THE MOMENT
“Hello?” Dan answered his phone. A bright, cheerful voice replied from the other end.
“Hello! My name is Samantha and I’m calling from-” She began her pitch, but Dan interrupted. He told her the truth, in the hopes of discouraging her from calling back.
“Can’t talk. ‘Bating,” He said. he lowered the phone to his waist to make sure she heard squishing sounds before he pressed the button to hang up. His phone rang again. Dan answered it. “Hello?”
“Sorry to interrupt, but I’m not selling anything.” Samantha’s voice said quickly. She still sounded like she was in a great mood. Dan admired her tenacity.
“Survey?” Dan asked.
“Nope.” Her voice chirped.
“Political?”
“Nope.”
“Alright, Samantha,” he sighed when he decided to hear her out. “Go.” He relaxed his grip on himself and grabbed a tissue to clean his hand off. The rest of his fun was going to have to wait.
“I’m calling from Monsterscripts. I hope they’re not monitoring my call, because I’m going off script. Normally I’m supposed explain about how the subscription service for Monsters works, but I’m sure you’ve heard of us, so I don’t want to waste too much of your time.”
“Thanks, yeah. I’ve heard of it. Parents hire monsters to keep their kids in line. And they get to pick how the monsters appear and all that. I don’t have any kids.” Dan said. He chuckled to himself when glanced at the wastebin full of crumpled up, sticky tissues.
“Oh. Well that’s not why I’m calling anyway. I did say I wasn’t selling anything, remember?” She asked. Dan heard the smile in her voice clearly, and he wondered if she was one of those “permanently happy” types.
“Oh, okay. So what do you want.”
“I called to offer you an opportunity,” Samantha said, then stopped talking. Dan wondered if she realized that it still sounded like a sales pitch.
“Alright, go on.” Dan said.
“Well, we have all kinds of monsters here. Some that come with the fog, some come at night,”
“Others in the closet, and in dreams,” Dan said. “Yeah, I’ve seen the commercials.”
“We try to fulfill all our client’s requests, but recently we’ve started getting some strange requests that we’re not prepared to handle. Basically we’re hiring civilians to help bolster our services.”
“You’re offering me a job?”
“Exactly!” Samantha said. “Times are changing, and some adults are hiring monsters for themselves instead of kids. We have plenty of monsters that come in the fog or at night, but we need more unconventional monsters. Monsters that just cum.