Chapter 1:

The Typewriter

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Amelia had passed over the office shop more times than she cared to remember. It was foolish really, she had enough debts to pay already with her little flat and her job was barely something that could cover it. Nevertheless, she again found herself passing through and staring at the black typewriter before going along on her way in her bike.

It was ridiculous; of course most people that owned a typewriter had something to do with them, something practical. Her superiors and the secretaries in the telephone station had their own, to copy letters, type documents and so on. But what could she, a telephone girl, do with one? Any notes she took were better and swiftly taken with a slip of paper and a pen. If she ever needed notes, considering her day – as it was every woman’s day in the station – consisted of switching plugs, answering and listening to conversations that most of the time she had to tune off from her mind.

She shook her head, trying to keep her mind focused on the next nine hours of silent work ahead. Coming close to the station, she spotted Fiona’s blonde head and signature black dress. Her co-worker waved to her while crossing the street and Amelia did the same as they headed to lock their bikes.

It was the only moment of the day they could actually be friendly with each other aside from when they left. Company policy was strict about their dresses, about their manners and even about their hair, which was why Amelia had cut her own short enough she wouldn’t have to spend time curling it. Of course, one of her superiors had still frowned at the cut, saying it was too short, but it didn’t get her into trouble, even when she made a habit of using a head scarf after that.

“What took you so long?” Fiona asked as they secured their bikes. “Did you pass around in the library again?”

“No, you know I just go there on Thursdays.”

“What is it then? Did your mum call?” Amelia shook her head and her friend sighed. “Oh, I see, you were around Old Harry’s shop again?”

“Keep your voice down!”

“You know that I would totally support you if you wanted to become a secretary, right?” Fiona grabbed her forearm and stopped her before she could pass the door. “I won’t get mad if you try to leave, Mel, it's not like I like this place better than any of the rest.”

“It’s not that,” Amelia said, looking over to check if anyone had seen them talking so animatedly so close to the job stations. One giggle could result in an entire night without pay and that was the last thing she wanted for either of them.

“Really! I wouldn’t blame you for wanting a better job.”

“I don’t have the nerves to be a secretary.” Amelia knew some secretaries were better paid but there were others that were virtually treated as servants or had bosses that viewed them as property. Of course, this wasn’t that different in the telephone station with their ridiculous rules and exhausting hours but at least she had Fiona here and the job was close to her home. Besides, she couldn’t contemplate going back to her parents after willingly quitting her job and being unable to get another.

“If you have the nerves for Mrs. Norris’ nagging, you would eat any bastard boss alive.” Fiona smiled and winked as they straightened themselves and walked to their work stations.

Amelia took her hat off and kept her face expressionless as they sat in their respective seats. Her friendship with Fiona had started precisely because they worked next to each other and she had once helped her when she had accidentally messed with one of the plugs on her first day. There were hundreds of girls working in the station, so many that she always asked herself why she and Fiona seemed to be the only ones actually talking outside of work. Maybe they feared to be spotted by Mrs. Norris or maybe they had their own friends outside the oppressive hold of the office and they weren’t as lonely as Amelia was.

Every day of the week happened so similar to the previous one that it could very well be captured in a moving picture. The calls always start with the same phrase: “Operator?" “How can I be of service?” and then just the change of plug on the name of the receiving call. Though it could also change into a run to the other side of the station if it was a long distance call. Fiona dreaded those moments where she had to run around, but Amelia longed for them after hours and hours of being seated without moving, eating or talking to anyone that wasn’t a client. But it seemed as though destiny had settled down in her routine, and delivered most of the calls to her as short and local ones.

With that kind of week, it wasn’t strange for her mind to just wander, with the rest of her body moving like an automation; answering, checking and plugging. It went to her next week's shopping list, or counting numbers for how much a visit to her parents would cost. But most of all, this week in particular, it went back to two things: the typewriter and a dream she had had the night before she started noticing it in that shop.

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The dream had been present on her mind more than any other she’d had in her life, more than even some memories, but it had never made any sense. So she always found herself fidgeting about it in the back of her mind, like some embarrassing thing she had said during a family dinner. Only that the dream was different, a far thing to her relatively mundane life.

She was inside a small cabin, not even a cottage, like the place where she had grown up, but a wooden cabin. Small and dark, barely lightened by a candle. Inside, there was a dying hearth, a chair and a table, and over the table, there was a typewriter that broke in the picture like a wrong note in a piano piece. Like anyone else’s body in a dream, Amelia felt hers moving against her will. Pacing around in the little cabin, she could see her own hair hanging over shoulder and almost touching her stomach, the clothes she wore heavier than her usual dress, something she wouldn’t use in spring.

She never sat down again nor did she look over at the pile of papers on the table, there was always a sound after that and her feet took her outside the cabin to a dark night barely graced by any moonlight. And like so many dreams, she was instantly out running to something that had fallen from the sky: a bird, big as a small dog or maybe even bigger, but when Amelia got to it, there was a man in its place, face down and covered in a black cloak.

She always knelt by his side, even when she would have never done that if she’d had the actual will to move her body, because she remembered what happened when she did it, once she turned him around, his hands went instantly to her throat. Amelia would grab at his wrists, slap his hands, try to get free, to stand up. But the man was always the one to get up, still strangling her, his pale eyes blood shot as he whispered the only words she could make out from the entire dream.

“You! you did this, everything is disappearing… Everything—”

It was always the same, she always woke up at the same moment and by now, the dream was too recurring to be something she could call normal. When she asked Fiona if she had any recurring dreams, she had replied something normal: that she was back at school and the teacher scolded her, that Mrs. Norris got cross at her for something and she lost her job or that she knew how to fly. Nothing detailed, just crumbs of those dreams left in the back of her mind, like normal dreams. That same week had been when Amelia had spotted the typewriter. It wasn’t the same as the dream, that one looked different: white and it had a rounder, fuller shape than the black one in the shop.

“I think it might be a subconscious desire of getting out of this hellhole,” Fiona had said as they stood outside the shop. “A new job maybe, you could work in an office easily, Mel.”

If it only were that easy, but she had explained again and again that she didn’t have the urge to change her job. It was more the curiosity of why. Why would she dream of it? Why would she be in a cabin she had never seen before? Who had that man been and why was he a raven first? She could never make out his face fully. Except for the pale blue and bloodshot eyes, his face was always a blur.

Why would he hate me so much? The question came to her mind again and again as her day went by on calls and plugs. What have I done that could have been so terrible?

A hand on her knee made her jump and she turned to the side to see Fiona pointing at the other girls walking out with her head. How had the day passed through so quickly? Amelia took off the headphones and straightened her dress before following her friend in the sea of black dresses inside the station, keeping her eyes down as they made line to check their cards without getting Mrs. Norris’ attention.

“Oh, finally,” Fiona said, raising her arms to the sky and letting her head fall back. “I swear, sometimes I think I’ll go mad from repeating the same phrase again and again. I don’t know how you can do it without blinking.”

“It would be the same with any job.” Amelia shrugged as she closed the buttons of her coat. “In a shop, you would have to ask what the customer wants constantly and then you would complain about it just like you do now.”

“Customers ask for different things,” Fiona argued and sighed at the line of women also getting their bikes. “No one calls in the phone to get anything but a call.”

“Maybe this whole secretary thing is your subconscious desire,” Amelia teased as they got their bikes out, her friend snorted.

“Are you kidding? I can’t type to save my life,” she said as the lights of the parking started to go off. “Let’s go before they leave us alone in this creepy place. Do you want to go to the pictures on Saturday?”

Amelia barely heard the last part. For as the lights went off, she could see someone standing at the other side of the street. A woman, but not one of her many co-workers plainly dressed in black, this one seemed to wear a long white cloak and her curly hair shone on the little light of the street with a blue glimmer.

“Mel? What is it?” Fiona’s voice made her turn around. She was stretching her neck to see behind Amelia. “What are you looking at?”

“That woman standing there, is she one of the girls working at the station?”

“What woman? There is nobody there.” Amelia turned back around to see the street was now empty. Where had she gone? “You okay?”

She narrowed her eyes, keeping them on the spot where the woman had been standing. It was late, but they weren’t the only ones in the street. Surely a woman with blue hair would stand out?

“Yes,” she finally said, rubbing her eyes and shaking her head. “Yes, I’m fine, let’s go.”

The next morning, she went back to the shop and asked for the typewriter.