Nailbiters

by Kane, Paul

  Mr Parks…Mark? They even sounded the same.

  If that was the case, why then was she so afraid of going to the dark place? The cellar, the cell… Why did she turn every time the automatic doors went, expecting to see someone in a blue uniform, someone who would take her away because she’d been so very bad? Not just recently, but in the past as well.

  ‘You’re for it now…’

  No! It was all in her head. All a fantasy…a flight of fancy. The strain of this work had taken its toll. Janet observed the supermarket steadily starting to fill up, the lunchtime crowds piling in, faces miserable.

  But why the beans? Why were they so significant, she wondered? Was it because she’d eaten them day after day at home, the cheapest food available? Her ‘rations’? Or was it because she’d seen so many of those mass produced tins going by on her conveyor belt?

  For the first time Janet noticed the old couple who’d come to stand next in line at the till. Her mother and father. He opened his mouth to speak:

  ‘You know why, lady. So you might as well get used to the idea!’

  Behind him someone laughed; it was Mr Parks.

  Then it dawned on her. Beans represented the ordinary, the everyday, the mundane. They reminded her of how dull her existence was and that there was nothing she could do to change it.

  Or was there?

  The way she saw it, she could kill two birds with one stone. Janet would never have to worry about going to that dark chamber ever again, and she’d show the world she wasn’t ordinary at the same time. That she could do something spectacular. One last something.

  She’d created the blessed instrument of liberation, a means to an end, because of something her father had said; something he’d seen in combat and spoke of as if he missed the beautiful sight of it. Hadn’t been hard. Mr Parks had taught her well and all the ingredients were at her disposal. She’d found them at work and in the kitchen. Once it was finished, the thing spoke softly to her of blue skies and meadows. Of a place where she could be free, where there was no work and plenty of love to go round. Where she could be with Mark forever in her dreams.

  And so she’d brought it to work with her every day since, in case. Her baby – the only baby she’d ever know – not a hard labour, not like her mother’s…and now, at last, it had told her that today was the day. Everyone was here, ready. Expectant. It was nearly time to:

  ‘Bite the bullet like a good soldier should!’ she said under her breath.

  ‘Sorry?’ asked the youth.

  She played with the lighter, flicking it on and off. Bringing it nearer to the fuse…nearer and nearer to the thing strapped to the hairspray and the bottle of turps. The fuse was sticking out of her bag right now – or was it? She found it so hard to focus… All she had to do was wait for the sign, then the guy who looked like Mark, who might be Mark, her parents… (no, the husband was far too thin to be her father, surely?) Mr Parks, the blonde girl, and all the other shoppers – not to mention the entire wines and spirits section – would bear witness to her passage. She’d make the whole store glow again.

  ‘I could see a bright light, and then…’

  Just like when she was a little girl.

  Janet closed her eyes, imagining the glorious blast with her at the centre. She would finally be somebody. No one would ever be able to ignore her, ever be able to order her around, ever be able to use her again.

  Janet was on the check-out.

  Only two items left. She was eager now. Pray it’s the beans. Oh please let it be the beans!

  Bip

  Cheddar cheese: £3.50

  Bip…

  The Opportunity

  From my hiding place behind the wall I can see the entrance clearly.

  Almost closing time. Last orders will have been called. I only have to wait a few more minutes before they start to emerge.

  Figures, bathed orange in the glow from the streetlights. They look unreal. I can hear them laughing. Joking. Pregnant with booze.

  I stare across, waiting patiently for the crowds to thin. There I see a woman. My victim. It looks like…yes, she’s with a group, but they’re all going their separate ways. She kisses one or two goodbye, on the cheek, on the lips. She begins to walk down the street on her own. They never learn. Coat wrapped around her tightly against the cool breeze, heels clacking on the pavement. When she gets far enough away from the pub then I’ll—

  She turns.

  Someone is calling out to her. Long hair whips round as one of the friends catches her up, a smaller woman whose goodbyes have gone on much longer than hers did. They link arms; she’s going to walk home with her.

  Fuck! My mind is already full of things I was going to do. But now I am denied.

  Yet I must follow them, keeping a good distance behind. To the untrained eye I am just another late night reveller on my way home. A thrill seeker.

  They stroll out of the town, down the side streets where the lights are few and far between – some are not even working at all. I’m too far away to hear the conversation but the sound of their giggling carries on the night air.

  I am in luck. The smaller woman points to one of the houses on the other side of the road. The pair embrace, then part, waving all the time.

  I follow the first woman now she’s alone, closing the gap slightly, but still out of sight. I am in the shadows (I am the shadows), my pulse racing. And I can… There’s that clacking again, louder now, ringing in my ears.

  The opportunity has arrived and I must seize it. The waiting is over at last. I speed up. Can she sense me behind her? I’m still some distance away. If she should turn now…

  Someone else is coming along the street. I jump into a garden to hide behind the hedge until they’ve passed by. A man out with his dog. It does its business on the grass verge.

  Finally, he goes away. His interference has cost me dear, though. I have to run, fearing that I’ve lost her.

  But no. I have the woman in my sights again, the clacking leading me to her. I’m catching up, quietly, stealthily. Hand in my pocket on the cheese wire. Don’t turn around, please…don’t. I don’t want to see your face.

  She’s mere feet away. It’s now or never—

  And she’s spotted me. Shit! No…

  ‘Nicky? Oh Nicky, thank God it’s you! I thought someone was following me. Scared me a little bit.’

  She kisses me then walks on, nearing her house. I stay by her side.

  ‘Just wanted to surprise you,’ I say.

  ‘Hmm…can’t keep away, eh? You know, I wish you’d come out with me and meet my friends one night. They’re beginning to think I’ve made you up.’

  I laugh. Can she see it in my face? Bathed orange in the glow from the solitary streetlight outside her house. Can she see what I had in mind?

  ‘What have you done with the car?’

  ‘Parked it round the corner,’ I lie.

  She grins. ‘Right, well…let’s go in then, shall we?’

  ‘Sure,’ I say. As I tail her up the steps I wonder if I can hold out much longer. Waiting for the right time. The perfect opportunity. I don’t know how long I can keep up the pretence. Touching her, ‘loving’ her. When all I really want to do is…

  How long before she discovers who I truly am? Before she sees through my masquerade?

  She opens the door with her key, striding into the darkness of her empty home. I follow, as I have done all night. As I have done for weeks now. And I know the opportunity will arise at some point. It has to. Maybe tonight. Maybe not.

  But it will be soon.

  Cold Call

  When the call came, Martin’s blood ran cold.

  He’d been expecting it, laying there in the darkness. Martin had gone to bed a few hours ago, but hadn’t been able to sleep. He hadn’t slept that well for a good week; since all this began, actually. He’d been thinking about the events of the past few days, and how things had got to this stage. If he could go back right now and tell himself not to t
ake that job, he would. But he’d needed the money, and as a struggling drama post-graduate who was finding it difficult to get any auditions, he’d take whatever he could get.

  ‘Here at CompliCalls we cover a wide variety of areas for a wide variety of clients. We also pride ourselves on our selling techniques,’ his supervisor had told him on that first day. The man had altogether too many teeth and insisted on showing them every few minutes in a smile that held no warmth, let alone sincerity.

  Martin saw selling on the phone as a necessary evil and one he hoped he wouldn’t need once that major film, TV or theatre role came up. Then he’d be gone faster than you could say ‘Sorry for bothering you, but have you ever considered the benefits of guaranteed protection life insurance cover…?’ or ‘Madam, I’m calling today to offer you a month’s subscription to our book club, absolutely free and, as a welcome, you can select any one of our titles on a trial basis…’ The standard blurb he’d been given on a clipboard in front of him to read out.

  Martin learnt, as he was putting the headset on, that a certain amount of numbers were called and when one answered he was ‘a go!’ – the others would be dropped. ‘They’re people who’ve ended up on lists from filling out questionnaires and the like, so it isn’t as if they haven’t asked for this,’ his supervisor said, then grinned again. His mouth looked like a piano begging to be played.

  That’s what happened when people got those annoying calls at home that simply rang off. Cold calling, Martin was informed. Standard procedure. He didn’t like the idea, but then he hadn’t come up with this system; he was just forced to work within it if he wanted to make the rent and, y’know, eat. He didn’t have to worry, though, he was told: his number never showed up, even if people did choose to ring 1471 and find out who the caller was.

  Martin’s first day was a complete washout. He was beginning to think that nobody out there wanted what he was peddling. Then he struck on the idea of treating this as just another role, another part to play. Martin began to use the acting skills he had to nail the patter necessary to sell this crap. And guess what, it worked like a charm. By the second afternoon, he’d already sold several insurance policies, magazine subscriptions and cheap holidays. He’d just hung up on another ‘satisfied’ customer – who’d bought something they didn’t really need in the first place – when, to his surprise, he heard a distinct ringing sound on his headset. His own phone line was going off. Martin looked around at the other sellers, sitting in their regimented cubicles like extras from 1984. Was this kind of thing supposed to happen? He stood up, looking to see if his supervisor was anywhere in sight. Nope. Nobody had told him what to do if the phone rang at his end, but Martin felt like he should answer it. Might be something important, he said to himself.

  Oh, it was important all right. Crucial. Life or death… Martin wished he could go back and tell himself not to pick up, just to let it ring off. Things might be so different now if he had.

  But he’d clicked the button to receive the incoming call and said, ‘Hel…Hello?’ in a tentative tone.

  ‘You rang me,’ said the voice at the other end. It was normal sounding, if slightly monotonous.

  ‘What?’ replied Martin.

  ‘You called me,’ the voice informed him. ‘Then you hung up without saying anything. Why?’

  ‘Er…’ Martin rose once more, looking for his supervisor. ‘I…’

  ‘That wasn’t a very nice thing to do,’ said the voice.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Martin, hardly believing he was getting into this. ‘It wasn’t me, the computer—’

  ‘I thought it might have been something important,’ the voice said, echoing what he’d just thought.

  ‘No, no…it was just…I sell stuff but—’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Look, I think I’d better hang up now. I’m really sorry for—’

  ‘I asked what your fucking name was!’ The voice rose, switching instantly from monotonous to angry.

  Martin hung up, his hand shaking as he pressed the disconnect button. A few seconds later the ringing began again. Martin let it, assuming the guy would just get fed up and ring off. He didn’t; the ringing just kept coming. And Martin couldn’t place another call until the line was free.

  He got up and walked away from his desk, determined to find the supervisor this time. When he returned with his boss, who told him it shouldn’t even be possible to receive calls through his booth, the ringing had stopped. The man, who was definitely not grinning now because he’d been dragged away from important work, said he could find no trace of any number having rung Martin’s station. ‘But, if it makes you feel any happier…’ The supervisor got one of the other centre workers to swap with Martin. He was pleased with how this new young recruit was working out, but told him to make sure this was the last interruption.

  Martin thanked both his boss and his colleague, then got on with his job for the rest of the day – gradually becoming less unnerved as he went on.

  * * *

  At 10:30am the following morning, Martin’s headset began to ring again. It couldn’t be the same guy, he knew that, and he was about to report the incoming call when he remembered what his boss had said about bothering him. He let it ring…and ring… Then, frustrated at not being able to get anything done – he was losing commissions here – Martin finally answered it.

  The caller hung up.

  Technical glitch, Martin told himself. The computer cocking something up. He waited as more numbers were dialled and someone answered.

  ‘Good morning, I’m Martin of—’

  ‘So it’s Martin,’ came the voice from the previous day.

  His mouth fell open. ‘It can’t be.’

  ‘That’s twice you’ve hung up on me, Martin. It’s really very rude, you know.’ The voice had a calm quality about it, just like the other time, but Martin knew it wouldn’t take much to set this man off.

  ‘What do you want?’ he asked. ‘An apology? I already said it isn’t my fault about the first call. But look, I’m sorry and—’

  ‘You can fucking stick your apology,’ snapped the voice.

  ‘Hey, I’ve said I’m sorry,’ Martin told the voice, starting to lose patience. He wasn’t normally a person who stood up for himself, but this guy was pushing him too far. ‘Now, could you please get off the line – you’re going to lose me my job.’

  ‘Oh, we wouldn’t want that now, would we?’ said the voice, in a tone that made Martin feel extremely uncomfortable.

  He hung up again. Wiping the sweat from his brow, Martin stared at the computer screen. Which one of those numbers the computer had randomly dialled belonged to him, the Voice? He could phone them all in turn, but—

  His headset started to ring, and Martin knew it was the man again, just like he knew it was him that had hung up the call before last. He flung down the headset, got up, and backed away from the desk. Martin told his supervisor on his way out that he wasn’t feeling very well and needed to get home. It wasn’t that much of a lie.

  The grin was now conspicuous by its absence as his superior told him, ‘That’s fair enough. You don’t work, though, you don’t get any money.’ Martin nodded, then left – with his supervisor’s words trailing after him. ‘And you’d better be here bright and early in the morning, or I’m giving your position to someone else.’

  Martin did as he said he was going to do: went home to his small bed-sit. He tried to watch TV, but it all washed over him. Tried to watch his favourite movie, but couldn’t concentrate. He barely slept that night, tossing and turning, hearing the Voice just as he was finally drifting off.

  Exhausted, Martin went back to work the next day, asking one of the workers near the back if he could swap again. They reluctantly agreed, but only after clearing it with the supervisor. The man simply sighed and nodded. Martin knew he was on very thin ice. But there was no way the Voice would find him after another switch.

  Yet it did, checking in at about 2:45 in th
e afternoon. ‘You don’t get rid of me that easily,’ it said.

  Martin clicked off the line again, then continued to do so every time the phone rang after that, hoping if he did it fast enough the caller would just get fed up. But he was also on the lines that Martin tried to dial out. How is he doing this? Martin thought. Is he some kind of technical whiz or something? A bored geek with a grudge? Whatever the case, he was definitely a nutter. Martin reported this new spate of harassment to his supervisor, who fired him on the spot.

  ‘You’re obsessed, boy!’ he told Martin. ‘Imagining things.’

  Martin was sad to lose the work, but looked on the bright side – at least he wouldn’t have to deal with that loony on the phone again. To cheer himself up, he went for a walk in the park, taking a McDonalds with him to eat by the lake. He was feeding bits of the bun to the birds when his mobile went off; the nice jingly ringtone that always made him feel happy.

  Martin pulled it out, opened it, at the same time checking the number and expecting to see either work, one of his acting pals, his folks, or maybe Tina – his semi-serious on-off girlfriend (more off now, as she hadn’t called in a while).

  It read simply ‘unknown’. He answered anyway.

  ‘Time on your hands?’ said the Voice.

  Martin almost dropped his mobile. ‘What? You?’

  ‘Yes, me, Martin. You were expecting someone else?’ He was about to bring the phone down from his ear when the Voice said: ‘If you fucking well hang up on me this time, you’ll regret it.’

  Martin swallowed dryly. ‘I’m… I—’

  ‘I’m…I…’ mimicked the caller. ‘Moron! Nice spot you’ve picked, though. I like it. Very peaceful. Or it would be if I wasn’t so wound up.’

  Martin snapped his phone shut, cutting the Voice off. He stood and whirled around. There were a few other people nearby: a jogger, a woman with a small dog, a couple of kids. He saw no-one else. But then he wouldn’t, would he.