The Callers

The Callers

Adam sits at Alice’s place, still yawning, and cursing himself a little bit for answering his phone when he saw the office number. They never call on your free day unless they want you to come in, and sure enough Alice hadn’t shown up and wasn’t answering, so here he was, covering for her. Well, at least they paid you double if you worked  on your free day.

He puts on the headpiece and taps the mic, listening to his own taps through the headphones, looks at the computer and sees the last name on Alice’s list from yesterday highlighted in green. Meaning it was still pending. He called that one first but got no answer, so he pulled the day’s sheet and started his calls, reciting like an automaton one by one.

By the end of his shift, he had finished with the sheet and had ten minutes to kill before he could check out, so he pulled out the highlighted number and called it again.

The phone rang one, two, three times, and he was about to press escape when a male’s voice answered.

“Hello?”

“Good evening, is Patrick Clays there?” Chirpy as ever.

“Speaking.”

“Hello Mr. Clays, I’m calling from your mobile provider service. I hope you’re having a great day, May I take 5 minutes of your time?”

“I didn’t get your name.”

“I’m sorry sir, Adam Clover. Pleasure to meet you.”

“Very well Adam Clover, I’m all ears.”

And Adam started reciting the pitch, as flawlessly as if he were praying. Now and then he could hear the client typing on his computer through the phone; he was used to this, most people didn’t stop working while they listened to the pitch. After he was done. And asked for the client’s permission to activate his membership, a silence followed.

“Mr. Clays?”

“I’m very sorry Adam, I was just thinking… is there anyway for me to know you are who you say you are?”

“Sorry?”

“Well, you know my home’s private number, and you know my name… am I right in assuming that you also know my address?”

“Well sir, all information on your contract including phone numbers and address., is protected by law.”

“Yes, I understand that, however, nowhere in my contract did it specify that my personal information would be released to an employee of the company. So tell me, is my address next to my phone number on your screen?”

“Well, yes sir, but I assure you that the company would never make ill use of your personal information.”

“Yes, well, it’s not the company I’m worried about.”

Adam closed his eyes for a second and rubbed them, asking himself why could he not play on his mobile instead of calling this creeper to pass those last ten minutes.

When he opened them, he saw that some people who should be leaving were gathering at the coffee room, looking at the news. Had something happened?

“Adam?”

“I’m sorry Mr. Clays, if you wish to, I can patch you over to our supervisor.”

“No, please don’t. Another person looking at my personal information is the last thing I wish.”

“Mr. Clays, please believe when I tell you, the company would never sell your information…”

“Tell me Adam, how would you feel if a stranger called you, saying he knows your phone, your name and your address, and then tried to sell you something? I can tell you what I feel. I feel threatened, and I fell I must accept, otherwise, you know where I live… isn’t that right?”

Man, what a freak… Adam looked over at the coffee room, and now Penelope was sitting on a chair crying and some other girl… the new one… what’s her name… had her arm around her.

To hell with this guy.

“I’m really sorry to have bothered you Mr. Clays, have a wonderful evening.”

“Adam?”

God, he never shuts up!

“Yes Mr. Clays?”

“How would you like to buy some peace of mind?”

“Look Mr. Clays, I’m just doing my job.”

And then, as he reached for the escape button, the man started reciting Adam’s name, mobile number and address, while the sound of a keyboard resonated through the headpiece.

“Look man, I’m sorry ok? I don’t know how you’re doing this but I’m just an employee, You got a problem, you can talk to the boss, a‘ight?”

“Tell me Adam, are you interested in some peace of mind?”

Adam pressed the escape key slamming it five or six times. Took off the headset, threw it on the desk and stood looking at it, as if it were a snake waiting to attack.

He looked up, and realized people were still in the coffee room, so he walked slowly towards them. He entered the room and was about to ask what was going on, when the picture on the TV caught his eye.

A girl lay dead in what looked like her apartment floor. He had never seen anything more bloody in his whole life, her ears were lying close to her, on top of the phone, and her tongue was dangling from where her chin should’ve been. Her eyes stared in horror at the camera.

“A-Alice? Is that Alice?”

--

“Hey George? It’s Neil, hey you think you could come in today? Adam hasn’t shown up and he’s not answering his phone. Yeah, I guess Alice’s death hit him harder than I thought. You can? Awesome. You can sit at his desk, I already transferred his calls from yesterday to his computer, there’s only one marked as pending. Awesome, see you in a while.”

Hair

Hair

She turns the water on and starts undressing while it gets warm, she hears the drain make a gurgling sound, and makes a face, she hates unclogging it, and she shudders just thinking about getting the hair out.

She goes in and steps into the water, relishing the first few streams on her face, she turns her head down to let the water drench all of her hair and opens her eyes. And she sees that the drain really is clogged, and it’s worse than she’d thought, there’s a great big wad of hair stuck between the slots of the drain cover.

Disgusted she looks around for something to clear it with, so she won’t have to touch it with her bare hands. Even if it just her own hair, the thought of it makes her want to gag.

She sees her razor on the top shelf, and grabs it by the blades, which still have the plastic cover on them, and squats to push the hair into the drain. She wouldn’t want to step on it.

She starts pushing all the hair down a slot using the razor's handle, trying to make it all go down with short movements, goddamned hair is so stuck it takes a little bit more time than she figured, but at least she gets it done without having to touch it.

She stands up and reaches up to the shelf to put the razor back, when she feels something on her ankle, at first she thinks it’s the water, but it feels a little bit more solid than that. She looks down and sees that a strand of hair got twisted around her ankle and exasperated she reaches down to take it off, she pulls on it, careful to touch it only with her nail and just as she’s doing this, she sees something moving on the drain.

Perfect. She’s pulling the wad of hair back… she grabs the strand around her ankle and pulls madly, to break it, and then she puts her hand under the water, rubbing her fingers, disgusted.

She looks back at the drain and sees there’s nothing there.  Finally she can take her shower, she starts turning and then thinks of something, she looks back at the drain cover and squats to look closely at it. Huh… there are three holes on it… holes that should be occupied by screws, screws that serve to keep the cover on it’s place.

She squints, not understanding how or when the screws disappeared, and how come she hadn’t noticed before. She starts reaching towards the cover and just when her fingers brush it, it flies up and strands of her shoot out of it, tangling themselves around her wrist.

She whimpers pulling her hand back, and with it, pulling the wad of hair out the drain. She places her other hand on the floor and uses it to stabilize herself and stand up, and just as she is, more strands of her shoot out of the drain and wrap themselves around her ankles. She stands up so quickly, she hits the hot water tap and boiling water starts streaming down her body, and the shower starts getting foggy.

Moaning she turns towards the door and reaches with her free hand to open it, but the strands around her ankles pull her and her left foot slips, she hits her face with the door, starts turning as she falls, hits her shoulder on the wall, and lands on her right hip with a thump that immediately sends a wave of pain through her whole hip.

Her tears get mixed up with the water, and she can’t see very clearly, but she feels the strands of hair starting to go up her leg, too quick for her to stop them.

Some stay swaddled around her legs, some continue up her belly, but oh god, some are actually inside her, and she can feel them, she can feel them tearing at her from the inside, pushing and pinching.

She opens her mouth to scream but the hair is quicker and it lashes out into her mouth fast as lighting, making her choke on her scream as the hair sticks to the walls of her throat and wraps itself around her tongue. She starts choking, she can’t breathe, she takes hold of the strand that’s lodged itself in her mouth and tries to pull, and when she does, for a moment she focuses on it, and she sees that where her fingers are parting the strands, there’s a bug.

A bug with thousands of hairs coming out of every single part of its body, only it's not hair, it's legs, legs with minusucle pincers on their tips. Millions of legs... and hoy many wads had shot out of the drain?

She starts squishing but just then the pain in her belly becomes unbearable and she whimpers but she’s choking and she can’t breathe, and the water underneath her is turning red. And something starts tickling her ear and then there’s no sound, and the light is going out, and she can’t breathe…

--

He steps into the shower wearing his sandals, he hates hotel’s baths. Being such a germophobe, the thought of other people’s bare ass sitting where he has to put his feet is more terrifying than the thought of bumping into Norman Bates. Oh, and isn’t that just dandy… a wad of hair on the drain, this day just keeps getting better and better. 

Mumma

Mumma

She hears the alarm go off. “Ten more minutes” she thinks. But the alarm woke the baby up, and even if she ignores him, his wailing won’t let her sleep any longer, so there’s no point in prolonging the inevitable.

She reaches to turn the alarm off, and switch the light on, shielding her eyes with her other hand from the glare.

“I’m coming baby, mumma’s coming.”

She sits up, and starts opening her eyes, but they seem to be stuck together. She reaches with her fingers to scratch the salt off of them, first.

What she touches doesn’t feel like salt, it doesn’t even feel solid. There’s some jelly like substance keeping her eyes closed.

“What is this?” Revulsion creeps into her voice, and she feels her stomach dropping. She starts scratching her top eyelids carefully, but they’re so sensible, and it hurts. She has to get this thing off.  And she starts scratching harder, but the thing won't come off.

She stumbles to the bathroom, and the baby’s cries grow louder and louder. She crashes into the sink and immediately turns the faucet, and splashes her face frantically. Things drop to the floor as she searches blindly for the soap, she knows this’ll sting, but she has to get it off, the baby needs her.

She starts scrubbing harder and harder, but the thing won’t come off. It’s as if it were some kind of super glue.

Is that it? Superglue? But how? Oh god… is someone in her house? Did someone do this to her?

She runs, crashing into walls, bumping her toe on the doorframe, crawling the last bit of the way. The baby!

She reaches the baby’s room, and immediately it’s cries increase, she crawls to the cradle and reaches inside. The baby feels fine.

“Did mumma scare you? I’m sorry baby, I’m so sorry, mumma's being silly.”

And of course she was being silly, the house has the latest alarm systems, no one could’ve gone in. Not without setting the alarms off.

She smiles and tries to open her eyes, again. The thing is still on them.

“God! What is this thing?!”

She wants to cry, but she can’t. The corner of her eyes are covered with the muck. And suddenly the baby starts giggling. Of all things, it’s giggling, she looks down, and asks:

“What’s so funny baby? Is mumma making funny faces?”

But then she feels it’s tiny fingers brushing against the thing on her eyes.

“No honey, don’t touch it.” She pulls her head back, but the baby keeps giggling.  And then, he speaks, his first word… and she’s so excited she forgets for a moment about the goop, and laughs and hugs the baby tighter.

“Oh my baby, yes I’m mumma, mum-ma, come on honey, mum-ma.”

“Duh-bah, duh-bah.” He giggles, and she bats his hands away from her face unconsciously.

“No babytums, muh-ma.”

There’s a noise coming from under the cradle…  Perfect, just what she needed, a mouse…

Duh-bah.

She freezes, mice don’t make that kind of sound, a kind of hacking followed by a thump…

Duh-bah.

There it is again; a guttural duh, something between a gagging sound and a yawn… and then a smacking sound, like when she makes fish faces at the baby and opens and closes her mouth.

“Get away from us!”

She stands up fast, with her baby between her arms, but then she steps on something gelatinous, but more solid, something that feels exactly like the crud on her eyes.

“Oh god, n—“ She slips.

She can only turn on her heels so that the baby will fall on top of her, and not vice versa, but she hits her head on the cradle before falling completely, one of her feet is still under her, and she can hear the bone cracking a moment before hitting the floor. She cries out, but at least the baby’s okay.

And then he starts giggling again.

“Duh-bah.”

Duh-bah.  Next to her ear.

“Duh-bah.” He giggles.

Duh-bah. Something wet on her cheek.

“Duh-bah. Duh-bah.”

She tries to scream, but she’s a second too late. There’s something on her lips, and she can’t open them. And the scream is stifled in her throat. She hugs the baby tighter. She sobs one last time before feeling the wetness on her nose.

“Duh-bah mumma, duh-bah.”

The pattern

The pattern

I come home earlier than usual, and take a deep breath before entering the house. I can already smell dinner, lasagna I think. She peers out the kitchen door when she hears the door open.

“Honey, you startled me, how come you’re home so early?”

“Darling”, I kiss her, but take care to keep mi lips closed. “There was an incident  in the office, they dismissed us early.”

She frowns one of her that’s-interesting-but-I-have-something-in-the-oven frowns, and starts turning away.

“What happened? Is everyone ok?”

She opens the oven door and the scent fills the room.

“No,  it’s Pat…”

She leaves the lasagna on top of the stove to cool it, takes of her gloves and turns to look at me, I can see real concern in her eyes.

“Honey, what happened?”

My throat clenches… I turn to the fridge, to get a beer. I open the door and take on from the door, almost instinctively, but as the door starts to close I see half a pomegranate on one of our sons dishes, the Winnie the Pooh one. The bottle slides from my hand and crashes on the floor. The door closes automatically.

“Oh honey…”

I turn towards her, that primal fear of being reprimanded flashes through my mind, but disappears, the moment I see her face.

“What happened? Sit down. Tell me what happened.”

She pulls me to the table, and sits down besides me, and as I start talking, I can’t even recognize my own voice, for there’s something in it that wasn’t there before: fear.

“You remember I told you about Pat’s project, the one he talked me into joining?”

“The children’s skulls” She shudders.

“Something like that, children’s skulls before losing their baby teeth. We were studying what happens to the holes left by the second row of teeth.”

“You make them sound as sharks.”

I realize she has never seen it, not even a picture. She’s never felt that first wave of nausea, the first time you see the pattern, the holes… I hope she never does. I start to show a forced smile, but think better of it.

“Lately, Pat seemed more nervous than usual. God knows he always was jumpy, but this was different, it was as if he feared the world. He stopped having lunch with us in the garden. “Sunflowers.” That’s all he said when we asked him why. A week ago he started sleeping in his office, he wouldn’t leave. And then two days ago, when we came in, we found he’d taken some things out of the lab, and left them in the halls. Said he didn’t want them inside, the sponge with which we washed the skulls… Tom’s fractal poster, hell he even took out my fern fossil… Anyways, we came in this morning and the lab was closed off. Security wouldn’t let us in, and no one would tell us what was happening.”

I take a moment before continuing, tell myself to get it over with. She waves her hand over my head distractedly.

“Just a bug baby. So what happened next?”

“Jerry came in, said he needed to talk to our team, something had happened. We went to his office upstairs, and the first thing I noticed was he’d taken down the beehive poster. You know, one of those motivational things, “bee yourself” or something like that, it was on the floor facing the wall. Struck me as weird, but hey, maybe he was changing it for a whale or something, I don’t even get those things… anyways, we sat down and he said, “Guys, something happened to Pat”. And I asked where he was, and was he ok… And he says “He’s in the lab… but… well, he’s not exactly ok.”

She’s looking at me with real concern now, I must have started to cry without realizing it, cause she takes a napkin from de table and cleans my eyes; the frown’s back on her face, but now there’s real concern in those creases.

“He turns his computer screen toward us, and we can see the security video’s frames filling it up. He moves the pointer over the one on the top right corner and clicks, and the image, which now fills the whole screen, and there’s Pat alright. Walking from side to side, scratching his head, muttering something we can’t hear, and then he stands still, and that’s when we see it. Tom gasps besides me, and I can hear Gretchen trying to swallow… or gag, I can’t even tell. My own skin prickles, I feel like scratching my whole body, but control myself. And I hear myself asking “What is it?” but there’s no answer. And I look at Jerry and he’s staring at his table as if he’d seen a ghost. I tell you Stella I’ve never seen such terror in a man’s eyes, he takes his letter opener and starts scratching at his desk, and I don’t even know what’s happening, and Gretchen is saying “Get them, there’s so many, so many… can’t we fill them up? Don’t touch it!!!” And then she slaps my hand, the one that was on top of the desk, and then she actually does gag, and runs to the trash bin. But she stops when she looks at it, and turns to Jerry with reproach in her eyes. It’s one of those metal things, you know, one of those meshed trash cans. And I look at my hand and realize I had actually been scratching with my own nails the little holes on the wood.”

She’s still looking at me, but now there’s something more in her eyes, fear I think, and even revulsion.

“I looked back at the screen, and realize Pat is looking at the camera inside the lab, it’s as he knew we’re watching him, and it looks as if he’s pleading, asking for help, but then he moves his hand towards the camera, and I can see his skin clearly… and honey… you remember that time we took Henry to the aquarium, and we saw those things stuck to the glass, and you said they were like something out of a horror movie?”

She pushes her chair back and walks toward the sink. She leans over it, and her voice is not much more than a whisper.

“The lampreys… those were the one’s with the teeth right? The ones with rows of teeth, stuck to the glass. Henry said they looked like the food disposer on the kitchen sink.”

She looks down at the sink and turns sharply. But she avoids looking at me. She’s quiet, so I start talking again.

“Well honey, his fingers looked like that… they looked as if something had eaten at the tips, and then there were red boils on his hands, one after another, like fish eggs… like caviar, all over his hands.”

She walks towards the oven, and stares at the lasagna.

“And his face… oh honey, there’s holes in his face, holes with little round squirming things inside, and they’re symmetric, you know? There’s a pattern, and I can’t look anymore, and Tom keeps mumbling to himself, and Jerry’s filing the desk with the letter opener, and I …”

She picks up the tray with the lasagna. She’s still facing the wall, and just to the right of her legs, I can see my own reflection on the oven’s door. And my hairline, it looks like there are bubbles in it. Immobile bubbles. And I rub my eyes, but it feels as if my eyelids have been eaten away. 

She turns towards me, and the lasagna is in her hands, and I can see the burnt cheese on top, the holes in it, the pattern, the goddamned pattern. And I look at her face and there are tears in her eyes, but her mouth looks twisted, as if she were about to be sick, and she swings the lasagna plate towards my head.

I have just a couple of seconds left to think, but I can’t even talk, all I can do is gasp, cause I see something in the corner of her mouth, and it could be a cold sore, or a hole, the first of…