Ring Ring

Since the invention of the etherphone, the “Phone to the Other Side”, Ethan had a pretty good gig. The sign outside his office said, “Contact loved ones on the other side: $5.00 / minute or partial minute.”

The first minute barely made up for the hassle of finding the correct number, but the calls were never that short. Except, Ethan thought, for that one lady who only ever says, ‘Fart!’, then hangs up. Still, every minute over the first two hours of calls each day was pure profit…the portion that he lived on. Some days, though, it took most of the day to make those first two hours.

He looked outside the office and saw a line already forming. “Customer service face, Ethan,” he said to himself, turning on the “Open” sign and unlocking the door.

For the most part, his clientele was polite, waiting in line for their turn. An occasional panicked customer would try to cut in line with some urgent matter they “had to address immediately.” He handled those on a case-by-case basis. Most were not so urgent, but sometimes — more like rarely — they were.

Today he was lucky, as the panicked customer was the first in line. Ethan cut her off as she tried to explain why it was so urgent. “Look, ma’am, you’re first in line, and every second you explain your problem is another second I’m not connecting you to your loved ones.”

She calmed down and Ethan took down all the particulars he’d need to find the correct number. He found the number, dialed it, and handed her the phone as soon as they answered before stepping out of the call booth into the main office and shutting the heavy door. He respected his clients’ privacy, after all.

She emerged, teary-eyed and defeated after ten minutes. He told her some platitudes meant to make her feel better about the situation, after she paid the fifty dollars she owed for the call. He wasn’t heartless, but he was running a business.

The Fart Lady was next in line. At least he didn’t have to look up the number anymore. It had taken a few times, but even her one-second calls were now no hassle. With the number memorized, it was a matter of muscle memory at this point to punch it in.

No sooner had he handed her the phone than she yelled, “Fart!” and hung up. She handed him a five-dollar bill and a one “as a tip”, grinning like the cat that ate the canary, and walked out. He wasn’t sure what was going on with her, but aside from her bizarre calls to her “long-lost love” on the other side, she seemed perfectly normal.

It didn’t matter, Ethan was content to let people be themselves and run his business. After taxes, rent, utilities, and the costs of the etherphone, he was almost comfortable, and that’s all that mattered. He sighed at the thought of himself as yet another cog in the machinery of late-stage capitalism.

Those sorts of thoughts never occupied his mind for long, as business was usually good enough that there wasn’t much in the way of time to think. There were times, though, when it slowed down, that his thoughts grew grim.

If someone else in town were to get an etherphone and provide lower-priced competition, it would hurt. He might have to give up his studio apartment and live in the office if he were to reduce prices. At least he had a four-year lease on the etherphone, with payments fixed at $10,000 per month. The current lease rates were higher.

He finished out his day, turned the sign off and locked the door. He was counting out the till, and preparing his deposit when it rang. The etherphone…rang!

Ethan rose from the stool behind the register and stared into the open call room at the etherphone. It continued to ring. It doesn’t work that way! He ran to the call room and slammed the door. He could still hear the ringing, muted by the heavy door.

With shaking hands, he rushed through his nightly duties and ran from the office, the phone still ringing. He hurried to the bank, only calming once he made the deposit. He looked at his reflection in the mirror above the night deposit slot, meant to alert users of anyone behind them.

“Ethan, calm down. The phone doesn’t work that way. You’re imagining the whole thing.” He didn’t believe it, but saying it with his confident, customer-service face, made him — somehow — begin to believe his reflection.

He laughed. “Hallucinations, that’s what it is,” he told himself. “You’re over-worked and over-tired. You just need a rest. Yeah.”

By the time he returned to open the office the next morning, he’d almost convinced himself that it wasn’t real. He was still relieved to open the door to silence. Opening the call room door took a moment of steeling himself against what he might find. His relief was tripled when the call room looked completely normal, the etherphone sitting quietly on the small desk.

He opened early as the line was already forming, and the etherphone was in use more than not that day. The first of the month was always the busiest, with everyone ready to spend a portion of their paycheck on talking to the other side.

Ethan turned off the sign while the last caller was still in the call room. He knocked on the door, cracked it open and pointed at his watch. The man on the phone nodded and concluded his call.

It was while Ethan was counting out the man’s change that it happened again. Ethan noted the time; 6:10 PM. The man took his change and ran, his face as pale as Ethan was sure his own was.

Rather than count the till and make a deposit, he chose to lock the register and deal with it in the morning. This was no hallucination, the customer had heard it too. He drank himself to a broken, uneasy sleep. Ethan’s dreams were filled with hideous aberrations crawling out of the etherphone, coming to smother him.

He arrived early, only opening the door after putting his ear to it and assuring himself that it wasn’t still ringing. He counted the till, prepared a deposit slip, and put the deposit bag in the small floor safe.

He closed early that evening, counting the till and adding the second deposit to the previous one in the bag. He stood by the front door, watching the time. At 6:10 PM, it began ringing again, and Ethan rushed out the door, locking it behind him and running to the bank.

The entire week continued like that; even the Fart Lady giving him a five-dollar tip for her one-second call couldn’t pull him out of the low-level dread that grew to terror as 6:10 PM neared. Every night, he stood just outside the door, waiting to hear the etherphone ring, and every night it did.

Ethan was closed on Sundays, but he was in the office this time. He determined that he’d have to answer, otherwise, whoever or whatever was on the other side would keep trying to contact him. And why shouldn’t they be able to call? he wondered. Because the company that leased the phone said so? There has to be some sort of device on the other side that makes the connection.

After several shots of liquid courage, Ethan sat down in the call room, ready to find out who was calling from the other side. 6:10 PM rolled around sooner than he expected, and the phone rang.

He lifted the phone with a trembling hand and answered. “E—Ethan’s Other-Side, this is Ethan.”

The woman’s voice on the other end was clear. She sounded young. “Is this Ethan Carmichael?”

He cleared his throat. “It is. Ho—how did you call me? This phone is supposed to be one-way. We call the living, not—”

“Mister Carmichael, we’ve been trying to reach you about your extended car warranty….”