With the start of spooky season, I’ve been thinking a lot about horror…
More than usual, that is.
So for this month’s “My Life as a Horror Story,” I wanted to share a horrible moment that all of us have experienced at one time or another. Although this particular piece was written during the height of pandemic isolation, this could happen to anyone at any time. We’ve all been tortured like this before, and it’s likely to happen again.
You have been warned.
I know when I start humming along that I am doomed. Whoever composed this torturous music must be immensely skilled in destroying the human mind. With each pause between each song, my heart skips a beat as I wonder if this will finally be the end of my suffering. Alas, when the first few poorly recorded notes of the next piece of music begin, I know that freedom is still a far-off dream.
They plan to break me. Their hope is that I, like countless others, will become more compliant once my mind has been reduced to mush. No doubt I will be startled when I hear a human voice, and caught off guard. I will be an easy target. I will go along with whatever they say. I will even risk being put back into this musical purgatory if it means bringing my suffering to an end. But I hope it will not come to that. I have spent so much time here already.
I have been trying to get through this for a day and a half, and I don’t know how much more I can take. They have abandoned me so much already that I was grateful just to get to this point. That is, until the music began to bore into my brain. I doubt I will have much sanity left when they come to deal with me. But that is their plan, after all. It must be. What else could justify such torment?
A voice calls out, and my heart is full of hope. But those hopes are dashed the moment I hear the artificiality in the words. “Please hold. Your call is important to us.” And then the music begins again.
I have called them seventeen times already, only to be told that the queue is full. Then they hang up. This is the third time I have managed to be put on hold. The other two times did not end well for me. I hope this third time will be the last. I need it to be the last. So far, I’ve spent a combined total of almost four hours on the phone over the past day and a half, and I know that I still have so much more waiting to do.
I just want to speak to a real person.
