Corporate Clarke's Fiction

[2,500 words]

Nothing works. Software is getting worse. Customer service is getting worse. 

Yes, it’s really easy to return that thing you bought from Amazon, but if you want to do anything else, if you have to call them – game over. No organisation can deal with anything outside the standard operating procedure. And now they want to give everything to AI agents.

Have you tried moving house? Don’t. Just stay wherever you are forever. It’s not worth moving. 

The process never ends. I moved house eight months ago – I still feel like I’m moving. Four months chasing a credit from an incorrect first energy bill generated six months ago. They finally sent it and there is no name on the cheque, so I have to call them again. Window cleaners who posted leaflets through my door don’t return my calls, so the window corners are caked with spiderwebs. The cover of the foul water pipe is seeping shit and toilet paper into my garden because the previous owner threw some rubble down the drain. Everyone is bemusingly incompetent or simply insane. 

My pregnant fiancee has coated the house in Ring cameras. It took a dozen tries over three months for her to be able to share access to the cameras so I can see the footage on my phone. Instant regret. So many alerts. Someone is at the front door, someone is in the kitchen, something is in the back garden. I just ignore them now. Totally defying the point of having the cameras. 

It’s Saturday. Saturdays are held in the tight grip of family routine. I wake up too late, prepare the toddler for his swimming lessons, goad him into eating his breakfast quickly, forget to eat my own, pack his wet bag, coat him in creams made from oil derivatives, worry if I’m curing or contributing to his eczema, then head out of the door. 

At the leisure centre I watch him swim from the spectators’ gallery. You only get these moments once, watching him learn, watching him get comfortable in his own body. But I’m still fighting the urge to browse reels. I watch him swim – mostly. 

Slap more oil derivatives onto his skin after the swimming lesson. A big cuddle, “As long as you try your best I am proud of you.” My father’s words coming out of my mouth. 

The Saturday family routine continues, we drive to the supermarket. I take the toddler to the cafe for breakfast while my fiancee shops on her own. We used to drink cocktails at lunchtime on Saturdays. He plays games on my phone or does some colouring-in while I sip coffee and eat microwaved Shashuka. This is my rest for the weekend. This and an hour of Star Trek in the evening before I flop into bed. 

I get a dozen chimes in my pocket as I’m unloading the shopping from the car, the smart doorbell can’t figure out what’s happening. Later I dismiss them from my notification tray, but not before catching a glimpse of myself inelegantly dragging shopping bags into the house. An out of shape, skinny-fat frame trying not to knock the head off the toddler with 18 kilogram, overpacked sacks of groceries. 

It’s just about midday and I am shattered. When was the last time we went on holiday? When will be the next time? Probably not for a few months until after the new baby arrives. We’ll be different people by then.

Just give me a week away from the list of things to do. It doesn’t have to be nice. Stick me in a Benedictine monastery, just fasting and chanting for a week. Just don’t make me call the energy company again.

The routine Saturday continues and it’s wonderful as well. I take the boy to a park. Get him some ice cream. Take him to the train station and watch trains pass under the bridge. He says so many funny things and I forget them. I should write them down. It’s windy today and he keeps asking me if we need to go home, if there will be a tomato. After a while I realise he means tornado. Growing up on American YouTube videos.

The phone repeatedly buzzes as the fiancee moves around the kitchen, preparing food and everything else she does that keeps the family factory, the home, producing everything we rely on. All while waddling under the weight of making new life. I just need to get a window cleaner.

Did we have a real conversation today? I don’t remember. 

The bedtime routine is the most challenging part of the daily routine, because it is the part that least resembles a routine. It’s a military intervention, predicted optimistically to be a 30 minute in-and-out consciousness change. But 20 years and 2 trillion dollars of bedtime books later, you realise you have no exit strategy.

I am laying next to him in his bed when he says, “Daddy, close the bedroom door.” He is stalling, grasping at a few extra minutes being awake. 

“After you shut your eyes.” 

“No. Close it now, the wolf will get me.”

“There is no wolf, buddy.” I give him a squeeze. 

“There is. The wolf with no mouth.” 

“I’ve never seen him.”

“He hides in the day.”

“Where does he hide?”

“In the wall in the toilet downstairs.”

“I will protect you from him.”

“Shut the door daddy, please.”

“OK.” 

I pull out my half-dead arm from under him and move over to the door. A little vestige of light shoots across the top of the hall and slides down the stairs. Nothing but my son’s lamp behind me, scattering my skinny-fat shadow. The apparitions of a house. I’m used to living in an apartment with blocky, clean lines and no phantoms. The shadows behaved themselves. Here there are too many little nooks and textures. There are ghosts in every corner. 

“He’s gone downstairs now,” my son says from his bed. He is so convinced. I remember being that age, being sure that monsters exist, seeing them everywhere. I remember stacking my soft toys in defensive formations around my bed to protect me while I was sleeping. 

“What should I do now?” I ask him. “Come back to bed?”

“It will get mummy,” he says. 

“Shall I go downstairs and scare it away?”

“Mm hm.”

“Ok.”

Before I head downstairs I poke my head around the door of the master bedroom. The fiancee is turned away from me, watching her phone in bed. It’s in landscape mode, it must be a K Drama. Portrait mode is reels.

“I’m going downstairs to scare the wolf with no mouth.”

She groans, the baby is kicking. She tells me to be careful, without turning away from her screen. 

“I will be.” 

“He lives in the wall of the toilet,” she mumbles, as I’m walking away. 

“So I’ve heard,” I say to myself. 

Halfway down the stairs I can hear the rumble of a taxi stopping somewhere vaguely outside our house and a few moments later my phone chimes in my pocket. The neighbours stumbling past the front of our house, no doubt. 

It chimes again. And again. I wish the app was still broken. It tempts you in with marginal increases in convenience until you can’t live without it, then force feeds you inconvenient notifications until you can’t live with it. 

At the bottom of the stairs I look down the hall. The door to the toilet that is tucked under the stairs is open, blocking my view of the kitchen. 

I hear the pitter patter of footsteps at the top of the stairs. My son is looking down at me, his face tight with concern. “Be careful, Daddy.” 

“I will be, buddy. Are you OK.” He shakes his head. “Go into Mum’s bed, give her a cuddle from me will you?” He nods before he darts towards our bedroom. 

On my right the door to the living room is ajar and the lamp is still on. I can see a blanket thrown untidily across the sofa and a cushion is on the floor as if someone had suddenly been disturbed and jumped up.

I push open the door. Nothing. The TV is still on, showing its app homepage. 

I see the hand-made, wooden, viking sword I bought my son from Etsy. Completely blunt, but painful if you’re hit with it at full power. I know because I have been on the receiving end of some full power strikes. 

I laugh at myself, what am I expecting to find? But I take the sword in my hand .

I step down the hallway on my tiptoes and pull back the toilet door. A blue light flashes into my eyes, and I stumble back, almost falling. The burglar alarm motion sensor. You never notice them in the day, but at night it’s the Enterprise phaser bank blasting into your eyes. 

The phone chimes with the Ring notification again. 

I push the toilet door until it clicks shut. 

In the kitchen we have no blinds on the windows or French doors. It’s on the list. The wilted sunflower tinted light from the neighbourhood lampposts scatters across the kitchen, folding over the furniture and toys. Something moves in my left peripheral vision. I tighten my grip on the sword handle. 

I’m 41 years old and I am seeing ghosts.

My phone chimes with the Ring notification again, ruining whatever element of surprise I might have had. What the hell are the neighbours doing in front of the house?

I turn on the lights. There is nothing to my left. I look under the furniture, behind the TV. Nothing. Not even a house spider. The phone chimes again as I pass the camera hidden next to the air fryer, that looks at the back door. 

All clear. 

I leave the kitchen. The toilet door is open and blocking the hallway again. Got to get that fixed. Add it to the list. I close it carefully and the lock clicks in, again. How on earth is it opening? There’s a metal frame coat-hanger looped over the door, it must be causing it to pop out of the lock. Just add it to the list, the list in my head, not the list on paper, so I will forget. 

When I get to the bottom of the stairs the phone chimes again. Just go to bed, neighbours.

I see a nervous waif of movement slipping around the hall above me. 

“Daddy?”

“I told you to go to bed and give mummy a cuddle.”

“I did. But then I got up again” 

His innocent, linear thinking makes me smile. “OK, time to give me a cuddle.” He embraces me at the top of the stairs and shivers in my arms. “Are you cold?” 

“No.”

“Scared?” He grips me harder. “No need to be scared. I made the wolf go away.” 

“The wolf with no mouth,” he corrects me. “He went back into the wall in the downstairs toilet, but he almost got you.” 

“No he didn’t, buddy. I scared him.”

“Yes he did,” he says with insistent worry. 

“OK. I’ll be more careful next time,” I say, sleep grabbing at the edge of my voice. 

“Because you had the sword.” 

“What?”

“He didn’t get you because you had the sword,” he clarifies. 

I look down at my hand , I am still holding it. “I’ll remember that.”

I carry him to our bed and plonk him in between the fiancee and myself. He forces me to close the bedroom door. I do. Then he snuggles into the crook of my arm. He’s totally silent but his eyes are wide. 

I flick through the notifications on my phone before I put it on charge. An awful habit. Nothing good is found in the notification tray before bed. I swipe away a few group texts, accidentally tap the main Ring notification which tumbles open into a dozen sub-notifications, little videos autoplaying on my screen. One shows the neighbours walking across the drive, forgetting something, then walking back to the car that dropped them off. One shows me in the kitchen checking for the wolf. 

One shows the kitchen, dark, before I entered it. Something is moving around but it’s hard to see. I open the full video in the app. A black silhouette rises up into the view, like a dog rising anxiously onto its hind legs for a treat. But it is a fuzzy, smooth silhouette, about the size of… a wolf – but without a wolf’s distinctive skull. Instead there is just a furry oval where the head would be. I can’t see any features on its face in that lighting, but the head rises, looks around with the distressed twitches of a cobra, then sinks out of view. 

“What the fuck?” I whisper under my breath. 

“The wolf with no mouth, Daddy.” I didn’t realise he was watching. 

It must be a person, someone is in the house. But I checked everywhere. Did I check inside the toilet? No, why would I? I feel hot and cold at the same time. A prickling in my armpits. The impotent realisation that I have no plan for this moment, combined with flickering adrenaline, and a terrifying willingness to do anything to keep the three of them safe.

I must call the police. I hate myself for the seconds we’ve already lost.

I look over to my fiancee, she is still watching the K Drama, has she not checked her notifications? “Look at this, Babe. Have you seen this? I think there is a person in the house.” I sit up and pick up the sword. “Call the police, babe.” I look at her. She doesn’t turn. “Babe, call the fucking police. I’m not kidding, someone is in the house.” 

“Nobody is in the house,” she says without turning. 

“Check the Ring notifications. Call the police. All the doors are locked, they must be still down there.” 

I sit down putting my weight against the bedroom door, wooden sword still in my hand. Defence is probably best, if they wanted to hurt us they would’ve already done it, surely. What do they want? Last week I read a news story about criminals who force owners out of their houses, change the locks and flash the police a fake tenancy agreement when they turn up. The police do nothing, say it’s a civil matter. I can feel my heart punching the front of my ribcage. I’m not really breathing. This is how people make bad decisions. I’m going to kill someone.

My son is silent but looking at me wide eyed. His mum sighs, and without turning she says, “It’s just the wolf with no mouth, just stay away from it.” 

“I told you daddy.”

END.