Inked Up

1

   Ellen calls me, late at night.

   The shrill call of a landline shatters whatever reprieve I happened to be enjoying. Dogs bark in the woods. Wolves, probably.

   I ignore it. I bury my head beneath the floorboards, trying my best.

   No dice.

   Ellen does not enjoy waiting. She simply enhances local volume, and that barely tolerable shrieking becomes torture. A banshee wails right beside my ear.

   I jolt awake.

   Blinking away the last vestiges of peace, I scan.

   My eyes land on my bedside table, which is wooden, brown. No lamp. No alarm clock.

   Only the old-fashioned home phone.

   Which was... not there a second ago.

   Neither was the bedside table, for that matter.

   I grumble. "Hag."

   I pick up the new addition to my sparse bedroom.

   "What was that, Marvin?"

   "Nothing," I sit up. "What's the issue?"

   The voice on the other end of the line is clipped. As well as young, clearly saturated with molten sarcasm.

   If tones could kill, I'd be speaking daisies right now.

   Ellen stays silent. After a whole minute, I start to wonder if I waited too long, and if this delay has just cost me a job. And a big, fat paycheck.

   That scares me more than what I'm hearing in the background.

   Somebody is screaming. The words bleed together.

   Explosions. Loud hissing. Like a snake shoved into a megaphone.

   Word salad is being passed around. Tossed, you could say. Innumerable voices drown out meeker, pitiful whining.

   Somewhere else, amidst this cacophony of apocalyptic horror and abject panic, somebody shouts, "Quick, seal it, se—"

   Well. That's all I hear before a volley of gunshots cut them off.

   From an AC-19 or EDEB-1.

   If the former, Rest In Peace.

   If the latter... Rest in pieces.

   Either way? Poor guy. 

   "Uh... E-Ellen?"

   Silence on Ellen's part.

   I stand up. The cabin's wooden floor is covered with burnt paper stapled together. An impromptu carpet.

   For an impromptu home.

   On the other end, broken car horns blare.

   Glass shatters.

   A very big, very loud laugh overtakes the hissing.

   "Ellen? What's, uh, what's going on? Are you at a... p-parade?"

   Gunshots become wet.

   Finally, Ellen takes a deep breath.

   I can hear the faintest instability. Not much. But enough to make me worried, since she is almost never shaken.

   And if she is shaken, and calling me this late at night, then...