New York, 9:34 PM
Katrine,
United States
I had been roaming the arteries of New York and its job boards for two months now—those digital cemeteries where the ambitions of desperate graduates go to die. Two months of pretending everything was fine, that it was temporary, that the big city would eventually notice me and reach out. Two months of polite silence in the face of questions no one asked me, because no one really knew I was there.
I hardly ever spoke of it, but I held a degree in financial management and accounting. I had even worked as a manager for a food company before slamming the door because the place didn't suit me. A brilliant decision, in retrospect. I now looked at that position in the rearview mirror with the kind of tenderness one reserves for things they destroyed themselves.
What had I come to New York for? I knew almost no one. Truth be told, I had never really known anyone—not in middle school, not in high school. I had been a ghost, and ghosts don't have address books. Growing up, I could have changed. I could have learned. Instead, I continued to let people go at the exact moment they started to get close, as if proximity were a threat my instinct refused to accept. A sort of inverse survival reflex—protecting myself from the living rather than from danger.
If it weren't for Arabelle, where would I be today?
— Delivery heading south! Katrine, this one's for you! Gregory barked from the register.
He was juggling three phone calls, a customer complaint, and the chaotic state of grace unique to Friday nights. The pizzeria was a boiling cauldron—orders flying, the smell of melting mozzarella, doors slamming. It was pizza party day, and clearly, the whole city was hungry. I gave him a wave before shoving my earbuds in.
Right now, I was a pizza delivery girl. Someone had to do it.
I had landed this job through an ad on the pizzeria's website—the only concrete response two months of applications had yielded. When I showed up, Elie, the owner, looked at me with the skepticism of a man who didn't quite believe what he was seeing. He didn't hide his mistrust, which, paradoxically, made him almost likable—at least he was honest. There had been a trial week. Since I performed my work without error or drama, they had eventually accepted me, somewhat grudgingly, like one adopts a stray cat they first tried to shoo away three times.
I understood them, in a way. The majority of their drivers were young men. The women here worked the front desk or served in the dining room. Reserved territory, apparently. I took the boxes—about ten, artfully stacked—and wedged them under my arm. A party for young people, probably. Someone, somewhere, was going to eat pizza and laugh loudly, and I was going to bring it to them.
I hopped onto the burgundy scooter emblazoned with the BonPizza logo. In English, it meant "Good Pizza"—but after a few years in Montreal, where I had learned French through immersion and cafe customers who didn't know a word of English, I also read the intention behind the words. And the intention here was clear: there was indeed a spelling mistake in the name. I preferred not to mention it—it gave the place an almost innocent charm, that of things done with enthusiasm and without proofreading.
I started the engine and slipped between vehicles like a comma in a long, congested sentence.
The GPS took me far out of the city. Very far. The urban density progressively faded; buildings gave way to trees, streetlights to stars. This client must have had a comfortable budget to have a delivery made at such a distance—the delivery fee was going to be steep. I only encountered another vehicle every ten minutes. The darkness thickened around me, pierced only by the scooter's small headlight beam and the pale light of the moon.
A B-movie horror atmosphere. Subcategory: The girl who really shouldn't be here.
I was almost tempted to turn back—but the pizzas were getting cold and my professional pride, fragile as it was, still stood tall. I had a mini-knife in my boot, anyway. The precaution of a reasonable woman.
A large black gate finally loomed out of the darkness. I stopped at the intercom, announced the reason for my visit in a neutral voice—BonPizza delivery—and waited. The gate opened slowly, with the solemnity of a gothic film's opening scene. An imposing manor stood at the end of a private driveway. My tires crunched on the manicured asphalt as I moved forward, somewhat reluctantly.
I rang the bell. A low, deep sound, worthy of a cathedral. Then the door creaked open, letting out a flood of pop music—that delicious contrast between gothic architecture and the carefree sound of a commercial chorus—and a dark-haired head.
A young man with blue eyes, curly hair, a nose piercing, and a pink sweatshirt stared at me for a moment. He opened the door wide with the quiet confidence of those who have never had to doubt themselves.
— Good evening. That will be—
He took the boxes and handed me a gold card without letting me finish my sentence. Gold. As in: I don't look at the price. I processed the transaction and wished him a good evening. He disappeared back into the light and the music.
I smiled, despite myself—a nostalgic smile, a bit bitter. I had never been invited to that kind of party at his age. To be honest, the only party I had a clear memory of was my senior prom—and even then, I had spent almost the entire evening sitting near the soda cup table, a spectator of other people's lives. I chuckled softly inside my helmet. Pathetic. But consistent.
I set off again on the deserted road, the trees on either side forming a dark vault above me. It was getting late. The engine hummed in the silence of the forest.
That was when a scream tore through the night.
A human scream—high-pitched, desperate, ripped from someone truly suffering. I jolted violently, lost control for a fraction of a second, and hit a tree with relative elegance. The scooter came to a halt with a dull thud.
Great.
I removed my helmet slowly, massaging my temple. Silence had returned, but it had a different texture now—dense, charged. That scream was real. Someone, somewhere in those trees, needed help.
Or not. Option B: It wasn't my problem, I'd call the police, and I'd go home.
Except Option B didn't seem in any hurry to impose itself.
I took a long breath, as if the fresh forest air could give me common sense—or at the very least, courage—and I plunged into the vegetation. I turned on my phone flashlight. The light poked holes in the blackness in small slices. No point in trying to be discreet: it was autumn, the ground was carpeted with dead leaves, and every one of my steps rang out like a public announcement. Katrine is here. Katrine is approaching. Katrine is terrified but refuses to admit it.
I stopped dead. A ragged, labored breath reached me through the trees.
I slipped behind a thick trunk and looked.
In front of me, a man was crawling on the ground with the tragic determination of someone who knows they shouldn't be able to move anymore. The light was poor, but it was enough to reveal the trail he left in his wake. Dark red, glistening on the dead leaves.
Blood. No mistake about it.
I wanted to rush forward—primary instinct, human reflex—but his voice stopped me cold.
— Mercy. No. Please...
His voice was broken, barely a whisper. He wasn't talking to me. He was talking to something—someone—above him.
A shadow materialized over the man on the ground. Tall. Calm. It held a weapon with the casualness of someone who has done this often and no longer attaches much importance to it.
Holy mother of god.
My brain formulated the thought with remarkable clarity, then decided to go into standby mode while the situation unfolded.
The man on the ground seemed to be choking, his pleas reduced to a thin thread of sound. The shadow leaned over slightly, as if out of academic curiosity. I could discern a smile. Not a smile of pleasure, not of anger—something colder, emptier. The kind of smile that doesn't reach the eyes.
— I beg of you... give me a second chance,the man on the ground sobbed.
A silence. Then the shadow's voice dropped into the freezing air like a verdict:
— Idon't believe in luck.
The detonation echoed through the trees with a dull violence, its echo bouncing throughout the forest.
I jumped. My foot found a hole in the ground. The crunch of my dead leaves exploded in the silence that followed the gunshot.
Crap.
I froze. Too late.
When I looked up, two irises of an indescribable green—not the green of forests or gemstones, something else, something that had no name in my palette—were staring at me from the darkness. No surprise in that gaze. No hesitation. Just total, cold, absolute attention. That of a predator who has just located something interesting.
My heart skipped a full beat.
Then I ran.
I ran like I hadn't run since childhood—without strategy, without technique, with the sole primitive intention of putting distance between myself and those green eyes. I dodged trees, rocks, and roots that reached for my ankles. I didn't look behind me. I refused to know. Was he following me? Was he running? Was he already ahead of me, waiting quietly between two trees with that icy smile?
He's going to kill me. I'm going to die as a pizza delivery girl. My epitaph will be engraved on a cardboard box with the address of a party I wasn't even invited to.
A grey line appeared through the trees—the asphalt of the road. The red scooter, faithful and dented, parked against its tree. I threw myself onto it, turned the key with a trembling hand, started it, and sped off down the road without looking in the rearview mirror once.
The wind whipped my face. My heart hammered against my ribs. My vision began to blur slightly at the edges, as if my brain were politely deciding that now was a good time to crash.
I recognized, through a growing fog, the pizzeria logo. I parked the scooter in the lot with an approximate hand, pushed open the front door, and walked in on legs that didn't really belong to me anymore.
I heard buzzing. My body suddenly weighed the weight of the entire night.
I had just enough time to see Elie's frantic face before the floor decided to come up and meet me.
And I went under.