The Delivery Driver

Ethan stared at the phone in his hand,pulse hammering in his ears.The voice of a male,calm and chilling echoed in his mind.

"He shouldn't have talked to you."

But Callum hadn't said a word. Ethan hadn't even gotten the chance to ask him anything. Someone else had answered. Someone who knew who he was. Knew what he was calling about.

He tapped redial. Straight to voicemail. Again. And again.

By the third attempt, his hands were trembling.

He tossed the phone onto the couch and turned to the package on the kitchen counter. It sat there like it was watching him, wrapped in plain brown paper.

He pulled a knife from the drawer, sliced it open carefully. Inside was a smaller box, tightly sealed, and within that,was a plain black notebook.

No branding. No pages filled in. Just a single line scrawled on the first page in blocky, slanted handwriting:

"Deliver this to 112 Granger Street .Do not open again."

He blinked. Was this the delivery? Or just instructions for the next one?

He flipped through the notebook, searching for clues. Every other page was blank. Clean. As if it had been bought fresh. But there was something else,tucked at the very back, almost missed.

A polaroid photo.

It showed the same man from the alley,the one in the soaked hoodie who never blinked. Only now, he was standing in front of what looked like a basement door, holding a flashlight and staring straight at the camera. His face was still obscured, but the energy in the image was wrong. Too still. Too deliberate.

Written across the bottom of the photo, in the same blocky handwriting;

"He's watching you now."

Ethan dropped the photo like it burned.

He turned on every light in the apartment. Checked the locks again. Looked through the peephole twice. Paranoia crawled up his spine like cold fingers. He tried to convince himself it was some elaborate prank. Maybe someone from the courier service playing games. But no one had access to his phone. No one knew about Callum.

And no prank ran this deep.

The silence in the apartment grew too loud, so he turned on the TV. Didn't care what was on. Just something to cut through the quiet. A sitcom was playing—laugh track, bright colors, fake lives. He watched it without hearing a thing.

That night, he didn't sleep.

When morning came, Brinlake was under a low, grey sky. The kind that made it feel like the city had hung its head in grief.

Ethan dressed in layers, slid the notebook into his jacket pocket, and left with the polaroid still sitting on the kitchen counter. He didn't want it on him. Didn't want it near him.

Granger Street wasn't far,just across the canal, past the old garment district. A part of town that felt like it had been forgotten by time. The buildings sagged with age, their bricks dark with mold and soot. The people moved slowly here, like they were wading through some invisible weight.

He found 112 easily. It was a boarded-up newsstand, long since abandoned. Faded signs still clung to the glass like desperate memories,Cigarettes. Scratch Cards. Cold Drinks.

He checked the address again. 112 Granger.

Right place.

The door was padlocked, but there was a mail slot low to the ground.

Ethan crouched, slid the notebook inside. It fell with a soft thud.

Done.

He stood there for a moment, unsure of what to do next. No text came. No voice in his ear. Just the sound of passing cars and the ever-present wind that seemed to whisper through Brinlake's bones.

He turned to leave and nearly walked straight into a man watching him from across the street.

Not the hoodie guy. Someone else.

Clean-shaven. Bald. Black trench coat. Staring. No phone. No bag. Just standing like a statue, like he'd been carved into the sidewalk. And again—that stillness.

Ethan moved quickly. Not running, but close.

He didn't look back until he'd crossed the bridge and was halfway through the square. When he did, the man was gone.

Back at his apartment, a new envelope was waiting for him. Slipped under his door.

He froze.

No footsteps in the hall. No knock. Just… silence. He checked the peephole again. Empty corridor. He bent slowly, picked it up.

Inside was a small slip of paper.

"Three more."

No explanation. No context.

Just that.

Three more what?

Deliveries?

Warnings?

He poured a drink even though it was barely noon. His hand trembled as he sipped it, trying to make sense of what was happening. Somewhere along the line, he'd stepped into something he didn't understand,something bigger than just a mistake at a drop-off or a wrong address.

It felt like a game. But the kind that didn't end. The kind that chewed people up.

He opened his laptop, typed Callum's name into a search engine. No social media. No recent posts. Not even a LinkedIn profile. Just a few old mentions on courier forums about how he got "obsessed" and started saying wild things about secret deliveries and people vanishing. Most of the threads had been locked or deleted. Others made jokes about tinfoil hats and ghost trucks.

But one post stood out. Dated almost six months ago.

"Anyone else getting those unmarked drops? One of my old crew went missing after his third."

The username was Courier93.

Ethan stared at the screen.

Three more.

The message clicked into place, ice flooding his veins.

He hadn't started a game. He'd stepped into a chain. One that had rules. One that others had followed,and disappeared because of it.

And now, he had three more left.