Part Three: Sinker
My phone chimes a third time and I tap the screen to accept the order: a large hot coffee and a poppy seed bagel with cream cheese from Anton’s. The fare is a significantly more modest, though still respectable sum of fifteen dollars. I pick up the order and begin driving towards the address. The GPS tells me I have nine minutes until my arrival. Nine minutes to prepare myself.
Nine minutes to live.
I can’t spend the whole drive thinking of that, so I get Abby on the phone. She answers on the first ring.
“Hey, what’s up? Everything okay?”
“I don’t know… It might be nothing. I got an order at Anton’s and… I can’t really explain it. I just have a weird feeling about this one.”
The line is quiet for a moment, and I know she feels what I’m feeling. Perhaps she hears it in my voice.
“Well if I’ve learned anything, it’s that you should usually trust weird feelings,” she says. “Most of the time, there’s something to them. I’ll have patrol tighten up the perimeter. We have the address, so we’ll be no more than a quarter mile away by the time you get there—just around the corner.”
I pull into the empty driveway of a freshly built single-story Cape and ring the doorbell. There’s no one home, from the look of it. I wonder for a moment if I have the wrong address, but that’s not it. I’m delivering breakfast to an empty house. Maybe th—
An empty house.
I close my eyes and try to tell myself that the customer is just out somewhere and on their way back. But I know the truth. I knew it before and I know it now.
He’s slippery.
I step away from the door and scan the lawn for something I hadn’t thought to look for at first. It isn’t there. I turn back to face the house again and look in the windows—not there either. But when I approach the door again, I catch the corner of something peeking out of the bushes. I slide it out from its hiding place, and see exactly what I feared: a plastic sign with fresh dirt caked on its thin wire stakes.
FOR SALE
by owner
CALL TODAY!
My earpiece crackles and suddenly Abby’s voice is in my head.
“You’ve been there for over a minute—everything okay?”
“I uhh…” I’m frozen in place, eyes glued to the sign. I’ve experienced this every night in my dreams, spent every waking moment in anticipation of it, and now it’s happening. And just like in the dreams, I can’t move.
“Come on, you’ve got to give me something, that’s the only way this works. Are you okay?” Abby asks again.
Then, there’s another voice.
“I hate to break it to you, but the house isn’t quite ready for viewing yet.”
It’s him, standing in the doorway, grinning at his own stupid remark.
“In fact,” he adds, “I don’t think it will be for some time.”
Abby is back on the earpiece: “That’s it, you’ve got ten seconds to tell me you’re okay or we’re coming in. What’s your status!?”
What happens in the span of these ten seconds is a matter of life and death.
One
He takes one step towards me and pulls a knife out from behind him. I can’t convince myself fast enough that this is real. This is the kind of thing that happens to someone else. But it isn’t happening to someone else. It’s happening to me and it’s happening right now.
Come on, move! You have to go. Now. GO! I scream into the silent chamber of thought. But I remain still.
He takes another step.
Two
I stand there, gripping the cup of coffee and the paper bag containing the bagel in one hand as a grin stretches across his face. I still can’t move. Now is my only chance to run, but I can’t bring myself to take a single step.
Three
My stomach hitches up into a loose knot and I feel a sharp twisting pain as its contents begin to swirl. The bag slips from my fingers.
He steps again.
Four
He reaches out, scrunches the front of my shirt in a tight fist, and begins to drag me through the door.
Five
I feel completely sick now, but I finally find my voice.
“Y—you don’t have to do this! Th-th-they’re going to come for you!”
“GET OUT of there! Use the tas—!” Abby begins to say, but I don’t hear the rest. He slaps away the earpiece and it rolls to the floor.
Six
But I heard enough. The taser! I forgot they gave me one. It’s so tiny that I put it on my keychain. I unclip my keys as he turns to face me. We’re in the house now and he’s closed the door.
Seven
I point the taser at him and squeeze the button. Nothing happens. I go to squeeze it again, but it’s already too late.
He’s swinging the knife.
Eight
He brings it down fast and before I can even feel the pain, the taser drops to the floor in a puddle of blood. It rocks back and forth on the floorboards, still cradled in my disembodied hand.
When I look at my arm, the sight of what remains is too much to bear and I suddenly feel more angry and aware of my body than I ever have in my life.
Nine
I scream and hurl myself backwards to create a pocket of space between us while I think of what to do. I have nothing—not even both of my hands—and it won’t be long now before I bleed out.
Wait. I do have something. There’s the coffee. Even as my right hand was being chopped off, somehow my left kept dutifully gripping the cup.
Anything can be a weapon if you’re desperate enough.
Ten
I squeeze the cup just enough to pop the lid off and fling the steaming contents in his direction. As the scalding beverage rains down upon his head, threatening to blind and boil, he cries out and falls to the floor, clawing desperately at his face.
“Here’s your fucking coffee, you sick bastard!” I scream.
Then I throw the empty cup at him, bolt out the door, and collapse onto the front lawn.
Time!
I lay there, about to faint, when I remember my severed hand. I rip off my shirt, wrap it around the stump of my forearm, and wait as the sound of approaching sirens begins to swell. Behind me I hear the crashing of furniture and breaking of glass. I try to prepare myself to move again, but he doesn’t come out.
Within ninety seconds, Abby and a team of a dozen officers are pouring out of armored vans and onto the lawn.
“You’re alive! Are you hurt? …my God, your arm!” She says all at once as she kneels in the grass next to me.
I feel myself slipping fast, but I manage to point with my only hand towards the door. “He… he’s still in the house” I say. “So’s my hand… you’ve got to.. you’ve..”
My vision narrows and the adrenaline that’s kept me going this long is rapidly draining away. The last thing I remember in a final moment of awareness is the officer stepping back out onto the lawn.
“We’ve searched the entire house… He’s gone.”
*****
I’m parked behind Chili’s watching the last sliver of sun sink into the night, waiting to see where my next eight dollars will come from. Just as I was before. It’s been six months since I passed out on the lawn that day, and the whole thing is probably as over as it’s going to be. Yet I’m not sure it will ever quite feel that way knowing he’s still out there somewhere. I absently clench and release my hands over the steering wheel as I’ve done ever since I got the prosthetic. In return for my service they sprung for a Skywalker-style myoelectric right hand. A consolation prize for being the only person to ever survive The Sugar Hill Slicer—and for almost catching him.
As the blue of the sky darkens closer to black, I sit in my little car and wonder how anyone is supposed to feel safe in this world. I think of how many billions of people there are sharing this one fragile planet, and how we all go about each day assuming we’re safe, but in truth it’s impossible know. How many times in our life might we be inches away from death and not even know it? How many of the people that we interact with online are actually who they claim to be? The questions are endless and terrifying, but thankfully my phone interrupts the thought.
A text from Abby:
Movie tomorrow? Skip orders?
Sure. Don’t have to twist my arm on that one haha ;)
A few seconds go by, so I add:
…what, too soon?
You’re awful lol. WAY too soon! Anyway, I’ll pick you up at six. Looking forward to it :)
I smile stupidly at the screen, thinking about how funny I am and wondering if Abby’s as into me as I’m into her and maybe life is finally looking up an—
And then the chime goes off.
Pickup: Anton’s
$37
Alan P.
(special notes: decaf, *iced*)
Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/w74vwl/death_by_delivery/
Part 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/w90d07/death_by_delivery_part_2/