Background Noise

 Hank leaned back in his chair and cracked his neck elaborately, pausing for effect.

“JESUS CHRIST WILL YOU FUCKING CUT IT OUT.” Deb barked from behind the mountain of chip bags on her desk behind him. Arnold to her right nodded without breaking the rhythm of his monotone delivery of CPR directions into his headset.

Smiling, he hunched forward again and picked up his Fitness Gear Adjustable Grip Trainer™ to get in another dozen reps. His forearms were his weakest body part, next to his calves, which didn’t seem to matter to women, and his ankles which no one knew about unless they had seen him ride a horse. He tried tensing and un-tensing his shoulders as he squeezed the gripper, to add in some additional resistance, but he still felt antsy. This shift was a complete dud. Nothing but fallen little old lady calls and the occasional chest pain, Hank had mostly been sitting in static silence for the past 3 hours trying to maintain the pristine blankness of his mind. In an empty stretch of hours like this a man could get to worrying, and that kind of shit absolutely killed testosterone levels. This is what he got for accepting afternoon shifts. But he’d promised Becky that he’d try to be home more nights, and if he was sitting in his creaky office chair at the nerve center working out tiny muscle groups, he wasn’t drinking at the Elks lodge and trying to get into fights, so that was that. 

It was important to see the whole picture: self-optimization was going to be his real life’s work, not entertainment. Taking the boring afternoon shifts, getting 8 hours of sleep, drinking water, working out, reading the daily affirmations the Better You™ app sent on his phone. If he let himself focus on the negative, think of it as self-regulation, that was when he was in trouble. The hours on the clock started to feel personally defeating, like a tar pit he had waded into and couldn’t get out of, rather than just time, the inevitable lapse between the beginning of one activity and its end. 

A call lit up on the switchboard at the front of the room and a second later bleeped across the far left of his 3 screens. It was just him, Deb, and Arnold on today, and they were both already coordinating other calls. The house location appeared on the map in the center screen, with the nearest police and fire stations highlighted: middle income neighborhood, West side of the city. Yes! Back in business. This could be anything…this could be…

“911, what is your emergency?”

“I need you to send the police now.” A woman whispered hoarsely. He had to strain to hear her, and he immediately felt the warm thrill of an emergency wash over his lap. 

“I can send the police, ma’am, but I’ll need you to stay on the line and give me some more information.” He clicked open a police dispatch request and pre-loaded the call information, waiting. There was heavy breathing on the line.

“Ma’am?” It this was a prank call he was going to throw his grip exerciser.

“I ne..need help. HELP!” She hissed.

“Can you tell me what’s going on? What is your police need?”

“There’s some kind of big…big animal.” She whispered evasively. “It’s in my house. I’m hiding in my closet.”

Oh for fucks sake. Hank rolled his eyes and took a slug of water from the bottle at his elbow.

“Hey, are you there? I need the police right now! I can’t get out to lock the bedroom door, it’s going to come in here! I heard it knocking things over in the kitchen.”

“Yes, ma’am, I understand.” He typed “wellness check” into the “reason for police dispatch” field. Estimated wait time for a non-emergent officer call was 11 hours, but that would get longer as the evening approached. He deleted the entry and started a new one. “So, tell me what happened. What kind of animal do you think is there? Did you see it? How did it get into your house?”

The woman swore loudly and then caught herself. “LISTEN! You aren’t listening to me, I need you to send the police right now, I don’t have time to answer all these questions!”

He smirked at his screen, unperturbed. “Well, if you want the police to come, you’ve got to give me some more information.”

“Alright, look, it’s…Oh fuck this, you’re not even listening to me!”

“I am listening, you’re just not talking.” He let that one slip and winced. Hopefully this wouldn’t be one of the random sampling of calls his manager listened to every week. 

“You’re not even going to believe me. This is so fucking stupid-”

“I’m going to need you to stop cursing at me, ma’am.”

“It’s a TIGER! It’s a tiger! I saw it when I was out in the back yard, it was coming around the side of the house and its head came up to my kitchen window. At first I couldn’t believe it, I mean it’s fucking crazy, there aren’t any tigers in Wisconsin, but–”

Hank was sitting up tall in his chair now, motioning for Deb and Arnold to pay attention.

“-but then it stood up on it’s hind legs to jump up on the deck and I swear to God the thing is at least 10 feet tall. I ran inside and got in the closet and I, I forgot to close the back door and I could hear it follow me in.” The woman sobbed. 

Deb and Arnold peered at the transcription on his screen in disbelief. Hank was enjoying this now. It was a bullshit call, but at least it was a good one.

“Oh, I got it. A tiger. You saw a tiger in your yard and it followed you into your home.” He nodded as he spoke. Deb covered her mouth with her hand and let out a moan of delight. Arnold shook his head and plopped back down in his chair to take another call, sounded like a car accident.

“YES!” the woman nearly screamed. “Now would you please, please send the cops! I’m telling you I know how this sounds but you’ve got to help me! Please.” 

He typed in the “Reason for Police Dispatch” field “intruder.” ETA was 2 minutes, they must be driving around nearby, probably as bored as he was at 15:00 on a Tuesday.

“Ma’am, I have sent the police to your location. Please stay on the line and describe the home to me, can you hear the-” he stifled a giggle “-the animal in the house?”

There was silence and closet rustling sounds for a moment. “No,” she whispered “I can’t hear it now…WAIT.” He heard a muffled thump and narrowed his eyes. “Didja hear that? I think it just knocked something over, in the dining room maybe?”

He had heard something. This was a thing crazy people did sometimes, he’d learned. They made up wild stories about things that were kind of, sort of, actually happening. There was a guy that called a couple times a week for months every time he heard Imagine Dragons playing overhead in a public building, because that was how he knew that the KGB was in the area waiting to kidnap him. He’d always hold the phone up to the nearest speaker so that Hank could confirm that yes, “Radioactive” was indeed playing. Maybe there was something in the house, actually. Maybe a person, probably a big dog or something. 

“Yes, I see. Ma’am, please stay on the line, I’m going to patch myself over to police dispatch to update the officer arriving on scene. How many rooms are there in your house? Where are you located in the house?”

“Oh thank god! It’s a 3-bedroom, the front door is locked but the back door onto the porch is open, and then there’s the kitchen and the dining room. I’m in the closet in the bedroom at the end of the hall.” 

“Does anyone else live with you?”

“No! No it’s just me.” She whispered fiercely. “Tell them to hurry!” 

“They’re only a couple minutes away, ma’am. Please stay on the line, do not hang up, ok?”

“Ok!”

He switched over to the police dispatch screen and rang through to the police radio. “Patrol Car # 3342, you are en-route to a possible intruder at 541 NE Sandy Avenue, please confirm?” He asked tersely. Talking to the cops ought to be fun, they were on the same team, but something about dispatch calling made them a little sarcastic. Hank tried to ignore it, but he’d asked a buddy in the fire department once if the police ever talked down to him and his friend had just shook his head and guessed that maybe they thought dispatch was a girly job. 

“Confirmed.” 

See! There it was, that bad attitude. “Update on the home: 3 bedroom, back door is open, homeowner is in a closet in the back bedroom.”

“Did she see anybody in the house? Male or female?” The officer barked. 

Hank began to feel flustered. “Erm, ah…no. She saw some…thing in the yard, thinks it followed her inside through the back door.” 

“MALE or FEMALE” the cop snapped.

“Uh…unknown.” He was beginning to sweat. Suddenly this call started to seem like a bad idea. He should have placed a dispatch request for animal control, it was probably just a damn neighborhood dog. Or maybe nothing! And now he was going to look like a wussy idiot, like he’d believed this crazy lady about a tiger, sent the police to an imaginary intruder. 

“Backup required?”

“No further information.” Hank clicked back to the call, and listened for a second to the woman’s harsh breathing. He realized he was straining to hear…anything. 

This was getting ridiculous. The officer would be walking up to the door any minute. “Ma’am, I’ve updated the police about your…situation. Are you still safe where you are?”

There was a pause. “I…I think so. I heard something fall in the hallway while you were gone but I don’t think it’s in the bedroom.”

Deb was on another call but Hank could feel her leaning forward in her chair as she spoke quietly into her headset, listening to him. Trying to calm his nerves he pushed back in his chair again to crack his neck and misjudged the distance, snapping his headphones out of the jack. Arnold snorted as the woman’s panting blared out from his speakers. The sound of crunching gravel rose in the background as the car pulled up outside the house. The car door slammed and the cop called out.

“Oh dear god, they sent just one? Is it just one?!” The woman shrieked. Hank was scrambling to plug his headphones back in when they all heard it, a rumbling that sounded at first like an engine, right next to the phone. He froze. Over the woman’s screaming the sound widened into an unmistakable roar.