Grown Men
Will Run

By Alex Rost

It’s late, and I’m alone at work when the phone rings. The phone in the back, in the closet sized floor manager’s office.

The shop is quiet, just the steady humming from air compressor in the warehouse, and I startle at the trilling. A sinking rush, enough to gasp. Because that phone, the only phone in the back, it never rings.

Suddenly I’m aware of the uneasy darkness in half the shop. Of the flickering red glow of the exit sign behind Big Ray’s press.

I wait for the ringing to stop, try to remember if the exit sign was flickering earlier, or if it coincided with the ringing of the phone.

The phone doesn’t stop ringing.

Rings and rings until I lift the receiver, push the pulsing button for line four.

Nothing.

No ring tone.

No static.

No voice on the other end.

Nothing.

And I remember that the shop only has three phone lines. There is no line four.

I replace the receiver, turn to survey the shop, notice that the exit sign casting its red glow across the dark side of the building is solid.

Not flickering.

I take a deep, shaking breath, exhale in a whimpering rush.

As the phone rings again.

Line four.

Rings and rings.

And now the empty shop feels crowded. A feeling that is familiar. A feeling all the long-time employees know. The reports are well documented—doors closing, lights turning on/off, shadowy shapes. Big Ray swears he once saw a man walk by the open front office doors, only to realize no one was there. All the doors were locked, he’d said.

But mostly, it’s just the feeling that we’re not alone.

All we can do is keep our shoulders back, fears hidden, eyes straight ahead, away from the potentials in our peripherals. Trying not to notice so as not to be noticed.

And when the last light is turned off, in those ten feet from the switch to the door outside, that space where the darkness reaches out, grown men will run.

Alex runs a commercial printing press outside of Buffalo NY.