The vision hit Marcus Chen between the stairs and the doorbell, right when his left knee – the bad one from that old construction site fall – gave its familiar twinge. One second he was holding a bag of pad thai and tom yum soup from Bangkok Bites, the next he was watching Mrs. Katherine Webb drown in her own living room.
Not in water, though. That would have been too simple, too clean for what Marcus saw. She was drowning in silence – thick, viscous silence that poured from her flat-screen TV like molasses, filling her lungs, her throat, spilling from her eyes in black tears while she sat in her recliner, remote control still clutched in her hand.
Then the vision snapped off like someone had changed the channel, and Marcus was back on the porch, heart hammering, the food bag rustling against his chest where he'd clutched it like a life preserver.
Mrs. Webb opened the door. Same woman from the vision – steel-gray bob, cardigan despite the Seattle September warmth, that practiced smile of someone who'd learned to be polite to service workers without actually seeing them.
"Oh good, you're here. I was starting to worry." She reached for the bag.
Marcus pulled back instinctively. "Ma'am, are you... are you okay?"
The smile flickered. "Of course. Why wouldn't I be?"
"Do you live alone?"
Now the smile died entirely. "That's really none of your business." Her hand was still extended, waiting.
What could he say? *Lady, I just saw you suffocate on your own loneliness while watching Netflix?* Marcus handed over the bag. "Just... maybe call someone tonight. A friend or family. Don't just sit by yourself watching TV."
She was already closing the door. "Two stars," she muttered. "Definitely two stars."
Marcus trudged back to his 2011 Honda Civic, the one with the cracked windshield and the passenger door that wouldn't open from the inside. Four years he'd been doing this gig, ever since Chen & Associates Architecture went belly-up and took his savings, his reputation, and most of his marriage with it. Four years of suburban porches and apartment building lobbies, of "leave it at the door" and "call when you arrive," of watching his ratings hover around 4.7 stars like a grade he could never quite improve.
But he'd never seen anything like what just happened. Never seen through the thin walls of someone's life into the void beneath.
His phone buzzed. New order: two burritos and a quesadilla from Taqueria Authentica, pickup in fifteen minutes, delivery to Capitol Hill. Marcus accepted it – rent was due in five days, and Lily needed new soccer cleats. His daughter had mentioned it last weekend, trying to sound casual like it didn't matter, but he'd seen her watching the other girls at practice, seen her tucking the separated sole of her old ones underneath her foot.
The visions had started three weeks ago. First one was mild – just a flash of a customer's apartment filled with yellow butterflies while he handed over Chinese takeout. He'd written it off as exhaustion. Twelve-hour shifts would mess with anyone's head. But they kept coming, getting stronger, more vivid, more disturbing.
By the time he pulled up to Taqueria Authentica, the lunch rush was winding down. Tommy Nguyen's electric bike was already there, leaning against the brick wall like a faithful dog waiting for its owner. Tommy burst out of the restaurant door, his arms full of bags, that perpetual grin plastered across his twenty-two-year-old face.
"Marcus! My man! You look like shit."
"Thanks. You sweet-talker."
Tommy laughed, already loading his delivery backpack. Kid was making twice what Marcus did, zipping through traffic on that bike, taking three orders to Marcus's one. But he never rubbed it in, never made it weird. Just about the only person in Marcus's life who didn't.
"You okay though? For real?" Tommy's expression shifted to something approaching concern. "You've been spacey lately. More than usual, I mean."
Marcus wanted to tell him. Wanted to say: *I'm seeing things, Tommy. Terrible things. Beautiful things. True things.* But what came out was: "Just tired. You know how it is."
"I know you're too old for this shit." Tommy swung onto his bike. "Should've taken that desk job at Amazon when you had the chance."
"Designing warehouses? I'd rather deliver food to them."
"Pride's expensive, bro." But Tommy said it with affection. "Hey, you heard about those missing persons cases? Three people in the last month, all from different neighborhoods. Cops think it's unrelated, but Reddit's going crazy with theories."
"Reddit's always going crazy with theories."
"True that." Tommy kicked off, then called back over his shoulder. "Take care of yourself, Marcus. World's got enough ghosts without you joining them."
Then he was gone, weaving through traffic, and Marcus was alone with his order and the growing certainty that something was fundamentally wrong with the city around him. Not just the usual urban decay, the tent cities and the tech bros and the coffee shops that used to be dive bars. Something underneath all that, something hungry.
The drive to Capitol Hill took him past the old office, the building that used to house Chen & Associates. Someone had turned it into a WeWork space. Marcus tried not to look, but he always did. Like picking at a scab.
The customer lived in one of those new micro-apartments, the ones they advertised as "efficient living spaces" but were really just gentrified tenements. Barely bigger than Lily's bedroom at her mother's house. Marcus climbed to the fourth floor, his knee protesting every step, and knocked.
"Just leave it!" came a voice from inside.
"I need a signature. The order has alcohol."
Shuffling footsteps, multiple locks disengaging. The door opened three inches, held by a chain. A young man's face appeared in the gap – hollow cheeks, three-day stubble, eyes that hadn't seen real sleep in weeks.
"I didn't order alcohol."
Marcus checked his phone. "Says here one Mexican beer with the—"
The vision slammed into him mid-sentence.
The same young man, but standing in a vast field of black glass. No, not glass – screens. Thousands of phone screens stretching to the horizon, each one showing a different version of his life. In one, he was laughing at a party. In another, giving a presentation to a boardroom. Another showed him getting married. But in all of them, he was alone. Even surrounded by people, even in the wedding photo with a faceless bride, he was fundamentally, terminally alone. And something was moving between the screens, something vast and patient, feeding on that loneliness like a spider draining a fly.
"—the order," Marcus finished, his voice cracking.
"What?" The young man was staring at him. "Dude, are you having a stroke?"
"What's your name?"
"What?"
"Your name. Please."
"David. Why?"
Marcus shoved the bag through the gap. "David, when's the last time you went outside? Like, really outside. Not just to get food or go to work, but just... to be outside?"
David's face darkened. "Is this some kind of corporate wellness thing? Because I'm not—"
"Do you have anyone you can call? Family? Friends?"
"Okay, you're freaking me out now."
"Good. Be freaked out. Be freaked out enough to leave your apartment tonight. Go to a bar, a museum, a fucking McDonald's, I don't care. Just don't stay here alone with your screens."
Marcus was already backing away, leaving David holding the bag, mouth open. Another two-star review, probably. Maybe one star. Didn't matter. What mattered was the certainty growing in his gut that something was hunting in Seattle, using the city's loneliness like a trail of breadcrumbs.
His phone buzzed. Three more orders waiting. The algorithm didn't care about his visions or his fears. It just wanted the food to keep moving, the great circulatory system of the gig economy pumping nutrients through the city's veins.
Marcus accepted them all.
The next two deliveries were normal – blessedly, boringly normal. A family ordering pizza, kids fighting over the last slice before he'd even left the porch. An elderly couple getting Indian food, the husband making the same joke about spice levels that Marcus had heard a thousand times. No visions, no drowning silence, no fields of screens. Just food and money changing hands, the simple transaction that kept the world turning.
But the third delivery took him to Wallingford, to a house he recognized before the GPS even announced his arrival. It was Katherine Webb's place. Same porch, same doorbell, same everything – except the porch light was off, and newspapers had piled up on the welcome mat.
The order was under a different name: M. Foster. Delivery instructions: "Ring bell three times, then leave food on porch."
Marcus sat in his car, engine idling, staring at the dark house. Every instinct told him to cancel the order, to drive away, to let some other driver deal with whatever was waiting behind that door. But he thought of Tommy's voice: *World's got enough ghosts without you joining them.*
He grabbed the food – Vietnamese this time, pho and spring rolls – and walked up the familiar steps. His knee didn't twinge this time. Nothing hurt. Everything felt numb, like he was walking through cotton.
Three rings, as instructed. The doorbell sounded wrong, muffled, as if the house itself was holding its breath. Marcus set the food down and started to leave.
The door opened.
"Marcus Chen," said the thing wearing Katherine Webb's face. It looked like her – same gray bob, same cardigan – but its eyes were screens, infinite black screens reflecting nothing. "I've been waiting for you."
Marcus's hand found his phone in his pocket, muscle memory from a thousand deliveries, thumb already seeking the emergency call button.
"That won't help," it said, stepping onto the porch. "Nothing in your little electronic world can help. I am older than electricity, older than the wheel. I was here when the first human looked at another human and felt alone."
"What did you do to Mrs. Webb?"
"I gave her what she wanted. An end to the loneliness. She's part of me now, her isolation feeding me like all the others. David will join us soon. That boy has such delicious despair, seasoned with years of social media. Do you know what Instagram tastes like, Marcus? It tastes like comparing your insides to everyone else's outsides. Delicious."
Marcus backed down the steps. "The missing people. That's you."
"Missing?" It tilted Katherine Webb's head at an unnatural angle. "They're not missing. They're right here." It tapped its chest, and Marcus heard voices inside – dozens, maybe hundreds, all speaking at once, all saying the same thing: *So alone, so alone, so alone.*
"But you, Marcus Chen, you're special. You can see the feeding before it happens. You're connected to the hunger in a way the others aren't. Why is that, I wonder?"
Marcus thought of his empty apartment, the divorce papers on his kitchen counter, the way Lily looked at him like he was already a ghost. He thought of four years of delivering food to people who never saw his face, of ratings and reviews and algorithmic punishment for being human.
"Because I'm already empty," he said.
The thing smiled with Mrs. Webb's mouth. "Yes. You're already hollowed out. That's why you can see the hollow places in others. But there's still something in you, something I want. That friend of yours, Tommy. He burns so bright. All that youth and optimism. I want to taste it when it turns to ash."
"Stay away from him."
"Or what? You'll give me a bad review?" It laughed, and the sound was like a thousand phones buzzing at once. "You can't stop me, Marcus. I am the space between the connection, the pause before the notification, the refresh that brings nothing new. I am what your city has been building toward all along – the perfect isolation, the ultimate disconnect."
It retreated into the house, Mrs. Webb's form dissolving at the edges like a bad video stream. "Keep delivering, Marcus Chen. Keep bringing food to the lonely. You're doing my work for me."
The door slammed shut.
Marcus stood on the dark porch, shaking. His phone buzzed. Another order. Always another order. He declined it. Then he declined the next one, and the next, watching his acceptance rate plummet, knowing the algorithm would punish him for it later.
He called Tommy. Straight to voicemail. Called again. Nothing.
There was only one person left to call, and she was going to think he was insane. Marcus pulled up Detective Esperanza Delgado's number – she'd given him her card two years ago after his car was broken into, said to call if he remembered anything about the thief. He'd kept it, not sure why.
Now he knew.
She answered on the third ring. "Delgado."
"Detective, this is Marcus Chen. You gave me your card a while back—"
"Mr. Chen, it's nine PM. Unless this is an emergency—"
"The missing persons cases. The three people from different neighborhoods. I know what happened to them."
Silence. Then: "Have you been drinking, Mr. Chen?"
"Katherine Webb. 4487 Densmore Avenue. She's one of them, isn't she? Disappeared last week?"
More silence. When Delgado spoke again, her voice was different. Careful. "How do you know that name? We haven't released it to the media."
"I deliver food. I see things. Please, Detective, I know how this sounds, but people are going to die. My friend Tommy—" His voice cracked. "Something's hunting in the city. It feeds on loneliness, on isolation. It's using the delivery networks, the apps, the whole digital infrastructure to find victims."
"Mr. Chen, where are you right now?"
"Wallingford. Outside Katherine Webb's house. The porch light's off but something's inside, something wearing her face."
"Stay there. Don't go anywhere. Don't approach the house. I'm fifteen minutes away."
She hung up. Marcus sat in his car, watching the dark house, waiting. His phone kept buzzing with order requests, the algorithm growing increasingly insistent. Your acceptance rate is now 45%. Your acceptance rate is now 40%. You may lose access to priority orders.
Thirteen minutes later, an unmarked Crown Victoria pulled up behind him. Detective Delgado got out – shorter than he'd remembered, early thirties, wearing jeans and a Seahawks sweatshirt instead of the suit from their first meeting. She moved like someone who'd learned to be careful, hand resting near where her service weapon would be.
"Mr. Chen. You want to explain what's going on?"
So he did. All of it. The visions, the drowning silence, the thing that wore Katherine Webb's face. Delgado listened without interrupting, her expression unreadable in the streetlight's glow. When he finished, she was quiet for a long moment.
"Show me," she said finally.
"What?"
"The house. Show me what you saw."
They walked up to the porch together. Delgado had a flashlight now, the beam cutting through the darkness. The newspapers were gone. The porch light flickered on as they approached, motion sensor activating. Through the window, Marcus could see a normal living room – TV playing the news, a cat curled on the recliner.
Delgado rang the doorbell.
Katherine Webb answered. The real Katherine Webb, alive and confused and definitely not happy about the late-night visit.
"Can I help you?"
Delgado showed her badge. "Ma'am, I'm sorry to bother you. We had a report of suspicious activity."
"At my house?" Mrs. Webb's eyes found Marcus, narrowed with recognition. "You. You're that delivery driver from earlier. The creepy one who asked if I lived alone." She turned back to Delgado. "Is he stalking me? Because I specifically gave him a bad review and reported him to the app—"
"No ma'am, just a misunderstanding. Sorry to bother you."
They retreated to the street. Marcus's face burned with humiliation. "She was gone. The house was dark. I saw—"
"What you saw," Delgado said carefully, "was a woman who's been home all evening. Who's very much alive and very much considering a restraining order."
"You don't believe me."
"I believe you believe it." She studied him. "When's the last time you slept? Really slept?"
"I'm not crazy."
"I didn't say you were. But this job, the hours you guys work, the stress... it takes a toll. And the missing persons cases – yes, we have three, but they're not connected. One was a domestic situation, one was a runaway teenager, and one was an elderly man with dementia who wandered off. All found, all safe."
"Then what did I see?"
"Maybe what you needed to see." Her voice softened. "Mr. Chen, I looked you up after you called. I know about your business failing, your divorce. I know you're working yourself to death trying to pay child support and stay afloat. Sometimes our brains create explanations for things we can't process any other way."
Marcus wanted to argue, to insist, but the doubt was creeping in. Had he really seen what he thought he saw? Or was his mind finally cracking under the weight of four years of grinding poverty, of watching his life disappear one delivery at a time?
His phone rang. Tommy.
"Marcus! Bro, where are you? I've been trying to reach you for an hour."
"Tommy?" Relief flooded through him. "You're okay?"
"Yeah, why wouldn't I be? Listen, I'm at this customer's place and it's weird as hell. Like, seriously creepy. Can you come? I could use backup."
"Where?"
"Industrial district. Warehouse on Marginal Way. Customer says they'll pay triple for after-hours delivery, but man, this place gives me the shivers."
Delgado was watching Marcus, had heard Tommy's side of the conversation. She shook her head slightly.
"Don't go there," Marcus said. "Tommy, just leave. Cancel the order."
"Can't, already got the food. Plus, triple pay, bro. That's like two hundred bucks for one delivery. But seriously, if you could come—"
The line went dead.
Marcus was already moving toward his car. Delgado caught his arm.
"Mr. Chen—"
"That's not Tommy."
"What?"
"Tommy would never ask for backup. Kid's fearless to the point of stupidity. And he'd never call me 'bro' twice in one conversation. He parcels it out, like he's rationing coolness." Marcus pulled free. "Something's mimicking him. Using his voice."
"Or he's scared and acting different because of it."
"Then come with me. Prove me wrong."
Delgado hesitated. Marcus could see her weighing it – the crazy delivery driver having a breakdown versus the small chance something was actually wrong.
"Fine," she said. "But we take my car. And if this is nothing, you're getting a psychiatric evaluation."
They drove south through the Seattle night, past the stadiums and the port, into the industrial district where the city showed its working bones. Marginal Way was aptly named – the margin of the city, where things were stored and shipped and forgotten.
The warehouse address Tommy had given led them to a building that looked abandoned even by industrial district standards. No lights, no signs, no indication anyone had been there in years. But Tommy's electric bike was parked outside, leaning against the loading dock like always.
"Stay in the car," Delgado said, checking her weapon.
"Like hell."
"Mr. Chen—"
"He's my friend."
She looked like she wanted to argue but didn't. "Fine. Behind me. If I tell you to run, you run."
They approached the loading dock. The door was open, hanging off one hinge. Inside was darkness so complete it seemed solid. Delgado's flashlight barely dented it.
"Seattle PD!" she called. "Anyone in here?"
Tommy's voice came from deeper in the warehouse: "Help me!"
They moved inside. The darkness was wrong – too thick, too heavy, like the silence Marcus had seen drowning Katherine Webb. It clung to them, made each step feel like walking through water.
"Tommy!" Marcus called.
"Marcus? Is that you? I can't move, man. Something's holding me."
They followed the voice, Delgado's flashlight sweeping back and forth. The warehouse was empty – no boxes, no equipment, nothing but concrete and shadows. Then the beam found Tommy.
He was standing in the center of the space, perfectly still, arms at his sides. His eyes were closed.
"Tommy?" Marcus started forward, but Delgado held him back.
"Something's wrong," she said.
Tommy's eyes opened. They were screens – black, infinite screens, just like the thing wearing Katherine Webb's face.
"Hello, Marcus," Tommy's mouth said, but it wasn't Tommy's voice anymore. It was the sound of a thousand phones buzzing, a million notifications arriving at once. "I told you I wanted to taste him. Such bright optimism, turned to perfect despair when he realized no one was coming to save him."
"Let him go," Marcus said.
"He's already gone. They're all gone. Katherine Webb, David from Capitol Hill, so many others. All alone in their little boxes, ordering food, watching screens, never touching another human being. The city built itself into the perfect feeding ground."
Delgado had her weapon out now, pointed at the thing wearing Tommy's face. "Seattle PD. Release the hostage and step back."
It laughed. "You're going to shoot loneliness? Arrest isolation? I am not a person, Detective Esperanza Delgado. I am what your society has created. Every swipe without a match, every unread message, every meal eaten alone while scrolling through other people's perfect lives. I am the gap between the connection you crave and the connection you get."
The darkness began to move, flowing like liquid toward them. Delgado fired three shots. The bullets passed through the thing wearing Tommy's body like it was made of smoke.
"Run!" she shouted, but the darkness was everywhere now, cutting off their escape. It wrapped around them, cold and thick and full of voices – all the lonely people of Seattle crying out at once.
Marcus felt it entering him, trying to hollow him out like the others. But there was a problem. He was already hollow. Already empty. The thing had said it itself.
And you can't feed on nothing.
"You made a mistake," Marcus said, letting the darkness in, letting it try to consume what wasn't there. "You said I was already empty. But that's not quite right. I'm not empty – I'm full of absence. Full of everything I've lost."
The darkness recoiled, tried to pull back, but Marcus held on. He thought of every delivery, every face he'd seen and forgotten, every connection that lasted only as long as it took to hand over a bag of food. He thought of Lily growing up without him, of his ex-wife's new husband playing catch with her in the yard he'd once mowed. He thought of Chen & Associates, of blueprints for buildings that would never be built, dreams that had been crushed into nothing.
"You feed on loneliness," Marcus said. "But I feed loneliness. Every day, I deliver isolation. I bring people what they need to never leave their homes, to never see another human being. I'm not your victim – I'm your competitor."
The thing shrieked, a sound like every phone in the world ringing at once. The darkness began to tear, ripping like fabric. Through the gaps, Marcus could see other places – David's apartment, Katherine Webb's living room, a dozen other locations around the city where the thing had been feeding.
"Choose," Marcus said. "Let them go, or I'll poison your food supply. Every delivery I make, I'll tell them the truth. I'll wake them up. I'll make them see what they're becoming. You think bad reviews hurt my acceptance rate? Wait until I start delivering consciousness along with the pad thai."
For a moment, everything hung in balance. Then Tommy collapsed, gasping, real eyes wide with terror. Around the warehouse, shadows peeled away like old paint, revealing shapes – people, dozens of them, all the missing persons who hadn't been missing at all, just trapped in the thing's web of isolation.
The darkness condensed into a single point, a black hole of loneliness so dense it warped the air around it.
"This city belongs to me," it said, voice fading. "Every year, more screens, more walls, more distance between hearts. You've won nothing. I'll just feed elsewhere. Somewhere with better WiFi."
Then it was gone, leaving only the warehouse, the confused victims, and Detective Delgado staring at Marcus like she'd never seen him before.
"What the hell just happened?" she asked.
"I think," Marcus said, helping Tommy to his feet, "I just delivered my last order."
The aftermath was chaos. Ambulances, statements, reporters who would never get the real story because who would believe it? The victims were treated for exposure and dehydration, but they all told the same story – they'd been at home, alone, and then suddenly they were in the warehouse with no memory of how they got there.
Tommy recovered quickly, the way young people do. Within a week he was back on his bike, delivering food, though he called Marcus every night just to hear another human voice. "I keep seeing things," he said during one call. "Little glimpses of... something. Like you described."
"It's still out there," Marcus said. "Just weaker. And now we know what to look for."
Katherine Webb didn't remember anything about that night, but she started inviting her neighbors over for dinner once a week. David from Capitol Hill deleted his social media and joined a hiking club. Small victories against the dark.
Delgado kept in touch, officially and unofficially. "The department thinks it was some kind of kidnapping ring using delivery drivers to scout victims," she told Marcus over coffee a month later. "They'll never find evidence, of course. But the disappearances have stopped."
"For now."
"For now," she agreed. "So what are you doing for work? I know you quit the delivery thing."
Marcus smiled. "Actually, I'm designing again. Small stuff – home additions, renovations. Turns out there's a market for architects who understand how isolation is built into our living spaces. I'm helping people redesign their homes to be less... nutritious."
"Nutritious?"
"For things that feed on loneliness."
She laughed, but it was uncertain. They both knew what they'd seen, even if they'd never quite believe it.
Marcus's phone buzzed. Not a delivery notification – he'd deleted all those apps. It was Lily, texting about her soccer game tomorrow.
"Can you come?" she'd written. "Mom says it's okay."
"Wouldn't miss it," he texted back.
And he meant it. The city might be full of hungry shadows and digital isolation, but his daughter was real, and present, and needed him to show up. That was its own kind of delivery, maybe the most important one he'd ever make.
Outside the coffee shop, Seattle hummed with its usual mix of rain and possibility. People walked past, most staring at their phones, wrapped in their private digital worlds. But some looked up, made eye contact, smiled. Small rebellions against the feeding dark.
Marcus finished his coffee and headed home. He had blueprints to draw – plans for spaces where loneliness couldn't take root, where connection was built into the very walls. It wasn't much against an ancient hunger that fed on human isolation, but it was something.
And something, he'd learned, was always better than nothing.
His phone buzzed one more time. A notification from a food delivery app he thought he'd deleted: "We miss you! Come back and deliver with 25% higher base pay!"
Marcus didn't just decline. He held down the app icon until it wiggled, then deleted it with satisfaction. Let someone else feed the city's hunger. He had different work to do now, one blueprint at a time, one human connection at a moment.
The darkness was patient. But so was the light.
And Marcus Chen, failed architect, failed delivery driver, successful father and unexpected warrior against the digital void, walked home through the Seattle drizzle, planning his next design. A community center, maybe. Something with big windows and no walls between the common spaces. Something the ancient hunger would choke on.
Behind him, in the shadows between streetlights, something watched and waited and grew hungry again. But for now, just for now, the city's loneliness would have to feed itself.