The Caller Who Knew What I Was Wearing

I did overnight tech support for a home security company, which, in hindsight, is a deeply ironic place to have had the most frightening shift of my life.

Nights were quiet. You got the occasional false alarm, someone whose cat set off a motion sensor, the odd person locked out by their own app. Mostly you sat in a big beige room under those lights that hum, four of us spread across forty empty desks, and you watched the clock refuse to move.

The call came in around three in the morning. No caller ID, which happens, but the line was strange -- too clear, no background, like the person was calling from inside a sealed box.

"Support, this is Danny," I said.

"Danny." The voice was flat. Male, maybe. "You should fix the light above you. The one that flickers. It's been flickering all night."

I looked up. The light above my desk was, in fact, flickering. Had been for an hour. I had complained about it.

"I'm sorry," I said, doing the script, "are you experiencing an issue with your system tonight?"

"You're wearing the gray hoodie," the voice said. "The one with the hole in the left sleeve. You keep putting your thumb through it."

I was. I was doing it right then. My thumb was through the hole in the sleeve.

I want to tell you I stayed calm. I did not. I stood up so fast my chair rolled back and hit the desk behind me, and I looked around that big beige room at the windows, which at three in the morning are just black mirrors, and I could not see anything past my own reflection. My coworker Alina looked over at me, mouthed "you okay," and I could not answer.

"Who is this," I said.

"Check the camera," the voice said. "The lobby camera. Feed four."

We had a security feed for our own building -- of course we did, we were a security company. I pulled up feed four with shaking hands. The lobby. Empty. The glass doors. Empty. The parking lot beyond, lit orange, one car. My car.