The app pinged as soon as I climbed back onto my moped, still shaking from the last delivery. My head felt foggy—like I'd misplaced something important, but couldn't quite remember what. Just a vague ache, sitting behind my eyes like a ghost of a memory.
NEW DROP. CLIENT: LOST AND FOUND. DESTINATION: INFERNAL ADMINISTRATION HUB, B-12 SECTOR. PACKAGE TYPE: LOST. URGENCY: CRITICAL.
"Well that's not ominous," I muttered. "At all."
I didn't even pretend to be excited. The words Infernal and Administration should never appear in the same sentence, let alone one involving me. Still, the app wouldn't let me refuse. The ACCEPT button hovered on screen, glowing a threatening red.
I tapped it.
The world blinked.
One second I was on the street. The next, I was somewhere else entirely.
Hell, as it turned out, looked like a government office at 4:59 PM on a Friday—if the air was 30 degrees hotter, the fluorescent lights buzzed with demonic whispers, and the walls were alive.
Literally alive.
They pulsed.
I stood in a lobby labeled LOST AND FOUND – INFERNAL DEPARTMENT OF MISPLACED OBJECTS AND MISDIRECTED FATES.
A demon receptionist glared at me from behind a cracked-glass window. She wore a name tag that read: KAREN. Her horns were filed sharp, and her blazer looked like it was tailored from the screams of the damned.
"Number?" she barked.
"Uh. I have a delivery?" I held up the package.
She slapped a buzzer. "Take a number. Wait in line."
A ticket machine materialized beside me, spitting out a crumpled slip: Number 9999.
I looked around.
"Now serving: 3."
I sat on a chair made of old office phones, which buzzed occasionally with sobbing noises. The demon to my left was made entirely of paperclips and stress. The one on my right had six eyes and kept trying to sell me something called time insurance.
I waited. For hours.
Or maybe days? Time didn't behave here. Clocks melted. Phones rang backward. At one point, my watch turned into a beetle and scuttled away.
Eventually, my number was called. I stepped up to the counter.
"Package," Karen snapped, not looking up.
I handed it over.
She sniffed it.
"Nope. Misfiled. Should've gone to the Office of Eternal Returns."
"But the app—"
She slammed a stamp on a slip of paper. "Not my problem."
A portal opened beneath me.
I landed in a cubicle farm the size of a city. Rows and rows of desks. Fluorescent lights. Endless typing sounds. Somewhere, someone was sobbing into a fax machine.
A goat-headed man in a button-up shirt approached me.
"You Ray?" he asked.
"Yeah."
"Follow me. You've got a reclamation request."
"Wait—I'm supposed to deliver this. Not reclaim anything."
He shrugged. "That's above my paygrade. Welcome to bureaucracy, kid."
We walked for what felt like miles.
Eventually, we reached an office marked SECTION B-12: CORRUPTED MEMORIES AND MISPLACED EMOTIONS.
A small imp with a bowtie sat at the desk, juggling three coffee cups.
"Ray Alvarez!" he squeaked. "We've been expecting you."
"You have?"
He handed me a file. Inside were hundreds of photos—every package I'd ever delivered. Every drop, every wrong turn, every almost died because someone forgot to label the box as haunted.
And one photo stood out:
A girl. Young. Smiling. Holding a letter. My sister.
But… I didn't have a sister. Right?
"She filed a loss report," the imp said. "Filed under Forgotten Family Units. She says she remembers you. Said you vanished years ago, 'taken by the job.' We just need you to confirm or deny."
My head spun.
"This isn't what I signed up for," I whispered.
The imp blinked sympathetically. "Nobody does. But memory's tricky down here. You lose enough pieces, you stop knowing what's yours."
The package in my arms rattled.
It split open—revealing the letter.
My handwriting. My name. Addressed to someone named Lina.
Tears blurred my vision.
"Where is she?" I asked.
The imp pointed to a door labeled REUNIONS – PROBATIONARY.
Inside, the room was warm. Real. For the first time in what felt like forever.
She stood by a table. Long hair. Same smile. Same eyes.
"Ray," she whispered.
"Lina?"
She nodded. We stood there, awkward.
"I… I thought you were a dream," I said.
"They said you were gone. But I kept writing letters. Hoping."
We sat. Talked. Laughed. Cried.
It wasn't perfect. It didn't make sense. But it was real.
When I stood to leave, the imp reappeared.
"You have to choose," he said. "Stay here. Or deliver the package, and forget this again."
Lina looked at me. "You should go. You have to finish this. But don't forget again. Please."
I swallowed. Nodded. Took the letter.
"I won't."
Back in the lobby, Karen sighed. "Well, look who's back."
I handed over the package.
She stamped it.
DELIVERY COMPLETE. MEMORY RECLAIMED.
"Wait," I said. "I remembered her. My sister. Lina."
Karen gave a half-smile. "Good. Not many do."
A door opened.
Light.
I walked through.
I was back on my moped. Dawn rising.
The app chimed.
NEXT DROP: THE HOUSE THAT BREATHES. CLIENT: RESTRICTED. PACKAGE: LIVING. WARNING: DO NOT LET IT FOLLOW.
I groaned.
"Why can't I just deliver pizza like a normal person?"
And I rode on.