Episode 21 - Receptionist, Not Gatekeeper (But Close)
By the following Tuesday, Olivia had stopped flinching when the phone rang.
She’d also stopped asking if the callers were alive, and now focused entirely on tone, urgency, and whether they were speaking in this plane’s time signature.
“OtherWorlds TV,” she said brightly into the receiver. “Yes, we’re aware the moon keeps blinking. No, that’s not a station issue. Try Channel Null.”
Click.
She jotted a note: Callers from 34-H really need a hobby.
Deliveries came at odd hours now.
Sometimes through the front door. Sometimes out of the vending machine. Once from a swirling rip in the hallway carpet.
She accepted them all with equal poise.
A case of blank tapes with no weight but humming softly when held? Signed. A crate labeled “BACKUP FOG – CAUTION: MEMORY LEAK”? Logged and pushed aside. A cow femur wrapped in ribbon addressed to “The Pretty Canine at the Gate”? She rolled her eyes and stored it behind the front desk.
Visitors arrived, too.
Some were obvious—tentacled, shifting, or dressed like 1920s morticians.
Some looked painfully normal. Too normal. Like photos that blinked out of order.
Olivia greeted them all the same way:
“Welcome to OtherWorlds TV. May I ask who you’re here to see, or what nightmare you’re currently escaping?”
It worked 80% of the time.
The rest just nodded and walked past her, vanishing into doorways that hadn’t been there a moment before.
She marked those down as “approved.”
The mail cart rolled in by itself now.
It knew the route.
Sometimes it delivered postcards addressed to people Olivia had never met.
Sometimes it delivered postcards addressed to her.
They were always unsigned.
“You looked radiant on Monitor 6B last night.” “That laugh. Keep it.” “We’re so glad you chose to stay.”
She didn’t tell anyone.
She just kept them in her drawer. Tied in a ribbon. Like they mattered. Because they did.
The station was strange. But Olivia wasn’t lost in it anymore.
She was part of it.
The flickering lights didn’t startle her. The voices behind the static felt more like hallway gossip. And the reflection in the mirror that blinked a half-second late?
She winked at it. And sometimes it winked back.