Joel Arnold - Fetal Bait Apocalypse - 3 Collections in 1

But here’s the thing. We’re trying. We’re trying to earn enough to pay them. Jessica’s got her job, and I’m working from home, but they don’t care about that; they keep calling, the phone ringing every ten, twenty minutes, and you can tell who it is by the caller ID, and you’d think we just wouldn’t bother, wouldn’t be such slaves to the phone, but what if it was actually someone important, you know? Like a neighbor, or someone with work to do. So we have to at least look at the caller ID.

“It’s all about persistence,” Jessica tells me. “They just keep calling and calling knowing that at some point you’ll pay them just to get them off your back.”

“It’s not that we’re holding out on them to be spiteful,” I say. “We really don’t have the money they’re asking for.”

Jessica says, “They count on you to have a tipping point. They count on you to get so annoyed, so bat-shit crazy from the sound of the ringing phone that you’ll do anything to make it stop. They don’t care how you get the money. They just know that somehow, at some point, you’ll reach critical mass, and you’ll get them their money.” She nods. “It’s all about persistence.”

The phone rings. I look at the caller ID. Damn.

Persistence.

But Jessica says, “Give me the phone.”

I hand it over.

To them it’s just a job, and they sit at their little consoles, or switchboards, or computers or whatever the hell it is they sit by, and wait until a computer tells them one of us poor schmucks have picked up the phone, and then they swoop in like vultures.

Jessica winks at me. “Where are you from,” she asks the caller flirtatiously. “I know what company you’re from, but where? Where are you calling from?” She smiles, and asks, “What’s your name?”

She does this with every call now. We still haven’t paid. We still don’t have the money. But she answers every damn call after she gets home from work. And they still call.

Most of the time, they don’t answer Jessica’s questions. That’s not why they’re calling. But sometimes she gets names. Locations.

She’s persistent.

And with a name and a location…

Jessica has been away for five weeks now. I didn’t realize how much money she had stashed away in her personal savings account. She’s way more frugal than I realized.

So far the killings appear random. As far as I can tell, nobody’s figured out a pattern.

She sends me postcards. “Having a grand time in Michigan!” or “Getting my kicks on Route 66” or “Loving the food here in India.”

You’d think they wouldn’t be so forthcoming with names and locations. But like I said, it’s all about persistence, and if I had to find one flaw with Jessica, it’s her damn persistence.

Amazing how one press of a button can change a man’s life forever. A simple transference of electronic impulses. An invisible leap as the remote control breathes life into the components of a television set. There is blackness at first. Then static. Carter sits back in his leather chair. An image pops on the screen, a subtle glow that captures his breath. He leans forward.

EXT. A FOREST — NIGHT.

A woman runs screaming from the video camera, the camera work amateur and shaky. The nozzle of a gun appears on screen, a thick black pointer, its tip wobbling against the running woman’s ass. There’s a loud crack, and the woman falls. The camera, relentless, is drawn to the fallen woman, and the smoke from the spent bullet can almost be smelled wafting up through the lens as the camera zooms in and leers at its subject.

She is still alive, but no longer screams, her hair a tangle of sweaty black, her eyes underscored by sleep circles so dark they look like bruises, and as she tries to scoot away from the camera on her back like a crab, a black gloved hand comes into view pointing the gun at her neck. You can hear the heavy breathing of the cameraman, and as the sounds of an oncoming climax nears, the bright explosion of the gun nozzle blinds the electronic eye of the camera for a moment until it refocuses, re-meters the scant incoming light. When the picture is once again clear, we see the damage the bullet has done.

The woman no longer moves. She lays there, her throat a rose in fresh bloom, the residual petals dotting her face and chest. Her eyes remain open and void of fear. It is as close to a miracle as anyone can ever hope to witness. A brief bridge that spans the chasm between life and death caught on tape.

Carter’s thumb misses the stop button twice before finally finding it’s mark. He stands, the hint of sweat licking at the collar of his shirt, and looks out the window, making sure Angie hasn’t pulled into the driveway. He knows how he gets when the tape is new, his total immersion into the picture, his obliviousness to outside noises. He knows this can be dangerous and shudders at the thought of his wife of ten years catching him.

He shuts the blinds. Sits back in his chair, the remote in his hand, presses rewind, then play. Again the black and the static and the picture popping on like a quick jab to the gut.

Angie comes home first, followed shortly by their eight year old daughter Brittany. By then, Carter has set the dining room table and taken out the meatloaf which he’d hastily stuck in the oven over an hour ago.

“How did your day go?”

It’s Angie’s usual opening question at the dinner table. She bites a piece of meatloaf off her fork, then reaches over to cut Brittany’s slab into bite-size chunks.

“Busy.” Carter catches himself nodding at his food a bit too long. “And yours?”

Angie begins a soft-spoken litany of the day’s events, and although Carter tries to follow the thread of her speech, he can’t concentrate. He left work early today, and the newness of the video flows through his head like molten steel.

“Are you okay?”

“Huh?” Carter realizes both his wife and daughter are staring at him. “Yes. I mean no. A bad headache.” He gets up from the table, pats Brit on the head. “I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

“You haven’t even touched your food.”