Wrong Number

Dead Line: Episode 3

SYSTEM REBOOT. LOADING USER PROFILE... CORRUPTION DETECTED. SECTOR 4 DAMAGED. WELCOME, MAYA.

Maya tasted copper. The back of her throat was raw. It felt like she had been screaming for hours. She swallowed. The muscles in her neck clicked. It was a dry and painful sound. It felt like grinding gristle.

She sat at Desk 4. The chair felt different this time. The foam padding was compressed. It was hard. It held the shape of a body that had sat there for too long. It held the shape of a skeleton. Maya shifted her weight. The plastic creaked. It sounded like a bone snapping under water.

The wall clock read 02:37 AM.

Maya looked at the time. She felt nothing. The shock was gone. There was only acceptance. There was only the dull ache of the routine. She was just meat in a swivel chair. She was a throat to read the script. She was a finger to press the button.

The office was darker. The shadows in the corners had teeth. They stretched across the floor. They swallowed the light. The fluorescent tube above her head buzzed. It was a dying fly trapped in glass.

Bzzzt. Click. Bzzzt.

She looked at her hands. Her fingernails were bitten down to the quick. The skin around the cuticles was red and angry. Tiny beads of blood sat at the nail beds. She did not remember biting them. She looked at the keyboard. Smears of grease and dead skin coated the keys. The letters were worn away.

On the screen, Oracle v4.5 loaded. The interface was glitching. The green pulse in the corner stuttered. It skipped a beat like a dying heart.

System Active.

Maya picked up the can of Red Bull. It was light. Empty. She crushed the aluminium in her fist. The metal crumpled. It made a sharp crinkle in the silence.

Rrrrring.

It was not the external line, not the angry red of a blocked number.

The light on the console was yellow.

INCOMING CALL EXTENSION: INTERNAL

Maya stared at the light. It pulsed with a sickly jaundice colour. Internal calls were impossible. She was the only one on the floor. The other desks were dead plastic. The other phones were disconnected. The cables were cut. She had seen the wires hanging loose in the gloom.

Rrrrring.

The sound was lonely. It echoed in the vast and empty room. It bounced off the far walls where the darkness was absolute.

Maya reached out. Her hand shook. It was a tremor in the bone. She pressed the screen.

“Crisis Line. This is Maya.”

She skipped the script. She was too tired for the armour. Her voice sounded thin. It sounded like it belonged to a stranger.

Silence.

Then a sound.

It was wet. It was hollow. It was the sound of a person falling apart in a room made of tiles.

“Hello?” Maya said. “Who is this?”

“I can’t do it.”

The voice was a whisper. It was thick with mucus and tears. It was a woman. The acoustics were wrong. The voice was trapped in a small, hard space. It bounced off porcelain.

Maya leaned in. The audio quality was sharp. It was too sharp. It lacked the digital fuzz of the phone network. It sounded like the speaker was standing right behind her ear.

“You can’t do what?” Maya asked. Her voice was soft. It was the voice she used for the jumpers. It was the voice she used for the ones standing on the bridge.

“The shift,” the woman sobbed. “I can’t finish the shift. It never ends.”

“I know,” Maya said. She felt a pang of sympathy. It was a physical ache in her chest. It was a tightening of her own ribs. “The nights are long. But it is 02:37. We are almost halfway.”

“It is always 02:37,” the woman said. She sniffed. The sound was gross and wet. “I checked the watch. I checked the phone. I counted to a thousand. I looked again. It was still 02:37.”

Maya looked at the wall clock.

02:37.

The second hand was twitching. It moved forward. It snapped back. It was stuck in a spasm of time. It vibrated against the plastic face of the clock.

“Where are you?” Maya asked. “Are you in the building?”

“I am in the bathroom,” the woman said. “In the last cubicle. I’m sitting on the floor.”

Maya looked at the darkness beyond her desk. The corridor to the toilets was to her left, twenty feet away. The door was propped open with a wedge. She could see the edge of the white tiles.

“I can hear you,” Maya said. “I am at the desk. I am just down the hall.”

“I know,” the woman said. “I can hear you too. I can hear you breathing.”

“Stay there,” Maya said. “I am coming to get you.”

She tried to stand.

She couldn’t.

Her legs were dead weight. The chair was a magnet. The gravity of the desk pinned her down. She pushed against the arms of the chair. Her muscles strained. Her tendons popped. Nothing happened. The paralysis was absolute. She was welded to the seat.

“I can’t move,” Maya whispered. Panic rose in her throat. It tasted like bile.

“I know,” the woman said. “We are not allowed to leave the desk.”

“You left,” Maya said. “You are in the bathroom.”

“I crawled,” the woman said. Her voice cracked. “I dragged the headset. The wire is pulled tight. It is cutting into my neck.”

“Why did you do that?”

“I am hiding. I am trying to get away from the noise.”

“What noise?”

“The buzzing. The lights. They are screaming at me.”

Maya looked up. The fluorescent tube flickered. Bzzzt.

“I hear it too,” Maya said. “Listen to me. You are having a panic attack. You need to breathe.”

“I can’t breathe,” the woman cried. “The air is stale. It tastes like copper. Like I have been screaming.”

Maya swallowed. The copper taste was strong in her own mouth. She ran her tongue over her teeth. They felt loose.

“Who are you?” Maya asked. The question felt dangerous. It felt like walking onto thin ice.

“I am the one who made the mistake,” the woman said. “I picked up the phone.”

“We all pick up the phone. It is the job.”

“It is a trap,” the woman said. “It is a loop. I looked in the mirror. I looked at my face.”

“What did you see?”

“I looked grey,” the woman whispered. “I looked like a ghost haunting my own life. My eyes were red. My skin was peeling.”

Maya froze. She looked at her reflection in the dark monitor. The grey skin. The dark circles. The ghost. She touched her cheek. Her skin felt like parchment.

“I’m scared,” the woman said. “I am going to do something terrible.”

“No,” Maya said. “Don’t say that. Tell me what you are doing.”

“I’m holding the scissors,” the woman said. “The ones from the desk. The ones with the blue handles.”

Maya looked down at her desk.

She looked at the pen pot. She looked at the scatter of paperclips. She moved the notepad. She checked the drawer.

The scissors were gone.

“Put them down,” Maya commanded. Her voice shook. This was a prank. This was someone in the office messing with her. “Whoever you are. Put the scissors down.”

“I have to stop the noise,” the woman said. “It is coming through the wire. It is pumping the static right into my brain.”

“There is no wire in your brain. You are having a breakdown. Tell me your name.”

“You know my name,” the woman said.

“Tell me!”

“There is a wire,” the woman insisted. “I can feel it. It goes into the headset. It goes into the wall. It connects us to the dead things.”

Maya touched her own headset. She felt the cable. It draped over her shoulder. It disappeared under the desk. It disappeared into the darkness. It was cold. It felt like an umbilical cord.

“I’m going to cut it,” the woman said.

“No,” Maya said. “Do not do that. You will hurt yourself.”

“If I cut the wire, the voice stops,” the woman said. She sounded calm now. The terrifying calm of a decision made. “If I cut the wire, I can go home.”

“You can’t go home,” Maya said. She gripped the desk. The laminate dug into her palms. The logic was fracturing. The voice on the line was too familiar. It was the voice she heard in her head when she tried to sleep. It was the voice that told her she was a failure. “Listen to me. If you cut that wire, you disconnect.”

“I want to disconnect.”

“Stop!” Maya screamed. She felt a phantom pressure on her own neck. It was cold steel. It pressed against the soft skin of her throat. “Do not cut it! Please!”

“I have to,” the woman whispered. “I… I’m sorry.”

Snip.

The noise was small. Two metal blades slid past each other. They sliced through the plastic coating.

Maya gasped.

The air in the room vanished.

She grabbed her throat. Her windpipe snapped shut. A deletion, not a blockage. The signal telling her lungs to expand was gone.

She clawed at her neck. Her nails dug into the skin. She drew blood.

Maya opened her mouth. No sound came out.

On the line, the sobbing had stopped. There was only the sound of the bathroom fan. It droned on and on, a mocking mechanical hum.

Maya fell forward. Her chest hit the desk. Her vision swam. Black spots danced in the grey light. The room began to dissolve. The walls receded. The ceiling lifted away.

She reached for the phone. She needed to plug it back in. She needed to fix the wire. Her fingers scrabbled on the plastic.

Her hand brushed the keyboard.

The monitor flickered.

A new window opened.

ERROR: CONNECTION LOST. PERIPHERAL DISCONNECTED. INITIATING HARDWARE RESET.

Maya’s lungs burned. The fire spread to her limbs. Her brain was starving. The grey edges of her vision turned black.

She looked at the door. The darkness of the corridor swirled. It was not empty.

She heard footsteps.

They were slow. Wet. The sound of bare feet on cheap carpet.

Slap. Slap. Slap.

Someone was coming from the bathroom.

Maya tried to lift her head. She couldn’t. Her neck muscles had failed. She could only watch the edge of the desk and the patch of carpet illuminated by the screen.

A hand appeared.

It gripped the edge of the laminate.

The skin was grey. The fingernails were bitten down to the quick. The knuckles were white with strain.

The hand held a pair of scissors. Blue handles. Wet. Red liquid dripped from the tip.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Maya stared at the hand. It was hers. The hand she used to answer the phone. It was the hand she used to wipe her tears.

The screen flashed red.

RECONNECTING...

Air rushed into Maya’s lungs.

It was a violent gasp that tore her throat. She heaved, coughed. She sucked in the stale, metallic air of the office. It tasted like life. It tasted like poison.

Maya scrambled back in her chair. She pushed away from the desk. The wheels screeched.

“Hello?” she croaked. “Are you there?”

The line was dead.

She looked at the edge of the desk.

The hand was gone.

She looked at the pen pot.

The scissors were there. The blue handles gleamed under the fluorescent light. They were clean. Dry.

She touched her headset. The wire was intact. It coiled down to the PC tower.

She looked at the screen.

CALL ENDED. DURATION: 00:05:00.

She touched her neck. Her fingers came away wet.

She looked at her hand.

It was blood, bright red and real.

The cut was clean. A thin red line across her throat. It was the exact width of a pair of scissors. It crossed the jugular notch.

It began to sting. The pain was sharp and hot.

Rrrrring.

Line 1 lit up.

INCOMING CALL UNKNOWN / BLOCKED

Maya stared at the blood on her fingers. She stared at the phone. It rang. It demanded an answer. It would not stop. It would ring until the end of time.

She wiped her hand on her jeans. She left a red smear on the denim. She pressed the button.

“Crisis Line,” she whispered. Her voice was a ruin. “This is Maya.”

“You’re through,” a voice said. It was deep. It was distorted. It was amused. “How can I help tonight?”

WAITING FOR NEXT CALL...

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