Stolen Souls

Full-time remote work. Excellent benefits. Mounting terror. A short story.

His home office was converted from a gym to a remote office soon after the pandemic hit. A week later he was laid off from his job. As expected, bills did not stop coming when his employment ceased. After a month of desperate job searching, he stumbled across a company’s website that listed a job described as “Full-time remote sales work. Excellent benefits”. It was a small out-of-state company, but he jumped at the opportunity and called the listed phone number.

The corporate recruiter seemed friendly and happy to explain the job. The interview process went quickly and well — all over Zoom. Three sullen interviewers, but these days a paycheck was a paycheck. He had yet to meet a single person from the company face-to-face but regardless soon he would have his first paycheck in weeks.

Another Zoom meeting his first day on the job today with the whole company, twenty or so mostly joyless folks — all of whom had a virtual background except for himself and the recruiter — sandwiched in between dull online product training.

His long day of online orientation learning the product was close to an end. Selling this shitty product would suck but it was a job nonetheless. Bill collectors did not care if you were happy at your job. The sheer boredom started to add weight to his eyelids. They drooped just a bit.

He decided the day of reading was over and he stopped to write a requested end-of-day email to his new boss, letting her know (again) that he appreciated being there and had made good progress on the training.

As his fingers typed, one of the letters on the laptop keyboard surprised him as he pressed it. He almost missed it, but something felt odd. He started typing again. As he pressed the H key, it vibrated ever so slightly.

He stopped typing and stood up slowly, staring at the keyboard. As he watched, the H key shook ever more slowly until it came to a halt.

He stared a bit longer.

Well, that was weird, he thought. “Might be time for a new laptop”, he muttered to himself, almost under his breath.

He sat back down to finish the email, shaking off the oddness as a strange fluke. He pressed the H again and the letter dutifully appeared on the screen, same as always. He tried it again and again. Every time an H was written in the body of the email, just as ordered. No vibration.

He backspaced over the flock of H’s, embarrassed a bit by his initial startled reaction.

Back to the email, he thought. Then a beer.

His fingers began typing unconsciously again. In a short moment, the E key shook as he pressed it. He sprung up a bit more quickly this time - his chair tipped backward and slammed against the floor. The loud bang jolted his blood pressure upwards. He took a step back away from the desk as the vibrating E key slowed to a stop. The H no longer seemed like a fluke.

He glared at the laptop now. What in the world am I freaking out about? The laptop is acting up, that’s all.

Imagination is powerful, he told himself as he began to calm down.

Still standing, he reached his hand back down to the keyboard and ran his index finger across all of the letters in the top row. The Qwerty row. Nothing extraordinary happened. The letters appeared on the screen as normal. He ran his finger across the second row. The ASDF row. The last letter shook as he pressed it. The L. His hand instinctively jumped off the laptop as if he had touched a hot stove.

Goosebumps exploded on both arms.

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. He looked around as if someone else was there. No one. The hair on the back of his neck seemed to erupt out of his skin.

He considered bolting out of his apartment but some barely existent deep feeling overrode his fright. He reached toward the suspicious keyboard and ran his finger across the bottom row of letters like they were piano keys. Nothing.

Back to the Qwerty row. He reversed course this time and started on the right side. He slid his finger across the letters, not stopping until he pressed the Q. Right off the bat, the P began to shake. Then the U. The P’s vibration stopped after a few moments — then the U ground to a halt.

Now fear choked him, gripped him. An inexplicable feeling of dread. He had had enough. Before he had a chance to close the laptop, the S key simply pressed itself. Unlike the other quivering letters though, the S stayed pressed like an invisible hand remained on it.

Or an invisible hand beneath it pulled it down tight.

He gaped as the letter marched endlessly across the screen, like the hiss of a silent snake.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

He slammed the laptop shut.

H-E-L-P-U-SSSSSS.

H-E-L-P-U-S.

HELP US.

Help who? How? And suddenly he thought of all those sullen faces on the Zoom calls.

The unexpected shrill ringing of his phone on the desk burst the silence like lightning splitting the sky. His heart pounded against the wall of his chest as if it was looking for an escape hatch.

He grabbed the phone and stared at the number. The recruiter.

“How was your first day?” asked the recruiter as he answered the call, relieved to hear another voice right now.

“Well, honestly something really weird just happened.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“Well, it’s a bit hard and sort of embarrassing to explain…”, he said, already again beginning to wonder if he had imagined the whole thing. He looked back at the laptop and though it was still closed his mind could still see the eerie parade line of S’s.

Help us, he thought again.

“One sec before you explain”, said the recruiter.

He thought he detected a slight sternness in tone — as if this was an order more than a request. No, just more imagination, he thought.

Then he heard three ever-so-slight beeps on the other end of the phone. But they sounded strange somehow. Like they were not normal sounds, but more like the sound of…

More like the sound of…movement. Of something dispatched toward him. Getting slightly louder each microsecond.

Beep. Beep. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

As the tinny beeps reached inside his ear, he felt a thinning sensation, as if he was fading into a dry mist. With panicked eyes, he realized he could see through himself. As his hand vanished, the phone clattered to the floor and he began to feel his soul being drawn within the phone.

As he dissolved into the phone, the recruiter whispered, “See you in Zoom with the rest of the team.”

The next morning the recruiter updated the company website with the new job opening.

Full-time remote sales work. Excellent benefits.