A story from my friend Angel who works at a large call center. Her job is to take calls from customers of the Nameless National Bank and deal with their questions, concerns, and complaints.
The other day she received a call that was totally unremarkable. The caller was polite and his concern was quickly identified and dealt with. On its own, that alone would be enough to make it noteworthy for this site -- considering how unusual a call like that is -- but there was something else...
The customer's voice. It was toneless, flat, and without any sort of inflection. Exceedingly creepy, in short. The sort of voice you expect to hear ordering you to put lotion in a basket. Thus, while she was working through this call, Angel says that the following questions were spinning through her mind.
-- Is the body of your elderly neighbor in pieces at your feet as you're talking to me on the phone?
-- Are you sitting in a room lit softly by the glow of lamps with shades made of human skin?
-- As you sit and talk on the phone, are you gored up to the elbows with blood and gobbets? Are these gobbets all that remain of the children who've gone missing in your neighborhood this month?
And of course...
-- Do serial killers worry about overdraft protection? Do they pay their bills online? Or are such mundane concerns subsumed in the all-consuming, quivering need to fulfill the Ritual at all costs?
By the end of the call, she reports, despite the fact that the call was so utterly ordinary, the customer's voice was so unsettling that she was happy to know he was several states away and would thus be unable to find her if took a notion to.
The other day she received a call that was totally unremarkable. The caller was polite and his concern was quickly identified and dealt with. On its own, that alone would be enough to make it noteworthy for this site -- considering how unusual a call like that is -- but there was something else...
The customer's voice. It was toneless, flat, and without any sort of inflection. Exceedingly creepy, in short. The sort of voice you expect to hear ordering you to put lotion in a basket. Thus, while she was working through this call, Angel says that the following questions were spinning through her mind.
-- Is the body of your elderly neighbor in pieces at your feet as you're talking to me on the phone?
-- Are you sitting in a room lit softly by the glow of lamps with shades made of human skin?
-- As you sit and talk on the phone, are you gored up to the elbows with blood and gobbets? Are these gobbets all that remain of the children who've gone missing in your neighborhood this month?
And of course...
-- Do serial killers worry about overdraft protection? Do they pay their bills online? Or are such mundane concerns subsumed in the all-consuming, quivering need to fulfill the Ritual at all costs?
By the end of the call, she reports, despite the fact that the call was so utterly ordinary, the customer's voice was so unsettling that she was happy to know he was several states away and would thus be unable to find her if took a notion to.
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