The first month of my new job has been absolute hell.
I've gotten spam calls, weird harassment voicemails from random angry people, vaguely ominous chain emails that supposedly curse me with maggots in my blood, some Sumerian "infertility demon" cult's recruitment ad, death threats just for not greeting someone, and even some creep breathing loudly into the phone receiver for an entire three minutes. Agatha has completely disappeared from my life after the interview, and it seems from Aemeth Co. as well, so I guess I'm really there to be her replacement. No wonder she was so stuck up when we met.
I've also bought a new pair of shoes and finally managed to ask for extra cheese on my sandwich the other day, so in summary, my life is fucking awesome right now.
I mean, sure, the employee training videos I had to watch were flickering with subliminal messages, the office rules were bizarre to say the least, and don't get me started on the workplace regulations...
Safe Lifting Techniques: Do's and Don'ts
Do: lift with your knees, keep your back straight, stand with your feet apart at shoulder width, keep your face hidden, keep your employee ID on you (for identification purposes).
Don't: lift with your back, twist your torso, try to lift too many things at once, make eye contact, acknowledge that which you are lifting, or give in to its pleading.
Remember: 44% of work-related injuries come from improper lifting techniques, making it one of the most preventable causes of cancer for our employees.
I'm sorry, cancer?
One of the things I quickly learned to accept is that while Aemeth Co. presents itself as a sort of biotech company on the surface, its network runs far deeper. The company specializes in dealing with all sorts of strange occurrences, from sudden hauntings to divine-revelation induced madness. But for the most part, my own work is isolated and lonely. I sit at my desk in the big office lounge and look pretty, then I wire calls to the different lines that supposedly belong to different departments. Majority of them seem to be from regular citizens calling to request "Product A" or "Package B" or other rather vague terms, and I never have to do more than check a few boxes on a requisition form. But a large chunk of my training consisted of learning what call goes to which line, and I suppose that will quickly become the bulk of my job.
Ring...
That's the sound of my lunchbreak ending. I put down my little frog-stickered mug and pick up the phone. The hall is quiet today, as it has been for the past month - we never really get in-person visitors, it seems.
Ring...
"Hello?"
"Listen, I don't have much time. They'll be at Compiègne tomorrow, to sign the Armistice. And I know what will come of the negotiations! Europe will fall, it surely will. Oh, I wish God hasn't forsaken us so!"
The man on the other end whispers, as if on the verge of tears. Compiègne, Armistice...I see where this is going. The poor man is trapped one way or another, living as if he's still witnessing France surrender to Germany during WWII.
"Sir, the Second Armistice was signed 84 years ago."
"But just yesterday, I heard the trains moving again...they're coming to take the prisoners. They call them 'refugees', but that's a lie! A lie!"
"Sir, can you tell me your name and date of birth?"
Nothing but terrified breathing left on the other end. A sinking sadness engulfs me, the terror in his voice had been so genuine. I assure him there will be no treaty at Compiègne, and I transfer him to Line 1 as per the manual's instructions.
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image [https://i.imgur.com/HW2QlGb.jpeg[/img]]
Line 1:
For temporally displaced minds, or those suffering, whether by trauma or by hands of inexplicable cosmic forces, refer to the instruction manual for consulting Line 1. If the caller displays agitated/confused mentation, disrupted sense of self, and a strong desire to return to their "pure" state, consider Line 1. Not all callers will be vexed by supernatural phenomena, and some will simply be struggling with a manifestation of one mental illness or another. Line 1 will help to discern the etiology of such manifestations, and coordinate the necessary interventions to aid with the caller's recovery. In short, Line 1 should handle callers that are uncertain of what they want, who they are, or if they are suffering greatly from psychological distress.
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Most of the calls that go to Line 1 seem to be in a great deal of confusion and pain, which makes listening to them one of the harder parts of the job. I'm not qualified to tell if the man just now was really convinced he was living in the 1940s, or if he's haunted by some other past ghosts, but I hope he will receive the compassion he deserves from Line 1.
I hear soft clicking of heels on marble tiles as someone enters the lounge. Weird, no visitors scheduled for today. I look up and see a young lady waiting nervously at the door, having possibly just walked off a romcom set where she plays the ingénue love interest with an air of waif sweetness. Her broad-brimmed hat hides most of her face, but I can tell by the way she twists her hands anxiously that her eyes are wide with worry.
image [https://i.imgur.com/J7RdleD.jpeg[/img]]"Ex...excuse me..." She begins, almost immediately bursting into tears. God, please, don't cry here, I don't have tissues on my desk.
"How can I help you?"
"I'm here to pick up some drugs for my husband. Just the regular."
I didn't know we carried medication, but the sincerity and urgency with which she uttered the request made me believe it - if she begged me for a kidney transplant, I probably would've said yes on the spot. I ask her for the "regular", and she holds up a small glass bottle with a faded yellow sticker. Something looks deeply, terribly wrong with it.
BRUESS'
A-B-C Liniment
Pain Stopper
For lumbago, sciatica, neuralgia, rheumatism, muscle pains and stiffness.
Active ingredients: aconite, belladonna, chloroform
Price: 50 ¢
It's easy as A-B-C!
Always
Brings
Comfort
This can't be right. There's no way a bottle of liniment costs only 50 cents. Well, that and the active ingredients.
"Ma'am, I think this medication is discontinued." In 1935, lady! It was discontinued in 1935!
"But I always get it from here..." She practically whimpers, too quiet to hear over the sound of my heart breaking, "It's the only thing that helps my husband sleep at night. Please, just check if you have it. He really needs it. He's been having back problems for months now. All the other hospitals said they can't help him, something with his spine...please, at least tell me if you're out of stock..."
Number one rule of customer service: stop them before they can have a crying breakdown. I take the bottle and lead her to sit down in the waiting lounge, give her my best smile and promise to check in the storage rooms for her.
To be honest, I've never been to the back of the office, and I don't know my way around those blank halls at all, but I think I saw some kind of storage unit on my way to Agatha's office? At this point, I'm praying for a random bottle of painkiller to manifest before me so I can hand it to the poor lady and see her off. Where, in this day and age, am I going to find a bottle of liniment of all things?!
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I run down endless twisting hallways until I see a vaguely familiar door that promises storage. (If I get caught going somewhere I shouldn't be, I'll just say I'm trying to help a customer, that's always a good excuse.) I push open the door and deflate with relief when I see the familiar silhouette of Agatha taking inventory.
image [https://i.imgur.com/9kX4d7T.jpeg[/img]]
"Hey, Ag-" wait that's not actually her name "-I mean ma'am, excuse me? It's me, Mara. There's a customer out front."
No response. Cold as always.
"She's looking for a bottle of A.B.C Liniment, do we have that here? Should I call Line 1?"
I trip on flat cardboard in the darkness and fall face-first into her, we both topple over, and when I look up, I see a sea of Agathas staring back at me.
Cardboard cutouts, every last one of them. Agatha from different angles, but all printed on recyclable paper and piled together haphazardly in a corner of the storage room. The one I was talking to had been her side-profile view, so was the one I tripped over. When I take a closer look, they're all a little bit different from each other. Agatha A has slightly rounder eyes than Agatha B, and Agatha C is wearing a lighter dress, so on and so forth. I reach out to touch them to make sure they're not secretly breathing or made of flesh.
image [https://i.imgur.com/Z7bhWR9.jpeg[/img]]
What kind of a fucked up company keeps cardboard cutouts of its employees?! Unless...she was the receptionist before me, and that means...she wasn't cardboard the last time I saw her. Does this mean...if I were to be fired...would I end up here?
Fuck this, Mara, I tell myself, get out of here. Forget the liniment, forget the dental insurance, you have to run before you get weeping angel'd into a cardboard cutout!
I push the many Agathas off me and scramble for the door, sweat blurring my vision, head rushing with blood. My mission for the liniment all but forgotten in the moment.
"Are you...okay?"
I look up to see the first unfamiliar face I'd seen at this place: someone else actually works here! And she's so beautiful that I briefly swapped my terror for jealousy - enough to snap out of the terror I was scuttling from to think God really has favorites.
image [https://i.imgur.com/Sxypp2w.jpeg[/img]]
The warm honey skin, gentle eyes, and dark wavy hair that frames her face with the smooth luster that only exists in shampoo commercials, the tranquility of her flowing blue dress. Then she smiles and in my head we're already flying to Sicily for our honeymoon, because she shouldn't be here in this moth-infested storage room, she should be savoring a fine port by the glittering sea instead.
Where was I? Oh, right, cardboard employees. The terror resumes.
"I'm Aruna, I work here." She helps me up, and I can smell her patchouli and oak moss perfume from up close, "You must be the new receptionist."
"Uh, wuh-huh. I mean, yes."
"And I see you found our cardboard assistant." She wanders over to pick up the pile of Agathas I knocked over, putting them in a stack against the shelf, "We call her Augusta, you know? Like Augusta Bracknell from The Importance of Being Earnest. But Line 3 always calls her Cardi-Board."
The names hit me like two successive trains so quickly I didn't even have time to decide if I was amused, scared, confused or deeply enamored. Today has been a truly educational experience. Aruna picks up on this and gives my shoulder a little pat.
"Don't worry, we won't turn you into cardboard. Augusta was Line 2's creation, some kind of animated talisman. She takes care of most of the office work, but...she wasn't so great at interacting with people, that's why we decided to hire someone with customer service experience. This is just where we keep her when she's not busy faxing documents."
Knowing that Agatha - Augusta is quite possibly not a sentient being only ever assuages my fear slightly. Knowing that whoever Line 2 is, they are capable of creating a whole live simulacrum out of cardboard and making them work in an office is probably more disturbing.
"Anyways, what are you doing here? Is something going on at the front office?"
I tell Aruna about the young lady with the weird bottle, and how desperately she pleaded with me. I feel silly for even agreeing to check the storage rooms, but Aruna seems more concerned for me than for her.
"She's asking for that A.B.C liniment again, isn't she?"
"She said she often gets it from this place-"
Aruna pushes me back into the room and checks the outside hallway, then locks the door behind her quietly.
"Listen to me, that is not a woman. That is an Echo. We call it the Weeping Maiden, it always comes around when people start getting desperate for medical supplies. That's when it takes form."
Someone's knocking on the door now.
"ᴾˡᵉᵃˢᵉ, ᵐʸ ʰᵘˢᵇᵃⁿᵈ...ʰᵉ'ˢ ᵛᵉʳʸ ˢⁱᶜᵏ. ᴴᵉ ᶜᵃⁿ'ᵗ ˢˡᵉᵉᵖ ᵘⁿˡᵉˢˢ ʰᵉ ᵍᵉᵗˢ ʰⁱˢ ˡⁱⁿⁱᵐᵉⁿᵗ...ⁱᵗ'ˢ ᵇᵉᵉⁿ ᵍᵒⁱⁿᵍ ᵒⁿ ᶠᵒʳ ᵐᵒⁿᵗʰˢ ⁿᵒʷ..."
"Why don't we just give it something? It'll go away, right?" I take a step back from the rattling doorknob, looking around the room for a possible weapon. This is not how I wanted my day to go.
"Echoes don't stop. They repeat and repeat until they fade away."
Then, the wood on the other side of the door begins splintering slowly, and I can hear the hinges creak under the strain of whatever is outside right now.
"ᴴᵉ'ˢ ⁱⁿ ˢᵒ ᵐᵘᶜʰ ᵖᵃⁱⁿ...ⁱᵗ ᵐᵃᵏᵉˢ ᵐᵉ ˢⁱᶜᵏ ᵗᵒ ˡᵒᵒᵏ ᵃᵗ ʰⁱᵐ! ᵂʰʸ ʷᵒⁿ'ᵗ ʸᵒᵘ ᵖᵉᵒᵖˡᵉ ʰᵉˡᵖ ᵐᵉ? ᴬˡˡ ᴵ ⁿᵉᵉᵈ ⁱˢ ᵃ ˡⁱᵗᵗˡᵉ ᵇᵒᵗᵗˡᵉ ᵒᶠ ˡⁱⁿⁱᵐᵉⁿᵗ...."
Aruna grabs one of the Augustas lying nearby. I am trying to find a phone inside to dial an emergency number with because, like the idiot I am, I left my phone at the front desk. The door bends, and with a terrifying crack, starts breaking apart at the pressure point. I hear nails outside, scratching, digging, trying to pry open the hole in the board. A sliver of light from outside, then fingers: one, two more, five and ten more - too many fingers clawing at the hole it made, tearing off chunks of plywood like flesh. I see a face beyond it, one that should've stayed hidden under the wide-brimmed hat.
image [https://i.imgur.com/8CLqiLd.jpeg[/img]]
"ᴴᵉ'ˢ ᵃˡʷᵃʸˢ ⁱⁿ ˢᵒ ᵐᵘᶜʰ ᵖᵃⁱⁿ...ⁱᵗ ᵐᵃᵏᵉˢ ᵐᵉ ʰᵘʳᵗ ᵗᵒᵒ...ˢᵒ ᵐᵘᶜʰ..."
The thing keeps repeating its request, and with each word, a limb breaks through the door.
image [https://i.imgur.com/m2VUofa.jpeg[/img]]
All I can find is a bottle of bug spray and a lighter, and I'm not in a hurry to turn the room into an oven, so I look at Aruna and see if she has a better idea. Before I can ask her, one of the limbs flies out from the rupture and strikes the standing cardboard Augusta, turning her top half into a shower of paper pulp. Its other arms now reach for the many, many Augustas in this room. Perhaps it can't tell if she's not a real person, by whatever strange logic these...Echoes operate on. It wails in horrible anguish when it realizes Augusta does not, in fact, have what it wants. Strings of tears roll down from its eyes and the room fills with the smell of isopropyl alcohol. Uh oh.
"I guess we are going to learn how to deal with an Echo today." Aruna chimes in her sweet voice, staring down this abomination that is beginning to pull itself through the hole. I can't see much of it except for the many, many deformed and fused limbs that writhe and flail, almost like copies of itself are superimposed imperfectly.
"The first lesson, is to know that it is a repeating thought, an endless loop, and do not be afraid of it."
"ᵂʰʸ ʷᵒⁿ'ᵗ ʸᵒᵘ ʰᵉˡᵖ ᵐᵉ? ᵂʰʸ ᵃʳᵉ ʸᵒᵘ ⁱᵍⁿᵒʳⁱⁿᵍ ᵐᵉ?"
It shrieks and strikes, arms flying to dig, to tear. Aruna plants herself between me and the Weeping Maiden, I see her duck from flying splinters, and then - a horrible crackling, hissing noise from the Maiden. She fucking grabbed it by its long, wiry neck in one of her hands. I can see the smile on her face, half-illuminated by what hallway light is shining through the broken door as the Maiden squirms to break free of her iron grip.
image [https://i.imgur.com/mI29dxI.jpeg[/img]]"You are tormented." She continues, "This is no place for you. Go now, I have patients to tend to."
A quiet wave of calmness washes over everything in the room, soft as the sea breeze. I feel my own heart slowing, the pulse no longer deafening in my ears. The Maiden weeps isopropyl alcohol as it struggles, but slowly, as Aruna's grip on its neck loosens, it stops moving, stops screaming, and one by one, the limbs retrace into its body until there's just the one holding out the empty bottle. Then that one too, along with the rest of it, evaporates when it is finally released. The small liniment bottle shatters on the floor.
image [https://i.imgur.com/fu4C9tt.jpeg[/img]]I deflate with relief and drop the makeshift flamethrower I was ready to unleash. Aruna crouches down to examine the bottle. Then she carefully sweeps up the shards and collects them in what I assume to be a specialized disposal bin. The isopropyl alcohol slowly dries, leaving a strong sanitized smell in my mouth.
"Are they...the Echoes...all like that?" I stammer, trying to remember if what I just saw was even part of my job description.
"Not usually, only some. This one had been wandering for quite some time now, looking for its medicine. Most others...simply repeat until they fade away." She carefully peels the A-B-C Liniment label off the shards and holds it up to a stack of boxes, and I realize she's checking for a match. Right in front of my wide, horrified eyes, she finds a whole box of those liniments sitting unused on one of the high shelves.
"We could've just given this to it!"
"We could." Aruna sticks the label on the box and puts it back without looking, "But we have human patients that require them more. The company doesn't like to waste them."
We sigh at the same time, and probably think the same thing about Aemeth Co. too. I want to ask Aruna more questions, about how she managed to dispel the Echo, about that wave of tranquility I felt, about the "patients" she mentioned, but she just picks up the broken Augusta cutouts and gives me another smile - I still shudder to think of how Augusta would look had she come to life in her bisected form. The smile soothes me in a way I hadn't thought possible, and my tension drains like rainwater.
"Wait, are you-"
"Correct. I'm Line 1." Aruna manages a little goodbye wave with her free arm, "It's good to finally see you in person, Mara. I look forward to working with you in the future."
I watch her leave until the steadily louder ringing of the front desk phone pulls me from this fever dream, would you believe it, right into the other fever dream that is my job.