking straight and I was worried that I might be found guilty, an accomplice to whatever the fuck was happening. And… truth be told… the allure of the money was still glimmering in me.
I’m selfish, I’m greedy, I’m a bastard. I’ll admit it.
That, and… I was scared. I was already late. Thing’s would go more smoothly if I delivered it like normal, then called the police after… and got more money one last time.
“Proud of you ;) we can keep this going as long as you keep me proud :)”
The note echoed in my mind. I should have backed away, but the siren’s call of wealth kept me going further into hell…