Next-Day Delivery

They not only know what you want, they know what you NEED

You ever get that eerie feeling that your thoughts aren't private anymore?

Not like someone’s watching you. That’s amateur hour. I’m talking about something deeper. Like your brain’s being mined. Thoughts scraped. Dreams catalogued. And not by some shady government spook in a bunker—no, this is corporate. Polished. Friendly.

It started with the usual dopamine drip. Midnight boredom, too much screen time, and that perfect, dumb magic of the “Buy Now” button. At first, I leaned into it. We all do. Order some toothpaste at 2 AM and it’s on your doorstep before lunch. Paper towels, batteries, a hoodie you forgot you clicked on—it’s modern sorcery. Sleek, convenient, no judgment.

Then one morning I opened the door and found a box I didn’t remember ordering. It had my name. My address. Same as always.

I figured it was protein powder. Or socks. I’m always forgetting to order socks.

I brought it inside and opened it with my keys.

Slippers.

Gray memory foam. Rubber soles with the little grippy dots. Size 12. I wear 11.5, but the 12s always felt better.

I didn’t order them.

No email. No receipt. No charge to my card. Just a package, sitting like it belonged.

I hadn’t mentioned slippers to anyone. I hadn’t typed it. Hell, I hadn’t even said it out loud.

I’d just thought about them.

That buzz started in my skull. Subtle at first. Like tinnitus for your intuition.

Three days later: another box.

Same packaging. Inside: Mindscapes: Reclaiming the Power of Thought. Black cover, gold letters. A book my father used to fake-read while chain-smoking and preaching about mastering your inner world. I’d dreamed about that book the night before. Not even the book, just the damn spine.

There was a note this time.

“You were thinking about this. Enjoy.”

Typed. Not handwritten. Not friendly.

I started searching the house for bugs. I turned off Alexa. I stopped using my phone near the bed. Switched to analog everything. It didn’t matter.

The boxes kept coming.

A dog collar. A VHS tape of Herbie Goes Bananas. A baseball I hadn’t seen since Little League, complete with my name scrawled on it in Sharpie. All artifacts. All memories. Some real. Some maybe not.

And then things turned.

One morning I opened the door and the box was already open. No tape. No label. Just sitting there, gaping like a wound. Inside was a tooth.

Human. I’m not a dentist but I’ve lost enough to know. Molar. Looked like mine. Old filling. I ran to the bathroom and checked. All there.

Still, I kept the box.

Why? I don’t know. Like it meant something. Like someone was keeping score and tossing breadcrumbs.

Next week, I got a pacifier. Then a razor blade in a velvet pouch. Then a photograph of me and my ex-wife. Only it wasn’t one I’d ever seen before. We looked happy in it. Genuinely happy.

I asked her about it. She said she didn’t remember it either.

That’s when I realized it wasn’t just memory anymore.

It was manipulation.

These weren’t deliveries. They were suggestions. Reality edits.

That night I dreamt of fire. Not abstract fire—my house on fire. And in the dream, I wasn’t trying to escape. I was watching. Smiling.

I woke to smoke.

The kitchen toaster had shorted. Small blaze. Nothing catastrophic.

But sitting by the door, wrapped in Prime tape, was a fire extinguisher.

Same brand I’d used in the Navy.

I never told anyone about that fire. Not even the landlord. And yet here was this box, like it had been prepped for the script of my life.

And I wasn’t the writer anymore.

I stopped sleeping. I unplugged everything. Moved to a motel. Paid in cash.

Boxes still found me.

Room 12. I checked in under a fake name. Woke up to a knock. Empty hallway. But there it was. Another box. Inside: a letter. No envelope. Just one sentence:

You can’t run from yourself.

I checked out and walked three towns over. Camped in a state park. No cell. No credit cards.

Next morning, under my tarp, I found a flashlight.

Same kind I had when I was six. When my uncle locked me in the cellar for “discipline.”

That flashlight never left me. Until it did. When I smashed it over his head.

And that’s when I knew.

This thing, whatever it was, wasn’t reading my thoughts.

It was reading my past. Editing it. Shipping it back piece by piece, until I cracked.

I burned the boxes. All of them. Every last item.

Didn’t help.

They still came.

Not daily. Not weekly. Just… when it mattered. When my guard was down.

Last one came this morning.

I hadn’t been thinking of anything. I’d managed a kind of quiet. A numb sort of meditation. No TV, no noise. Just silence.

I opened the box and found a mirror.

Not just any mirror.

It was me, older. Gaunt. Eyes dark, teeth missing. Dressed in a hospital gown. And smiling.

Not a photo.

A reflection.

Except I wasn’t smiling.

And now, as I sit here writing this, I’m waiting for the next box.

Because I think I know what’s coming.

And I don’t want to see it.