Harold peered through the glass, hunched over the wheel as he drove through the downpour. His hands guided the rust spotted car through the storm uneasily, and as his vehicle rattled to a halt at a stop sign, He sighed and looked up at himself in the mirror. A tired man in his 30's with hazel eyes glared back.
"Right," Harold mumbled as he picked up his list of address off the pizza stacked on his passenger seat. "Time to get to work." He was proud of his job, and didn't care what other people thought about him. Once he might have held higher career aspirations, but that was before the accident. The memory brought back a twinge of phantom pain, and Harold unconsciously rubbed the scars on his left leg. The crash had left him in need of a leg brace, but the pain wasn't the worst part of that memory. Waking up 4 years later and finding himself with no remaining family and a heap of medical bills took the cake. Still, life goes on, and Harold never considered himself a bitter man.
Putting his foot on the gas, Harold decided to start his run on the outskirts of town. A few minutes later he had already made his first delivery, a young couple with a small child whose eyes were affixed on his leg with an undisguised look of horror and curiosity. The brace never hurt the tips.
Harold continued on his run, heading into downtown. The rain began to let up and he rolled down his windows, enjoying the scent of the fresh evening. Traffic had died down, and the street lights were illuminated as the sun dipped behind the skyscrapers. Harold turned past a deserted parking lot and stopped waiting for the traffic light, appreciating the quiet that could seldom be found in the middle of the city.
A flash in the parking lot caught his eye, and Harold looked to see a pretty girl in her 20's standing next to a heavy set man who was holding what looked like a cell phone up to her eyes. Her face was frozen in a dopy grin and her gaze was clearly locked on the man's phone. She swayed gently to an invisible breeze, her slim frame seeming weightless in her yellow dress.
Harold thought that the man looked to be in his 60's, and clearly didn't take care of himself. He was overweight, balding, and wearing stained sweatpants. Harold watched as the man leaned over her, whispering. Harold considered the scene strange, however living downtown himself he had witnessed far stranger. He was just above to depart when the man dropped the phone with a muffled grunt.
As he watched, the man fell to a knee and clutched his chest. The girl continued staring into space with that same grin, apparently oblivious to the scene before her. The man dropped his phone which briefly flashed light in strange patterns before going blank.
Fearing some kind of medical emergency, Harold quickly put his car into gear and drove alongside the couple. Slowly extracting himself, he watched the man slump over, and Harold began to hobble toward him.
"Hello? Do you need help?" Asked Harold as he approached. Something about this scene was not right, and he was painfully aware that he wasn't going to be able to carry this man back to the car.
The man, curled at the girl's feet, gave no response and continued gasping and shuddering. The girl continued to pay him no mind as Harold reached down to feel the clammy skin. Just as he touched him, the man gave one last shuddering breath and fell silent.
"Help me! Call an ambulance!" shouted Harold. In response, the girl blinked and looked down at him before calmly turning away and walking out of the parking lot. Harold considered the man at his feet, reaching for the phone he had dropped, his own having been broken months ago. The phone was larger than normal, and not a brand that Harold had seen before.
"Must be some Chinese model," muttered Harold under his breath. It had a single button on the side with a large screen that was slightly curved. Pressing it, the device flashed yellow, and two glowing dots appeared. The words "Primed" appeared briefly, followed by "subject exposure in 3...2...1." The device began emitting more strange light patterns and Harold began to feel light headed.
Harold was startled back into reality by the sound of an ambulance approaching. He wondered briefly who had called it, before absent mindedly slipping the device into his back pocket as the crew soon arrived. Harold waved them down, grimly noting that the man had not started breathing again.
The man was quickly loaded onto a stretcher, however Harold could tell that the workers were just going through the motions at this point. He explained to Ambulance crew that he was just a bystander, and they waved him on. As he got back into his car, he looked at his clock, startled to see that he had been there for 20 minutes. Sitting down he felt the device in his back pocket too late, and as he struggled to stand to give it to the ambulance crew, they sped away.
Harold finished his remaining deliveries in a daze. The tips were terrible due to his time delay, and he rather dejectedly returned back to the shop. Frank's pizza was a typically greasy small pizza joint, and his boss Frank seemed to fit the stereotype of a fat, disliked small business owner.
He hadn't even managed to get out of his car before the front door flew open and Frank bellowed out
"It took you long enough! This is what I get for being a good guy and hiring a cripple!"
Frank stood in the doorway with his too small white shirt barely covering his large hairy belly. His arms waved threateningly, and he furiously grabbed his jacket from a hangar near the door.
"I can't fucking deal with you right now, I really can't. You have no idea how much money I lost tonight because of you. I'm going home. Close up the shop, and I'm not paying overtime!"
