The Midnight Shift at the Mica Mill

The digital clock on the wall flickered to 10:30 PM as I clocked in, the fluorescent hum of the office a familiar drone. The call center floor was a labyrinth of cubicles, but tonight only myself, a grizzled veteran named Ray, and a newbie called Josie were on the graveyard shift. The air smelled of stale coffee and burnt circuitry. I usually sat in the admin section, but the Wi-Fi had been acting up all evening, dropping connections every few minutes. Ray, my shift supervisor, nodded when I asked to move to the production area, where the internet was supposedly more stable. ‘Sure, take pod 14. It’s free,’ he said without looking up from his crossword.

I settled into pod 14, a cramped space with a cracked chair and a monitor that felt impossibly cold to the touch. The moment I sat down, a thick pressure clamped around my temples, like a vice being tightened slowly. My stomach churned, and a wave of nausea rolled over me. I barely made it to the men’s room, where I retched nothing but bile. The taste in my mouth was sulfurous, sharp and metallic, like I’d bitten into a rotten egg. This persisted for the next hour, forcing me to stumble between my desk and the bathroom in a daze.

Between trips, I tried to focus on the tickets, but the screen seemed to swim. Then, I felt a strange tingling across my right hand, as if a thousand needles were pricking the skin. I looked down and saw a rash of red spots, clustered like a map of tiny islands. They didn’t itch, just pulsed with a mild heat. My mind raced. Was it an allergy? A reaction to something in the air? I thought of the chemical factory nearby, always belching out its sweet, acrid fumes. But everyone else seemed unaffected.

Around 2 AM, between my third and fourth dash to the restroom, I noticed something odd about the workstation itself. The keyboard was slightly sticky, and the underside of the desk had been carved with strange, looping symbols, almost like a spiral. I’d never seen anything like it in the other pods. I mentioned it to Josie, who came to check on me, but she just shrugged, saying she felt fine. Ray, when I asked about the previous person stationed here, said it was a guy named Voss who left abruptly two weeks ago. ‘He just stopped showing up,’ Ray admitted, a hint of unease in his voice.

At 4:30 AM, the headache peaked, and I thought I might pass out. I grabbed the edge of the desk to steady myself, and my hand brushed against a small, worn-out label under the monitor. It read, ‘WARNING: Low-level radiation. Do not remain within 3 feet for extended periods.’ A cold dread seeped into my bones. I’d been sitting directly in front of this machine for hours. I stumbled to the bathroom mirror, and in the harsh light, I saw the red spots had spread to my neck, forming a strange pattern — almost like a coiled serpent.

The remaining hours crawled by. Every minute felt like an hour. I kept my distance from the desk, pacing the empty aisles, but the nausea and dizziness wouldn’t let go. At 7:30 AM, the moment my shift ended, I bolted for the exit, leaving my jacket and bag behind without a second thought.

I drove home in a haze, my hands trembling on the wheel. When I finally collapsed into bed, I slept for fourteen hours straight. When I woke, the rash had spread to my chest, and a dull, persistent ache had settled in my bones. I called the office to quit, but the line was dead. When I drove there to clean out my locker, the building was dark, and the doors were padlocked. A faded sign on the glass read, ‘Pending Environmental Review.’ The place was no longer in business.

Weeks later, in a dusty online forum, I found a thread about the old call center. A user named ‘Voss2020’ had posted a cryptic message: ‘The radiation at pod 14 is just the beginning. They use it to keep us docile. I found out what they’re feeding the servers.’ The thread ended abruptly, but in the comments, someone had mentioned a ‘shadow company’ that leased the building, a name I hadn’t seen before: Sable Systems.

Now, every night, I lie awake, feeling the faint pulsing in my hand, the red spots that never fully fade. The sulfur taste returns whenever I’m near anything electrical. And I can’t shake the feeling that something is still waiting for me at that desk, its cold monitor watching, its hum a silent, patient lure.