Day 031 Hour 08: The Click
BZZZT.
The vibration felt louder than it should've.
Like the phone wanted to shout, but could only whisper through my skin. I glanced at the time: 08:45 on the dot. No message. No prompt. Just the buzz.
I lifted the phone slowly, deliberate in every motion.
No one around.
No sudden movement.
Just me, the alley, and the wall with the red words bleeding across its bricks like a warning that was never meant to be erased.
SHAPARD'S TEETH.
The morning light filtered just enough from behind to cast a long line across the graffiti, like a clock hand frozen mid-swing. I framed the shot tight — top to bottom, corner to corner — nothing extra. No context. No distractions.
Just the wall.
Click.
The sound was almost insulting. Soft. Plastic. The phone's cheap shutter tone cracked like an old toy. But it captured. I checked the screen. Blurry at the edge, but legible. Timestamp in the corner, unedited.
It would have to do.
I didn't linger.
There was no applause. No feeling of completion.
Just a sudden weightless urgency — a sense that staying even a second longer would shift the world into something I didn't want to see. I pocketed the phone and turned sharply out of the alley, retracing my steps with the same deliberate pace I'd used arriving.
My eyes scanned corners. Windows. Doors that hadn't opened in years.
Nothing.
No one.
But I felt it.
The shift.
Like something had been marked — not just on the phone, but in the space itself.
Like I'd left behind a version of myself… and something else had stepped into its place to wait for the next poor bastard with a camera.
I didn't stop until I was three blocks away.
Didn't check the photo again.
Didn't look back.
The Club never asked for retakes.
And I didn't want to know what might happen if I gave myself a reason to try.
Day 031 Hour 09: Between Teeth and Plexiglass
The alley was gone behind me. Memory now.
I didn't slow down.
Didn't check the photo again. I knew it was there. I knew it was clean enough. The phone was back in my pocket, screen off, like a sleeping witness I didn't want to wake too soon.
Next stop: Rust & Hollow.14:00.Cracked plexiglass bus stop.
It wasn't close.
Not the farthest distance in the city — but far enough to remind me this mission wasn't designed for comfort. They'd placed the second target in a different sector of the slums, almost like they wanted me to feel it. Not just the weight of the schedule, but the dislocation. The sense that this world I called home had a thousand faces — some of which I didn't recognize, even if I lived beside them.
By the time I crossed into the next block, my stomach reminded me I hadn't eaten since the day before. And I still had hours to go before the next mark.
So I stopped.
It wasn't a shop. Not really. Just a steel drum turned into a grill, wedged between two cracked walls and covered by a bent corrugated roof. Smoke leaked sideways from the coals and danced toward the sky like it wanted out of here as badly as I did.
A woman worked the setup. No apron, no signs, no name. She didn't say much — just nodded when I pointed and held up two fingers.
For a second I hesitated.
But then I reached into my hoodie and pulled a single bill from my own stash — not the Club's money.
I gave her exact change.
No words passed.
She handed me something in a grease-stained wrapping that didn't look like food until you felt its weight. Some kind of fried roll, stuffed with meat or cabbage or both — I couldn't tell. Fries spilled from the side in a paper pouch. She added a bottle of water without asking.
It didn't taste like anything.
Didn't matter.
It was calories. Heat. Salt.
I stood off to the side of the stand and ate slowly, eyes drifting across the unfamiliar street. I didn't know this part of the slums too well. The air felt different here — more space between the stalls, fewer eyes meeting yours when you passed. A little quieter. A little more... neutral.
No one paid attention to me.
But I paid attention to them.
Because being new in a place like this wasn't safe. Not because of the people — but because you couldn't read the rhythms yet. You didn't know what was normal, which corner was safe to lean on, which alley was best avoided. Every neighborhood had its own clock, and I was off by half a beat.
I finished the meal, tossed the wrapping into a bin already overflowing with someone else's secrets, and headed east.
The bus stop wasn't far now.
And I still had time.
But something told me that time alone wasn't enough.
You had to use it right.
Or it used you.