Truth Calling comes to us from Red Bluff author Dylan MacMillan, who describes himself as a ‘bad employee but a decent writer’. He didn’t reveal his employer, but as long as he can keep his job while working on fiction ideas in his head we say, “more power to him!”
How and why it started, I don’t know. The only thing I know for certain was that I’ve never been more afraid of getting an instant message. This was worse than getting a message from my manager telling me I needed to come in to work all weekend–much worse.
The first message seemed innocuous enough. My Crackberry went ba-ding while I was waiting in line for coffee. I didn’t look down until I placed my order and was waiting for it to come up. I wanted to see what the message was, but I was afraid of looking like a self-important douche in front of the barista, because she was kind of cute. A lot cute, actually, and she didn’t look like the kind of girl who thinks guys who order while looking down at their Crackberries are cool.
So I tried to play it mellow. Inside, I was hoping she’d heard the sound and thought better of me for holding off on looking at the message. It was too noisy, of course, but that didn’t stop me from imagining. Having a rich internal life is important for happiness, or so I’ve always believed.
I pulled the phone out of my pocket and tapped the screen. It lit up and I touched the message indicator. Act naturally. Glance at this message, shake your head, and press Delete.
I shook my head. It was obviously spam. I deleted the message and put the phone back in my pocket.
Ba-ding. I glanced up. My coffee wasn’t ready yet. Nothing better to do than check my messages again. Hopefully it was something real this time rather than some random spammer.
You are in danger. Get your coffee and leave by the side door.
Now this was just getting stupid. I was getting angry now. Someone who knew me must be in the coffee shop trying to mess with me. I looked around, trying not to tip my hand. I didn’t see anyone I knew, but that didn’t mean anything. They could be sitting outside, they could have seen me come in, or they just knew my schedule too damn well. I cursed myself for living such a predictable life.
I deleted the second message. Then someone yelled my name: “Charles!” I looked it up. It was the pretty barista, ready with my coffee. “Roast, straight up.”
I dropped the phone in my pocket and smiled at her. It may have looked like a grimace, actually, because I was still pissed about the messages. She pushed the cup across the counter to me and turned away. I took the cup to the creamer station and put in a single brown sugar.
The tram stop was nearest to the side door anyway, so leaving by that means had nothing to do with the message. It was what I was going to do anyway.
Ba-ding. I didn’t want to look but I had no way of knowing if I was getting an important message from work or not. I had to look. That’s why they pay for your phone.
Good. Go to your stop. And whatever you do, don’t look behind you.
Christ on a cracker, what a load of crap. Whoever it was, they needed to try something more original. But I glanced behind me anyway. A man in a dark suit was walking behind me, about six paces back. Nothing to do with me, right? I thought to myself.
Wrong.
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Thus ends part 1 of Truth Calling. Come back next week for the next installment–but before you go, please vote on this story. Our readers are the final editors on serialtales.com. Vote for one of three options:
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