You'll Never Want To Work As A Phone Sex Operator After Reading This Story

You’ll Never Want To Work As A Phone Sex Operator After Reading This Story

Writer’s Note: As I’ve mentioned previously, people like to send me the most random stuff: detailed fan-art, outlines for how to conduct authentic pagan rituals, candid pictures of their engorged genitals… But by far, what I get sent the most is weird fucking stories. Accent on the “weird” but even more so on the “fucking” because these stories almost always have to do with some kind of sexual vice or perversion. I’m sure that’s not very surprising to anyone who has read a lot of my previous work and I’m fully aware of the fact that I only have myself to blame here.

Though, the truth is that I rather enjoy it. It seems as if there’s something about erotica that makes one extremely susceptible to horrific subject matter (probably because the idea of being cornered by a monster becomes exponentially more terrifying when you’re also erect.) I think that’s why I’ve always gravitated toward scary stories that explored the darker recesses of human sexuality and when a reader sends me something like that, I usually feel the need to share it with you guys. Which brings us to tonight’s tale.

It should be stated for the record that I am in no way aroused by the idea of hurting women, or anyone for that matter. Quite the contrary in fact, and if there are certain parts of this story that you find difficult to read, know that they were just as difficult for me to write. Okay, here we go…

Nancy started working for the Naughty Night Line when she was 48, long past what she had thought of at the time as her “sexual prime.” Nancy had been quite the looker when she was younger, but two kids and 15 years in a loveless marriage had since taken its toll on her figure and, along with it, Nancy’s self-esteem. When her friend Tina first offered to get her a job as a phone sex operator, Nancy assumed she was joking.

Tina, who had been working for the Naughty Night Line since her own divorce two years prior, then went on to describe how great of a job it was for single mothers in their position (flexible hours, good pay, health benefits). It was a tempting proposal, but Nancy figured there was no way she could bring herself to do “something like that” for a living. Where would she even begin?

Her ex, who had always been kind of uptight in the bedroom, had seemed to forget about the idea of sex altogether after the birth of their second child and it was more than a decade since Nancy knew what it felt like to be the object of someone’s arousal… But times were tight, Glen’s alimony check wasn’t cutting it, and she eventually gave in. Nancy applied for an operator position at NNL and, with a bit of coaching from Tina, she nailed her “audition.”

Fast-forward five years later and Nancy was now what you can call a certified pro. She could “phone-sex like a boss,” as some of my more obnoxious friends might say, and had accumulated a long list of regulars by this point. Like every girl at NNL, Nancy had her own specific shtick that she used to keep callers coming back.

Her ex was a bit of a man-child and from him Nancy had gleaned an extensive knowledge of all things nerdy. Basically, if you were looking for a girl to accurately depict Counselor Troy going down on you while you captained the U.S.S. Enterprise, she was your girl. The act proved to be quite effective and Nancy soon became one of NNL’s most profitable operators.

This is why, when “Robert” was first forwarded to her phone, Nancy didn’t think much of it. She didn’t recognize the name but assumed he had requested something from her typical menu of sexy elves and cylon frakking. Nancy pushed the button to accept the call and switched on her headset as she said, “Hey, baby…”

“Call me Robert.” His tone was perfectly neutral but there was something slightly off about his voice.

“Sure thing, Mr. Robert…”

“Just Robert.”

“Okay then, Just Robert…”

“No, not Just Rob…” He cut himself off to let out an annoyed sigh and then abruptly hung up. This surprised Nancy and she was a bit taken aback by the sound of his line going dead.

“Well excuse the fuck out of me,” she mumbled to herself and pushed the button that switched her phone back to “available.” Her next caller was a guy named “Timothy” who wanted to eat out a female Na’vi’s ponytail. Just as she was finishing up with him, Robert’s name once again appeared on her computer screen, the text blinking in earnest.

“Hello, Robert.”

“Now was that… SO hard?” There was something so strange about his voice; the way it wavered between random syllables like the tone of a man who was on the verge of crying.

“Not hard at all. Now tell me, Robert, what are you in the mood for?”

“How about I roll you over so I can rip off those panties and fuck you from behind?”

“That sounds hot,” she lied with the feigned excitement of a true pro.

“No it doesn’t. It hurts and you don’t know who I am. You woke up with me on top of you, violently fucking your tight little pussy.”

“Okay…”

“I’ve got a hand over your mouth, muffling your screams.”

“Look, I… no offense but rape fantasies aren’t really my thing. Who you want is Gina. Is it okay if I transfer you to her? I won’t even charge you for the time. I’m sorry. It’s just not something I’m comfortable with.”

Robert let out a condescending scoff and said, “The whole point of rape is that you’re not supposed to like it.”

Nancy was stunned by his response and took a beat before finally muttering, “Still… I wouldn’t be any good at it.”

“Like I give a fuck if you’re good at it… I’m still gonna rape you. Now, I tie your hands behind your back and then force my big dick into your spread asshole. Your screams are muffled by my hand over your mouth.”

He paused for a moment but Nancy was still too shell-shocked by Robert’s words to realize this was her cue. It wasn’t the first time a caller had requested a rape-fantasy but it WAS the first time they had refused to be transferred to another girl. Of course, she could do it anyway. Though, there was another part of Nancy that was wondering if maybe she should just suck it up and give the guy what he wanted. A real professional would be able to do it.

“I SAID your screams are muffled by my hand over your mouth…”

Nancy put her hand over her mouth and screamed into it. This made Robert chuckle and the sound of his laughter sent a shiver down her spine.

“I flip you back over so I can look you in the eyes… You let out another terrified scream as you see the smile on my face.”

Nancy fought a panicked urge to hang up and used her hand to simulate another muffled scream. She was actively trying NOT to picture what Robert was describing, which went against Nancy’s trained reflex to immerse herself in the caller’s narrative. She kept trying to remind herself that it was all just harmless talk, simple make-believe, and that it was her job to indulge the fantasy no matter how depraved it may be.

“I remove my hand from your mouth and start hitting you in the face over and over until you’re punch-drunk. While I wait for you to recover from the beating, I light a candle and use it to heat a sowing needle and then I use the red-hot needle to pierce one of your nipples…”

She switched off her headset and said, “Nope.”

Nancy disconnected the call and switched her line to “on break.” She needed a minute to shake off what had just happened. Nancy plugged her headset into her phone and put on a song, hoping to get the sound of Robert’s voice out of her head. It helped, though not much.

By the time Nancy was ready to punch out four hours later, she still hadn’t gotten over the unsettling feeling that Robert’s call had left her with. Nancy checked the logs to see who had transferred him to her line and was surprised to discover that it had been Tina. Nancy asked her friend why she had sent Robert to her of all people and Tina said, “He requested you by name. I assumed he was one of your regulars. Why?”

Nancy told her what happened and Tina responded with a guilty frown. “I’m SO sorry… I’m glad you hung up on that creep. Fuck him. I would’a done the same thing.”

This made Nancy feel better and by the next night, she had all but forgotten about the incident. Then “Robert” once again appeared on her computer screen under the “CALL-WAITING” heading and the sight of the name sent an icy tremor through her body. It was possible that it wasn’t him (Robert was a pretty common name) and so Nancy accepted the call just to make sure.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Princess. You ready to finish what we started last night?”

Nancy lifted her hand to disconnect the call as soon as she heard his voice but in the moment that followed, her extended index finger seemed to take forever to reach the appropriate button on her phone. By the time Nancy finally heard the line click off, her heart was racing.

She wanted to chastise herself for being so susceptible to Robert’s bullshit. Some professional she was and all that… But this sort of thing was far from “business as usual.” Nancy added Robert’s name and number to her “RESTRICTED” list and then did her best to put the whole thing out of her mind.

About an hour later, just as Nancy’s nerves were finally starting to settle, the name “John” appeared in her “CALL-WAITING” column. Nancy accepted the call and was immediately greeted by Robert screaming, “WHY THE FUCK DID YOU BLOCK ME?!”

Nancy disconnected the call and fought a sudden impulse to get up and run out of the office. After a beat, she added “John’s” number to her “RESTRICTED” list as well. Before that night, Nancy hadn’t needed to block a single caller and now here she was, adding two numbers to her list in less than two hours.

Robert tried the same thing again about thirty minutes later, using a new number and yet another phony name. Nancy later found out that there were computer programs these creeps could use to generate a new outgoing phone number whenever they got restricted or banned from calling the line. There really wasn’t much NNL could do about it aside from alert the police and that was only under the most extreme of circumstance which, as Nancy’s manager had so bluntly informed her, “this wasn’t.”

When it started up again the next night, Nancy asked to have all of her incoming requests temporarily blocked. She hated the idea because it would almost certainly mean losing some of her regulars, but it had to be done. This prick was messing with her ability to do her job and it wouldn’t be long before she started losing callers on her own.

Her boss agreed to give Nancy two nights free of requests but it didn’t matter. Robert just kept calling until luck of the draw eventually landed him on Nancy’s line and the first thing he said was, “Bitch, you’re about to find out who you’re fucking with!”

Nancy disconnected the line and sat there for a moment, eyes wide with fear, her gaze fixed on her computer monitor as a new call notice suddenly appeared on the screen. Nancy pulled off her headset and tossed it onto the desk in front of her. She then got up and started over to Tina’s cubical.

Tina took one look at the expression on Nancy’s face and quickly led her outside, where Nancy did something she hadn’t done in almost 10 years — she smoked a cigarette. Though, under the circumstances, it was hard for her to feel that guilty about it. She could only finish half of the thing before she started feeling lightheaded and had to put it out, though Nancy welcomed the wooziness. It was an effective distraction from the bleak tension currently looming over her.

Nancy caught Tina up to speed on the situation and she suggested that Nancy take a week off of work. She had a ton of vacation days saved up and this was as good a time to use them as any. Nancy decided that’s exactly what she would do and felt better now that she had a plan. She followed Tina back inside the office and then informed her manager that she would be taking the rest of the week off.

It was about 11:00 PM when Nancy headed back to her cubicle to turn off her computer and grab her purse. She gave Tina a quick wave as she left the office, exiting out into a long hallway and proceeding toward a bank of elevators at the other end. There was someone standing in the middle of the hallway.

Nancy froze. Her heart began to race as she saw that it was a man. He was very tall, with a bald head and a round belly. The man was wearing a sleeveless t-shirt and sweatpants. His combat-boots were covered in a colorful patchwork of stains. The man was just standing there, staring at a watercolor painting of birds that someone (most likely the building’s owner) had hung up across from the elevators. And then he spoke…

“This is the most hideous thing I have ever seen.” Nancy recognized Robert’s voice as soon as he started talking. “Are you ready to go?”

He said this as he turned to grin at Nancy and then slowly started toward her. Adrenaline had everything moving in slow motion now. Nancy turned and scrambled back towards the entrance to her office. She could heard his labored breathing growing closer and imagined that she could feel the sickening warmth of it on the back of her neck.

“Somebody call the cops,” Nancy screamed as she plowed through the office door. “He’s right behind me!”

She had managed to startle several girls seated near the office entrance. Tina quickly stood up and shouted, “WHO?”

“The fucking guy!”

“The one that’s harassing you?!” Tina asked and then started to dial office security without waiting for her response. “Jesus!”

Tina told the security guard at the front desk that there was a man on their floor, but he was gone by the time the guard made it up there. He seemed to have a hard time believing Nancy’s story and eventually attempted to placate her by proposing to walk her to her car.

Sensing Nancy’s distaste for the guy, Tina offered to escort her instead. Nancy gave her friend a grateful look as they followed the security guard down to the lobby and thanked her once they were outside.

“No problem,” Tina replied as the two women started across the lot. “That security guy is kind of a dick, huh?”

“Little bit.” Nancy had arrived for work that day before 5 PM and had been forced to park at the far end of the then-packed lot. As they finally reached her car, Nancy said, “Let me drive you back.”

Tina nodded and slid into the passenger’s seat as Nancy started the car. There was a loud crashing sound as safety glass suddenly sprayed against the back of Tina’s head and a hand grabbed her by the hair, yanking her toward the shattered passenger’s side window.

Robert reached his other hand into the car and quickly slit Tina’s throat open, eliciting a startled scream from Nancy as she began to fumble for the driver’s side door handle. She was struck by something that felt like a bee-sting to her shoulder and began to convulse as her body was rocked by a powerful jolt of electricity.


Nancy awoke to find herself lying across the backseat of her car with Tina’s body sprawled out on top of her. The first thing Nancy saw as she regained consciousness was her friend’s wide lifeless eyes staring down at her. Nancy tried to move and found that her wrists and ankles had been bound in duct tape.

Robert was behind the wheel, driving at a high rate of speed, and it wasn’t long before they were pulling into a dimly-lit garage. Nancy started to squirm as Robert opened the back passenger door and dragged her friend’s corpse off of her. Tina’s body hit the cement floor with a wet thud.

Robert retrieved a knife from the holster on his belt and cut the duct-tape binding Nancy’s wrists. As soon as her right hand was free, Nancy swung a fist at Robert’s face. He leaned out of reach and then casually jabbed her in the nose with his free hand. The punch was hard enough to make Nancy see stars and it took a moment for her to regain her bearings.

“You gonna stop?” he asked and the dazed Nancy slowly nodded. “Good.”

Robert wrapped one massive hand around both of her wrists as he pulled Nancy from the car and then dragged her through a side door, into the attached house. Robert hauled her into a sparsely furnished den that smelled of dust and old beer. He yanked Nancy’s hands behind her back and zip-tied her wrists together.

“Get on your knees,” Robert commanded as he then pulled her up into a kneeling position. Robert slowly bent over and held the tip of his knife to her eye. “Do… not… move.”

He stood back up and began to search for something on a nearby table as the terrified scream of what sounded like an elderly woman suddenly filtered down from somewhere upstairs…

“ROBERT!”

“Who is that?” Nancy asked, almost out of reflex.

“My mother,” Robert said as he returned to her side, holding a tape-recorder and several pieces of paper.

“ROBERT!”

“Why is she screaming?”

“Because she’s obnoxious.” Robert held the recorder close to Nancy’s mouth and started the tape as he said, “Read aloud from the script.”

He held “the script” up in front of her and nodded. The first line was: OH GOD, PLEASE STOP!

Nancy swallowed and recited the words in a robotic tenor, “Oh god, please stop.”

“Like you mean it… Or do I have to MAKE you mean it?” A coy smile appeared on Robert’s face as he scanned her trembling body.

“ROBERT!”

Nancy forced herself to scream, “Oh god, please stop!”

The next line was: NO, DON’T! YOU’RE MY SON!

Robert rattled the pages in his hand, urging Nancy to continue.

“No, don’t! You’re my son!”

“ROBERT!”

Robert wet his lips with his tongue and nodded for Nancy to keep going.

“It hurts! Oh god, it hurts!”

“ROBERT?!”

“Please don’t fuck my asshole!”

“ROBERT!”

“I’m your mother!”

“ROBERT!”

There was a pause as he turned to the next page of the script and Nancy began to sob quietly. Robert saw this and his grin got wider as he said, “I’ll give you something to cry about…”

He set the tape recorder down and began to unbutton Nancy’s blouse. She quickly shut her eyes, which was fortuitous timing considering the flash-bang that was suddenly chucked through a nearby window. Robert was monetarily blinded by the exploding stun-grenade and the cops were able to take him down with little resistance.

It turned out that the guard at Nancy’s office building had been watching them on the parking lot security-camera and dialed 9-1-1 when he saw Robert approaching her vehicle. Nancy’s car had a built in GPS system that the cops were able to track and this led them to the familial home of one Robert Michael Price.

Robert’s father had died when he was a young boy and as a result his mother, who hadn’t been the most mentally stable person to begin with, quickly devolved into a raving alcoholic. At this point, Robert was left to fend for himself and eventually became a textbook example of an emotionally neglected child: stealing, setting fires, harming small animals, and the like.

The details of how or why are unclear, but according to Robert’s own admission, by the age of 14, he had developed an unhealthy sexual obsession with his mother. Three years later, he tried to act on this obsession while his mom was passed-out drunk in her bed. She woke up almost immediately and attempted to push him off but Robert was too strong. After he raped his mother, Robert chained her to a cot in the attic where she spent the next 15 years slowly going batshit insane.

The officer who found her initially thought he had stumbled upon a particularly convincing Halloween decoration. They were still clearing the house after placing Robert under arrest and he had been the first one up the attic stares. As the officer approached her cot, the skeletally thin Mrs. Price turned to look at him and screamed, “ROBERT!”

By then, her mind was so deteriorated that her son’s name was the only thing she could say. Though that was all the explanation authorities needed. The poor woman’s back was basically one giant bead-sore and she had to be airlifted to a special hospital where she later died due to heart complications.

The remains of five women were found buried in the backyard, as well as a shoebox containing more than 30 unmarked cassette tapes. Each tape featured a recording of what sounded like numerous different woman reciting lines from his scripted rape fantasy. Robert never confessed to any of the murders, even after the D.A. threatened him with the death penalty. Authorities are still unclear as to the fate of most of the women heard on these tapes.

As for Robert Michael Price’s only known survivor, she resigned from NNL the next day and never looked back. Nancy’s boss had tried to talk her into calling her absence an indefinite vacation (“Just until you’re done dealing with, you know, all of that…”). But the longer she considered it, the more Nancy came to loathe the thought of returning to NNL. The money was great and she had been good at it, but there was just no way.

Eventually, Nancy landed a job answering customer service calls for a local cable company, which may sound like a pain in the ass, but was actually a cakewalk after five years as a phone-sex operator. Soon, she started dating a really nice guy named Allen who worked in the same building.

Next month, she and Allen will be celebrating their seventh year of marriage. It took a lot of therapy to get Nancy to where she is today, but if that woman is anything, it’s a fighter. She still suffers from the occasional nightmare, but Allen is always there to comforter her when she wakes.

Robert recently used up his last plea for an appeal and is currently sitting on death row, awaiting his day with the needle. He still has nightmares as well, but there’s no one there to comfort him afterwards. Not unless you’re counting the ghost of his mother, but all she does is stand there and scream.

“ROBERT!” Thought Catalog Logo Mark


About the author

Joel Farrelly

When Joel isn’t writing creepy-ass short stories, he can be found scripting and acting in subversive comedy sketches on YouTube. You can follow Joel on Twitter or support him on Patreon, if you’re into that.