I think I need help. Advice maybe. I got to work tonight and things were just… off. I’m not sure how else to explain it. Nothing was overtly scary, nothing in particular really “happened”. I guess that’s the thing though, that’s what’s wrong, it feels like there’s nothing to be afraid of, but I can’t shake the feeling that that’s a lie. Nothing happening almost feels worse than something happening. Now I can’t figure out when I’m supposed to go home. Why can’t I go home? It feels like I don’t want to, but I know I do, yet I’m still not leaving.
I’m currently at a cubicle writing this on an old computer. One of those big bulky white ones that yellowed a lot as they aged. This one, however, seems brand new. Just like the one in my family computer room when I was a kid playing Runescape and building fake websites on piczo.com. The frame rate is killing my eyes. I have a headache now and the pain is pulsing through my body, so I’ll try to make this as succinct as possible.
I don’t usually work in a cubicle. I’m an overnight board operator for a local radio station. It’s crazy they still pay people for this shift. I basically just play and log infomercials, mostly about some sort of “magic” vitamin that cures all of your health problems. My program director tried to cut costs by automating it overnight but one night the computer rebooted on its own and went off-air. These overnight scammy infomercials pay the bills around here, so it was a big deal. That’s when I got moved to this shift. It was better to just pay a minimum wage glorified button-pusher than to risk losing a client like that. I actually generally like the shift. I love being awake when no one else is, and it’s a really easy job with no real expectations. I’ll typically just watch old movies on my computer while the shows run.
Every night, I arrive at 11:55 pm. Radio is a precise industry. Time matters a lot. If I’m even a minute late, the station will go dead. But tonight I nearly missed it. I got in at 11:59 pm. I had to run inside to make sure I didn’t miss switching over to the top-of-the-hour news. Once I get out of the 3-minute news break, I switch over to a 24-minute infomercial.
Tonight the infomercial was new. They switch up every few months, so that wasn’t really alarming. But what they were advertising was really strange, more outlandish than usual. And I’m not sure why, but these infomercials always sound 10 years in the past audio quality-wise. I get the feed before it goes through the crushing AM frequency compressors, but even pre it has decently intense mic distortion.
This infomercial was a guy who called himself “Dr. Jones”. I don’t remember it all verbatim but I remember the first line so clearly. Ironically, he said, “Don’t you hate forgetting?”. It went on kind of like this:
“Do you find yourself reminiscing about your childhood? About your teens? Maybe your 20s or 30s? Time is fast, and time is cruel. The older we get the less we remember about those good old days. Don’t you want to remember it all? So you can live in those moments forever? Pass along family stories and keep those days alive? This new vitamin (I forget what he called it) will make your memory 100 times as strong, and allow you to never forget all of those good old times.”
After the pitch, the infomercials kinda just ramble and give examples of supposed people who saw “astounding results”. I’m not even sure this is relevant, but it stood out to me so I figured it was worth sharing. Maybe one of you has heard the infomercial before.
Once the pitch was over, like I always do, I left the studio to go to the vending machines on the third floor to get some snacks. The studio is in the headquarters of a massive media company in my country, so the building is quite large and there are many floors I’ve never even visited.
Before I left the studio, I checked the clock on the station feed and set a timer on my phone so I know how much time I have before the infomercial finished. If I don’t do that I always panic and think I’m going to accidentally let the station go off air. Tonight I set my timer for 17 minutes.
Sometimes I’ll take the stairs up to the third floor, but tonight was one of those lazy nights where the elevator was calling. This is when the first odd thing happened. When I got into the elevator, the lights felt more fluorescent than normal. There was a yellow-green tinge that I wasn’t used to. It made the building feel so much older and grungier than it is. Like a classroom I was in the third grade back in 2002 or something. The building is really only 8 years old.
This alone wasn’t too abnormal, lights start to die all the time. But then there was the music. Elevator music. Which, honestly, I didn’t even think was real because I’ve never actually ridden an elevator with elevator music. It was new in the building. At least, new to me.
The music was so odd. Vaguely reminiscent of one of those songs that you don’t really remember the first time you heard it, it just always seemed to be on the radio when you were growing up. But instead of the original song, whatever it was, it was like it was remade in that boring elevatory-type genre. And also warbling, like on an old tape, going in and out of the correct time at such a slight rate that it was hard to tell it was happening, you just knew because it felt so unsettling. I just can’t understand why they would install an old analogue system like that if they wanted to add elevator music. And the building isn’t old enough for a system like that to have been dormant.
The ride is only from the first floor to the third one. It usually feels like 20 seconds or so. Now, at this point, I hadn’t checked my timer at all, so I can’t confirm, but the elevator also felt excruciatingly long considering. The music just felt like it kept going. Not like a loop though, it was like the song itself never ended, and the entire time it played my brain was lost trying to place the tune. I knew it, but I didn’t. The door dinged and the music stopped suddenly mid-bar. The song is still stuck in my head, and that annoying “tip of my tongue” sensation has not gone away, though I feel no closer to figuring out what it was.
After the elevator dinged and opened I wanted to grab a couple of snacks and then just go right back downstairs. Sometimes I would dilly-dally to kill time, but I just felt so uneasy. And almost tired. I checked the timer on my phone. 16 minutes to go.
I walked down the long empty characterless hallway until the corner where I turned and met the vending machines. The two that take credit cards were out of order but I typically like the options in the older machine better so I had cash on me. I guess the company that stocks them was low on items though because there was only one type of chips and it filled the whole machine, fully stocked. It was a brand I had never seen before and the only flavour was plain, but I’m honestly not very picky anyway. That made my choice easy.
I put a 5 in for two bags of chips, but the stupid machine malfunctioned and ate my money without giving me my chips. I was pretty irrationally pissy about it, to be honest. I just wanted to get back down to the studio and watch a movie. But I wanted my chips too. And my money.
I checked my timer, and it still said 16 minutes so I decided to head to the security desk and see if they could open it up or something. I took the stairs back down to the first floor and went to the lobby.
It was so weird at night to see the massive entryway completely empty save for a single head poking up at the security desk. During the day dozens of people would be walking in and out of here consistently, and the sounds of chatter were ever-present. At night time it’s always so calm, and the only noise is the clacking of my feet on the hard floor. I love that part of the job, but tonight the clacks sounded heavier and more imposing.
The security guard tonight is different than usual. The normal guard is Vicky. She’s really bubbly and helpful and spends most of the night taking quizzes on Buzzfeed. Tonight there is a man. I’m not sure if he’s new or if I just don’t see him a lot. I do feel like I recognize his face, but I’m not one hundred percent sure. I walked over to him, but his head didn’t lift as I neared.
“Hey,” I said, almost at the edge of the tall desk now.
He didn’t say anything, but he looked away from his computer and down at me with an unchanged face.
“Ugh, I think the vending machine is broken.”
He blinked, then continued to stare directly into my eyes.
“I know the building doesn’t own them, but I was wondering if you still had a key or something, you know, in case of emergencies.
Slowly, his eyes moved to look at something behind me, then went back to piercing mine. He said nothing. I looked behind me, nothing was there.
“I’m taking that as a no?”
He went back to looking at his screen. He was so unfriendly. I missed Vicky. I decided to cut my losses. I checked my timer. It still said 16 minutes. That was my first, “Okay this is really fucking weird” moment. But it wasn’t as weird as what happened after that.
When I started walking away from the desk I went on my tippy-toes to coyly get a glimpse of what he was up to on the computer. To see if he was a late-night e-bay bidder or a Buzzfeed quiz addict like Vicky or something. At first glance, it was a lot more boring. He was watching the security camera feeds. Nothing weird there. But then I got a bit of a better look. I squinted my eyes and saw the studio feed, where I was supposed to be. Where I am supposed to be. And I know this sounds fucking crazy and I understand if you don’t believe me, but I was there.
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Holy shit okay this computer just suddenly started popping off with virus warnings. It’s running Windows XP for some reason and it’s those classic blue and grey boxes just layering themselves on the scr- fuck this is so annoying to type because I keep having to exit out of them. I am going to just press publish on what I have now and try to figure this out. Maybe I’ll move computers, there are seemingly endless rows so I have options.
I know this isn’t much to go on yet, but do you have any ideas what the fuck is going on? I’ll believe anything right now, there’s so much more crazy shit that’s happened. Does anyone understand any of this?