[story] found
author: eve
e-mail: stormofblossoms [ at ] gmail dot com
artist: llyse (llyse)
email: xanedrian [at] gmail.com
The cell phone gave off a sharp, persistent beep, rousing Randy from what she considered as well-deserved sleep after a hectic Friday at work, and her first groggy thought was Oh, shit, it's Carley, Mom's finally had her long-overdue cardiac arrest, and they're all at the ICU now. Bad news, Randy had discovered, would always hit you at the worst possible and most unexpected moment. As the cell phone continued to cry out, the beginning of a headache crept up behind Randy's eyeballs, and she made a low growling noise. She started to turn sideways and reach toward the bedside table when she remembered that she had switched the cell phone to silent mode before she went to bed, a habit she had acquired against prank callers.
Or did I forget to do that? Randy thought, befuddled. Could a cell phone switch itself back to general mode? And then the answer crashed upon her, sending a chill alongside her bare arm, which was now poised over the cell phone. Her throat constricted, and she slowly rose to a sitting position. The cell phone rang on.
Randy squinted briefly, counted a quick one-two-three, then picked up the cell phone. She peered at it to see the caller's number, and on seeing the blank screen, the chill spread down to her side. Cautiously she pressed the receiver button and brought the cell phone to her ear. "Hello."
There was a faint crackle of static, then silence. Randy listened carefully, back straight, her other hand clutching at the blanket. The silence went on for another fifteen seconds. Randy was about to hang up when she caught a single word.
She got down from the bed, now wary and alert, and moved toward the window. A police siren wailed thinly from the street, eleven floors below. Randy had chosen the apartment because the streets around it were not too busy - she could not stand loud, constant noise, had never been able to. All her life she had been forced to hear too many sounds, many of which could not be heard by anyone else. During her early years, her reaction to these sounds resulted in either raised eyebrows or a severe rebuke. Carley used to mock her for starting over nothing, looking nervously over her shoulder at an empty room, or blinking rapidly at nothing at all. One day at the dinner table Carley regaled their parents with stories of how Randy had been freaking out without good reason all week long, and Randy had thrown the saltshaker at her. Her father had slapped her, the only time he ever physically hit either of his daughters, and there followed a lot of crying, recriminations, and half-hearted apologies. Randy had kept a considerable distance from Carley and her parents since then, a decision none of them ever regretted.
There was another, jarring burst of static. She swallowed and fingered the cell phone. "Hello?" she said again.
The voice came again. It was tiny, unutterably lost. "Now."
One of her legs was going numb. Randy tried to wriggle the toes, darting her eyes at every corner of the bedroom, as if expecting to see the caller crouching on the floor, skin the color of curdled milk and stringy hair hanging on their face. In all her twenty-six years she had only been able to hear, but probably people got more sensitive, not less, with age. A vision in addition to the sounds. Such a jackpot.
"What?" she whispered. Her lips were stiff and would not form the syllable properly.
Something brushed against her heel; Randy gasped, but it was just the new scatter rug she had bought yesterday.
"Now," the voice repeated for the third time, helplessly, and Randy realized that this time it had not come from the cell phone.
It had come from behind her, from the bed.
She turned off the cell phone and could barely refrain from slamming it down on the windowsill. Her palm was sweaty, tattooed on by the lingering warmth of the cell phone. The last thing she wanted was to turn around, but she hated even more to think that the owner of the voice might come to her instead, fleshless knees rasping against the bed sheet, joints cracking with disuse.
Not that they would not come to her anyway.
Her hands clenching into painful fists, Randy turned her head around very, very slowly. She dared not close her eyes, in case a less than wholesome visage suddenly materialized before her when she opened them. The headache was getting worse, sending her blood pounding on her temples and making her grit her teeth.
The bed was empty.
She almost staggered backward, and kept her balance at the last minute. Panting and shivering all over, she lurched toward the light switch and clicked it on. As brightness flooded the room, banishing dark corners and turning them into recognizable shapes, Randy started to breathe more easily. She knew it would take her a long time to fall back to sleep, and she might have to migrate to the old sofa outside. Right now she could not care less. First thing tomorrow she would call Carley, make small talk, ask about Mom, Dan and the kids. Carley would be suspicious, and Randy would end the conversation feeling pleased for having nettled her sister.
A sudden puff of icy breath hit her wrist. "Gone," the voice said loudly - confidently - from the same direction, enunciating the word with single-minded clarity.
On the windowsill, the cell phone rang, making Randy yell hoarsely, and she scrambled toward the door, bent on getting away, n- No, no, not that word, not that word, immediately, yes, that was it, n-
Before she fled the bedroom, Randy saw a thatch of pale hair emerging from underneath the blanket, glimmering in the dark.
"Dan and I heard crashing sounds from downstairs," Carley said. When she was upset, Carley sounded vaguely like a bad actress in a melodrama, and listening to her over the phone only amplified the effect. Randy heard her blow into her handkerchief. "Mom must have gone to the kitchen to get a drink, and then she fell against the kitchen table and knocked over the fruit bowl. We called the ambulance, but by the time we arrived at the hospital, it was already too late. The doctor made the pronouncement at four-twenty." She sniffed. "Well, we've all been expecting this for years, and I guess ... The kids are in their rooms. We've told them as best as we could that Grandma is gone."
The word made Randy shudder. "Have you called Dad?"
"I don't see that it's a priority, since they haven't been speaking to each other for almost five years. Are you coming right away?"
"I am," Randy said, pressing the handbag she carried against her chest. It contained her wallet, credit cards, keys, and other essentials, and felt like an anchor in a world yet to be touched by the sunlight.
After she exited the bedroom, she'd stood next to the old sofa, too restless to sit down. She mulled over her options. All the while the cell phone rang persistently on. For some reason the relentless beeping made her think of her mother, bloated with boxes of chocolate-covered cherries and disappointment, staring dully at the TV screen all day long. The image remained, intensifying her headache, and she knew then that it was Carley at the other end. She risked a trip back into her bedroom to snatch a blouse, a pair of jeans, and her handbag. She grabbed the cell phone, which had finally shut up, and stuffed it into the handbag with trembling fingers. It was the longest ten seconds in her life; she kept expecting the bedroom door to slam shut, or something to leap out of the bed, from which she resolutely turned her eyes away. She left the apartment building without any incident, and as soon as she was safely outside, she found a pay phone and dialed Carley's home number. Her suspicion was confirmed: her mother had died of a heart attack around the time she starred in her own little drama.
"I'll be on my way to the airport," she told her sister. "Immediately." Immediately: it was a word that had become her new best friend. An urge to burst into hysterical laughter bubbled up her throat, and Randy pinched her jaw viciously to stifle it.
"Okay. But why didn't you answer my call earlier? Why call me instead? And what happened to your cell phone?"
"Later." Randy heard the underlying accusation - Were you too busy being in bed with some guy? Did you lose the cell phone? - and the annoyance helped soothe her nerves. "Carley, one more thing. Do you remember Julia?"
There was a startled pause. "Julia? But you were just a year old then. How come you still remember her?"
"I don't, but I saw pictures of her." Julia, their parents' second child, was born three years after Carley. She died of TBC when she was four, during the time when both their parents were between jobs and barely had enough money to pay the mortgage, let alone additional medical bills. Julia's memory had always been a shadow that Randy never bothered to ask about - a shadow that, she suspected, was responsible for making her mother shut herself off emotionally from her living daughters, and her father to hit her that day. In the photo albums, Julia was a plump little girl with blond hair, often captured with a keen, curious look in her eyes.
And I bet she liked snuggling inside blankets, Randy thought, and once more had to fight off hysterical laughter. She took a deep breath.
"What's Julia got to do with this?"
Randy licked her lips. "Nothing. It's just that - it came to me that - sometimes you can better appreciate people when they're - no longer around."
"Yes, sometimes." Carley was still curious, but obviously putting down Randy's incoherence to delayed shock, and willing to let the matter go - for the moment.
"See you later, then. And Carley? Thanks for taking care of Mom all these years. You're a better daughter than I'll ever be."
"Quit it with the theatrics. Just get your butt on that plane."
"Thanks again, Carley."
Randy hung up and stepped away from the pay phone, her mind churning. She would arrive at Carley's house with nothing but the handbag and the clothes she stood up in; ergo, she would have to think up a believable tale about why she had not stopped to pack. Otherwise Carley would pester her until tempers flared, funeral or no funeral. She might also have to share a room with Carley's daughter, who, Randy was sure, would be mildly surprised when her aunt refused to sleep with a blanket.
Gripping her handbag more tightly, Randy hurried to the curb, ready to hail the first available taxi. Contemplation could wait, flights could not. She only hoped that whoever it had been tonight would not make this sort of visit a routine. That possibility, coupled with her mother's death, might be more than enough to make her snap.
And if it had been Julia last night, might not her mother come to her too, sooner rather than later?
Great way to start a morning, Randy said to herself, her eyes roaming the street. Soon she would be at the airport, among solid bodies, and all the voices she heard would be real, would be easily traceable. She would feel calm, and indeed she needed to be calm, as would anyone about to meet Carley.
Something whispered against the back of her left hand. When Randy looked down, two strands of fine blond hair were sliding over her knuckles. Before they could float away to the ground, she caught them with her right hand and rubbed them against her skin. Then she shook them off her fingers, and waved at an approaching taxi, a little too energetically, a little, she thought, like someone trying not to drown.
the end
e-mail: stormofblossoms [ at ] gmail dot com
artist: llyse (llyse)
email: xanedrian [at] gmail.com
The cell phone gave off a sharp, persistent beep, rousing Randy from what she considered as well-deserved sleep after a hectic Friday at work, and her first groggy thought was Oh, shit, it's Carley, Mom's finally had her long-overdue cardiac arrest, and they're all at the ICU now. Bad news, Randy had discovered, would always hit you at the worst possible and most unexpected moment. As the cell phone continued to cry out, the beginning of a headache crept up behind Randy's eyeballs, and she made a low growling noise. She started to turn sideways and reach toward the bedside table when she remembered that she had switched the cell phone to silent mode before she went to bed, a habit she had acquired against prank callers.
Or did I forget to do that? Randy thought, befuddled. Could a cell phone switch itself back to general mode? And then the answer crashed upon her, sending a chill alongside her bare arm, which was now poised over the cell phone. Her throat constricted, and she slowly rose to a sitting position. The cell phone rang on.
Randy squinted briefly, counted a quick one-two-three, then picked up the cell phone. She peered at it to see the caller's number, and on seeing the blank screen, the chill spread down to her side. Cautiously she pressed the receiver button and brought the cell phone to her ear. "Hello."
There was a faint crackle of static, then silence. Randy listened carefully, back straight, her other hand clutching at the blanket. The silence went on for another fifteen seconds. Randy was about to hang up when she caught a single word.
She got down from the bed, now wary and alert, and moved toward the window. A police siren wailed thinly from the street, eleven floors below. Randy had chosen the apartment because the streets around it were not too busy - she could not stand loud, constant noise, had never been able to. All her life she had been forced to hear too many sounds, many of which could not be heard by anyone else. During her early years, her reaction to these sounds resulted in either raised eyebrows or a severe rebuke. Carley used to mock her for starting over nothing, looking nervously over her shoulder at an empty room, or blinking rapidly at nothing at all. One day at the dinner table Carley regaled their parents with stories of how Randy had been freaking out without good reason all week long, and Randy had thrown the saltshaker at her. Her father had slapped her, the only time he ever physically hit either of his daughters, and there followed a lot of crying, recriminations, and half-hearted apologies. Randy had kept a considerable distance from Carley and her parents since then, a decision none of them ever regretted.
There was another, jarring burst of static. She swallowed and fingered the cell phone. "Hello?" she said again.
The voice came again. It was tiny, unutterably lost. "Now."
One of her legs was going numb. Randy tried to wriggle the toes, darting her eyes at every corner of the bedroom, as if expecting to see the caller crouching on the floor, skin the color of curdled milk and stringy hair hanging on their face. In all her twenty-six years she had only been able to hear, but probably people got more sensitive, not less, with age. A vision in addition to the sounds. Such a jackpot.
"What?" she whispered. Her lips were stiff and would not form the syllable properly.
Something brushed against her heel; Randy gasped, but it was just the new scatter rug she had bought yesterday.
"Now," the voice repeated for the third time, helplessly, and Randy realized that this time it had not come from the cell phone.
It had come from behind her, from the bed.
She turned off the cell phone and could barely refrain from slamming it down on the windowsill. Her palm was sweaty, tattooed on by the lingering warmth of the cell phone. The last thing she wanted was to turn around, but she hated even more to think that the owner of the voice might come to her instead, fleshless knees rasping against the bed sheet, joints cracking with disuse.
Not that they would not come to her anyway.
Her hands clenching into painful fists, Randy turned her head around very, very slowly. She dared not close her eyes, in case a less than wholesome visage suddenly materialized before her when she opened them. The headache was getting worse, sending her blood pounding on her temples and making her grit her teeth.
The bed was empty.
She almost staggered backward, and kept her balance at the last minute. Panting and shivering all over, she lurched toward the light switch and clicked it on. As brightness flooded the room, banishing dark corners and turning them into recognizable shapes, Randy started to breathe more easily. She knew it would take her a long time to fall back to sleep, and she might have to migrate to the old sofa outside. Right now she could not care less. First thing tomorrow she would call Carley, make small talk, ask about Mom, Dan and the kids. Carley would be suspicious, and Randy would end the conversation feeling pleased for having nettled her sister.
A sudden puff of icy breath hit her wrist. "Gone," the voice said loudly - confidently - from the same direction, enunciating the word with single-minded clarity.
On the windowsill, the cell phone rang, making Randy yell hoarsely, and she scrambled toward the door, bent on getting away, n- No, no, not that word, not that word, immediately, yes, that was it, n-
Before she fled the bedroom, Randy saw a thatch of pale hair emerging from underneath the blanket, glimmering in the dark.
"Dan and I heard crashing sounds from downstairs," Carley said. When she was upset, Carley sounded vaguely like a bad actress in a melodrama, and listening to her over the phone only amplified the effect. Randy heard her blow into her handkerchief. "Mom must have gone to the kitchen to get a drink, and then she fell against the kitchen table and knocked over the fruit bowl. We called the ambulance, but by the time we arrived at the hospital, it was already too late. The doctor made the pronouncement at four-twenty." She sniffed. "Well, we've all been expecting this for years, and I guess ... The kids are in their rooms. We've told them as best as we could that Grandma is gone."
The word made Randy shudder. "Have you called Dad?"
"I don't see that it's a priority, since they haven't been speaking to each other for almost five years. Are you coming right away?"
"I am," Randy said, pressing the handbag she carried against her chest. It contained her wallet, credit cards, keys, and other essentials, and felt like an anchor in a world yet to be touched by the sunlight.
After she exited the bedroom, she'd stood next to the old sofa, too restless to sit down. She mulled over her options. All the while the cell phone rang persistently on. For some reason the relentless beeping made her think of her mother, bloated with boxes of chocolate-covered cherries and disappointment, staring dully at the TV screen all day long. The image remained, intensifying her headache, and she knew then that it was Carley at the other end. She risked a trip back into her bedroom to snatch a blouse, a pair of jeans, and her handbag. She grabbed the cell phone, which had finally shut up, and stuffed it into the handbag with trembling fingers. It was the longest ten seconds in her life; she kept expecting the bedroom door to slam shut, or something to leap out of the bed, from which she resolutely turned her eyes away. She left the apartment building without any incident, and as soon as she was safely outside, she found a pay phone and dialed Carley's home number. Her suspicion was confirmed: her mother had died of a heart attack around the time she starred in her own little drama.
"I'll be on my way to the airport," she told her sister. "Immediately." Immediately: it was a word that had become her new best friend. An urge to burst into hysterical laughter bubbled up her throat, and Randy pinched her jaw viciously to stifle it.
"Okay. But why didn't you answer my call earlier? Why call me instead? And what happened to your cell phone?"
"Later." Randy heard the underlying accusation - Were you too busy being in bed with some guy? Did you lose the cell phone? - and the annoyance helped soothe her nerves. "Carley, one more thing. Do you remember Julia?"
There was a startled pause. "Julia? But you were just a year old then. How come you still remember her?"
"I don't, but I saw pictures of her." Julia, their parents' second child, was born three years after Carley. She died of TBC when she was four, during the time when both their parents were between jobs and barely had enough money to pay the mortgage, let alone additional medical bills. Julia's memory had always been a shadow that Randy never bothered to ask about - a shadow that, she suspected, was responsible for making her mother shut herself off emotionally from her living daughters, and her father to hit her that day. In the photo albums, Julia was a plump little girl with blond hair, often captured with a keen, curious look in her eyes.
And I bet she liked snuggling inside blankets, Randy thought, and once more had to fight off hysterical laughter. She took a deep breath.
"What's Julia got to do with this?"
Randy licked her lips. "Nothing. It's just that - it came to me that - sometimes you can better appreciate people when they're - no longer around."
"Yes, sometimes." Carley was still curious, but obviously putting down Randy's incoherence to delayed shock, and willing to let the matter go - for the moment.
"See you later, then. And Carley? Thanks for taking care of Mom all these years. You're a better daughter than I'll ever be."
"Quit it with the theatrics. Just get your butt on that plane."
"Thanks again, Carley."
Randy hung up and stepped away from the pay phone, her mind churning. She would arrive at Carley's house with nothing but the handbag and the clothes she stood up in; ergo, she would have to think up a believable tale about why she had not stopped to pack. Otherwise Carley would pester her until tempers flared, funeral or no funeral. She might also have to share a room with Carley's daughter, who, Randy was sure, would be mildly surprised when her aunt refused to sleep with a blanket.
Gripping her handbag more tightly, Randy hurried to the curb, ready to hail the first available taxi. Contemplation could wait, flights could not. She only hoped that whoever it had been tonight would not make this sort of visit a routine. That possibility, coupled with her mother's death, might be more than enough to make her snap.
And if it had been Julia last night, might not her mother come to her too, sooner rather than later?
Great way to start a morning, Randy said to herself, her eyes roaming the street. Soon she would be at the airport, among solid bodies, and all the voices she heard would be real, would be easily traceable. She would feel calm, and indeed she needed to be calm, as would anyone about to meet Carley.
Something whispered against the back of her left hand. When Randy looked down, two strands of fine blond hair were sliding over her knuckles. Before they could float away to the ground, she caught them with her right hand and rubbed them against her skin. Then she shook them off her fingers, and waved at an approaching taxi, a little too energetically, a little, she thought, like someone trying not to drown.
the end