The smell of corporate processed pizza serves as a grim reminder that the hills have more than eyes but have mouths as well.  I was a pizza delivery driver, a working college student in love with my soon to be fiancé, scrounging the dismal paychecks biweekly by biweekly to keep myself afloat in the city of El Paso, Texas where the rich live in the mountain’s slopes and hills and the poor and middle class below them.  My name is Henry, and I am one of the poor who live under the watchful shadow of the upper class elites. 

          College is an expensive matter but I make it by with government funding as for the rest of life’s necessities, I’m on my own.  As I stated, the paycheck of a pizza delivery driver isn’t a sufficient source of income to make a living, but there are little luxuries that come with it.  The solitude of being on the road is calming and I can listen to anything I wish to from music to podcasts as I deliver in a timely manner.  I can leave the store and go on delivery when all shit hits the fan in the store, sometimes taking up to four deliveries so I can spend as much time as I can away from the store. 

          My employees are mix and match, much like our pizza deal we offer; there’s Alan, a large heavy set man in his late forties with a heart of gold, Tina; a college kid like myself, studying criminal law and trying to get her way into the police academy.  Then there’s Phil, my coworker bestie, who I usually smoke out with after our shift is done and play videogames online on our days off; he’s four years younger than me but is built with over sixty pounds of muscle and stands far taller than I ever could.  Then there's my manager Jess; a sixty-year old man who can be a real sweetheart like Alan but can lose his top when no one’s following orders or the deliveries aren’t going streamline.  My happy little work family. 

          One thing to note is the reliance on making tips, and knowing just which neighborhoods provide the largest ones.  There’s the projects just off of Mesa street, where you’ll make the worst of the worst tips.  You go up Westwind and you’re bound to make decent tips from the supple middle class homes.  But the best and truest tips come from the neighborhoods along the foothills of the Franklin Mountains and gated communities along it.  But no one is just able to pick which delivery to go to, you have to wait in a line of all the others delivery drivers waiting their turn and the deliveries coming in order of oldest to newest, and the chance your name lands on that big delivery on that small eighteen inch monitor with a GPS map of the area. 

          Thunderbird Drive is a small road but it leads straight into the mountainous neighborhoods- one second you’re past middle class homes, the next you’re eyes are bewildered by the sudden shift of greenery and the immaculate designs of houses so large they might as be the equivalent of twenty-first century mansions, or sometimes they really are.  They sit so high up into the mountain you can see over their beautiful fresh green yards and the desert, or you’ll pass the country club, which is split in half by Thunderbird.  To the untrained, these roads can turn into a spiraling labyrinth and where you entered one way, you may just exit another by the many deterring roads.  But of all these roads lies one, dimly lit of any street lamps, where high beams are required to see the road before you- Singing Hills. 

          It's like just the others with similar immaculate houses, but the people who live there are another breed.  Every delivery its the same thing, you knock on the door and there’s always a man or woman in their middle ages with a wide and perfect white smile to greet you.  A company policy we have is to never enter a customer’s home, even if invited in, one of the few policies I actually uphold, but always on Singing Hills the customers beckon me to come in, but I never do, and never would. 

          508 Sing Hills; I was greeted by an elderly whiteman beckoning me to come indoors from the rain while he grabbed the cash for the order, “I can’t,” like I always do, and he said back, “Suit yourself,” with a grinning distasteful smirk.  After ten minutes of waiting at the door in front of a videocam doorbell, I rang again in hopes he didn’t forget he needed to pay for his food.  But there was no answer, only the sound of my car running and the patter of rain falling.  Another ten and I make my way back to the car, sure Jess would’ve called me by now to check what was taking me so long. 

          Reaching the car door I noticed my tire was deflated, not only slightly but flattened to the point I would need to pull out the extra full size in my trunk.  Frustrated, I confided with a sigh in light of my circumstances, and did the only sensible thing and began switching out my tire to the sounds of synthwave blasting in my car.  

          It was once the tire was off after five minutes of getting my hands dirty with sludge and oil that I began to hear singing coming from somewhere nearby, like chanting. 

          Investigating it sounded to be coming from the backyard of the house.  I struggled as quickly as I could to get the new tire set and headed around the side to investigate and hopefully get the payment needed before Jess would rip me a new one. 

          It must’ve been some sort of neighborhood gathering because the large backyard was filled with people in the midst of some ritual.  The smell of smoke filled nostrils then at the sight of a burning pyre with the man who was supposed to pay for his food at the pyre’s base leading the chant. 

          I’m not a god-fearing man but I can tell the difference between something innocent and benevolent from something malevolent.  At the far corner stood a statue of the previous conservative president in gilded gold.  Being not a conservative either, this was my clear indicator the man could keep his food free of charge. 

          There’s something that slashers film get wrong every time someone gets hacked or cut, the pain isn’t instant.  But the body knows something is wrong in those first two seconds.  There’s no pain but only that sense as a growing tingle travels up to your brain at mach speeds and then the want to scream out in agony fills every want and need you could ever have in the past and future.  And you just stand there pulling a face like a toddler who just pissed their diaper, because you probably did. 

          I’ve never had a history of asthma but maybe this is what it feels to lose your breath; that tingling sensation in my ankle intensifying and pulling me down to the ground.  The metal jaws of a bear trap biting through my leg held me down and a chain bolted to the ground hindered me from leaving. 

          The chanting stopped then as the swelling pressure in my eyes commanded I bleed streams of tears with a newfound need to pry open the metal jaws.  The voices of many drawing nearer, my skinny fingers slid between the flesh and metal for some small grip and I began to pry open the trap. 

          It was the, “Get him!” of unfamiliar voices that sent shivers down my spine before the trap availed me freedom and I hobbled away back to my car.  I heard the sounds of hands slapping the body and windows of my car as I shifted from park to drive, speeding off with only two bars of my gas meter remaining. 

          Twenty-one dollars and ninety-eight cents, that’s how much it cost to ruin my future.  Unable to afford medical insurance, the medical bills from the hospital stacked up and I had to drop out of college to pay them off; I’m still paying them off.  The police ruled in the man’s favor that I was trespassing and I was charged for it, gaining a criminal record.  My fiancé, being a christian, later left me as I grew verbally paranoid and hesitant of anyone religious. 

          I was able to keep my job, and months later was promoted to assistant manager where I’m constantly on the food line making pizza after pizza and walking with a limp that’ll forever stay with me, serving as a reminder that the hills have mouths and a desire to gorge on the less fortunate.