I was out of work and pretty much going nowhere fast when I saw this ad on Craigslist, in the labor gigs section: "Movers needed tomorrow (fox run)."
I clicked on the ad. It read: "Moving out tomorrow & need a few extra hands. Will pay $80 for 3-4 hours of work. Will also provide lunch. Respond ASAP."
So I hit the reply button and later that night I got an email containing the address of the house. I was already familiar with the Fox Run subdivision. A friend of mine lived there when I was in the 3rd grade; I'd go over to his house for sleepovers sometimes. I was always envious of him because his house was nicer than mine, and Fox Run was a much nicer neighborhood than the one I lived in.
3rd grade was a long time ago. I'm 26 now and suffer from depression. I was at the lowest point in my life when I saw that ad on CL. No job, no education beyond high school, no girlfriend, no life. Won't bother explaining why because no explanation would be good enough. I was living in my friend's laundry room and quickly wearing out my welcome. Homelessness was a very real, very scary possibility. I needed money.
I drove my POS car to the address in Fox Run. A large moving truck was parked outside. I parked across the street and walked up to the house. Both the garage and the front door were wide open; a smiling, dark green garden gnome was propped against the latter.
Two rough-looking men emerged from the garage carrying a couch. Each of them shot me a look at me as they walked past. They carried the couch across the lawn and loaded it into the truck, and that was when I noticed an old lady standing under a big, overspreading oak tree across the street.
She was staring at me. With something like...concern. Like she wanted to walk across the street and tell me something very important, but something was making her hesitate. Maybe that was just in my head, though. I'll never know because I turned my back on her and entered the house.
"Hello?" I called. The living room was almost completely empty and I wondered if my services would even be needed anymore. I told myself I should have gotten there earlier, like the other two guys.
A red-haired man maybe in his late 40s appeared in the hallway, wiping his hands with a rag. He squinted at me suspiciously and asked, "You here to help with the move?"
"If you still need help," I replied. "Looks like you guys are almost finished."
"Oh, I still need help," the man said, and shook my hand. "I'm Howard Foote."
There were still three bedrooms to take care of. The two men who'd arrived before me tackled the two smaller rooms while Howard and I worked on the master bedroom. We didn't talk very much. I looked for the old woman once or twice while outside, but she was long gone.
The house itself was wholly unremarkable and devoid of any personality whatsoever, with the exception of an unusual painting hanging in the master bedroom. It was a painting of a smiling boy sitting in a dark room, peering into a double eyepiece microscope. The eyepieces seemed to be impaling the boy's eye sockets.
Howard noticed me staring at it. "You like that?" he asked.
"It's different," I said. "By the way, is this your house?"
"Nope. I just work for the owner." Howard stepped past me and removed the painting from the wall.
Contrary to what the CL stated, Howard did not offer us lunch. In lieu of food, he payed us each ten extra dollars. Three and a half hours after I'd arrived, the two rough-looking fellows took their money and drove off in a rusty pickup truck. I was about to leave as well until Howard said, "Hold it. Let's go inside and talk."
He led me into the gloomy kitchen, took two cold bottles of beer out of the fridge, and handed one to me. We made small talk for a while. Then Howard said: "I'd like to offer you a very unusual job."
Instant red flag. But I was willing to listen because I needed the money. "What kind of job?"
"To do this job properly, you'll only need two things. A hammer, and a water bottle. Are you capable of acquiring a hammer and a water bottle?"
"I think so. What for?"
"I'm part of an organization that's dedicated to eradicating an evil microscopic empire." He looked at me with a wry little grin, as if expecting me to laugh or walk away. I did neither.
Instead, I sipped my beer and told him to go on. "We call them the Button People, but they aren't people. They've been meddling in our affairs for the past fifty years. Their ultimate goal is to take over the world and kill as many human beings as possible."
"What do you mean, 'they aren't people'?" I asked. "Are you saying they're aliens?"
"We don't know, and it doesn't really matter. Does it matter where a killer bird flu originates? Of course not. The point is, it's a threat and it has to be stopped."
I finished my beer and placed the bottle on the bare kitchen counter. "Why are they called the Button People?"
"They live in buttons. Entire cities of them." He pulled something out of his pocket and put it in the palm of my hand. It was a beige, four-hole shirt button.
"I don't understand."
"That's why we call them the Button People. They live inside buttons. The one place no one would ever, ever think to look. And now I'm going to show you how we kill them." Howard opened a cabinet and took out a hammer. For a split second I wondered if he intended to use it on me, but on some level I knew he wouldn't. This man believed every word he was saying.
Howard took a plastic, half-full jug of spring water out of the refrigerator. He told me to give him the button and I did. He placed the button on the linoleum floor.
"Like this," he said. I nearly jumped out of my shoes as he brought the hammer down on the button. He scooped up the broken pieces and dropped them into the water jug. "I just destroyed an entire city of those evil bastards." He stood up. "Is this something you think you're capable of doing on a regular basis?"
"For how much?"
"Right now, I'm prepared to pay you five hundred dollars per button. There's a lot of driving involved, and we may not be able to locate more than four buttons for you per month. We have finders and we have breakers. You'd be a breaker."
The insanity of what he was telling me was suddenly rendered insignificant and beside the point. Five hundred dollars per button. Holy mother of God. I sucked at math, but not so badly that I failed to grasp the economic implications of this job offer. Possibly four buttons per month! There had to a catch.
"The catch is," Howard said, gravely serious, "you have to live with yourself. The Button People aren't human, but they aren't entirely unlike humans. When I say cities exist inside buttons, I mean just that: cities. Men, women, children."
"You've actually seen them?"
"No. And if you're smart, you never will either. Even if given the opportunity. I once knew a breaker who looked at them. He was dead a month later."
"But how--?"
"Electron microscope." Frowning grimly, Howard put the hammer and the water jug on the counter. "We were having a beer in a bar together the night after he looked. He drew a picture of one of them on a napkin and tried to show me. I refused even to look at that. They can only get in your head if you look at them." He waved the memory away. "Do you want the job or not?"
"Yes. I want the job."
"First thing's first. You'll need a post office box."
Submitted July 11, 2016 at 06:38AM by Nick-A-Laos http://ift.tt/29wJiHf nosleep
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