Phantom Bride

Chapter 2- The First Call

Jolting awake, my hand instantly shot under my pillow. An eerie breeze danced with my curtains, throwing them in a twisting, romantic waltz and casting sinewy shadows across my room. My papers fluttered lazily, the candle flame flickering wildly in the gentle wind. Contorted shapes crawled across my walls and I sat up further in bed, the painful throbbing of my heart beginning to fill my ears. I felt all the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, prickling and sharp. Slipping out of bed, my bare feet hit the cool wooden floors of my apartment just as light exploded to my right and sound bleated through the tense air. I swung around and locked aim on... my phone.

Showing a restricted caller, my phone rang insensitively into the soft quietness of the night. I sighed, locking the safety and tucking my gun under my pillow again. My hands finally free of that awful contraption, I sunk onto my bed and snatched up my phone. "Hello?" I quipped, more than frustrated at having been woken up at... A quick glance at the luminescence of the clock sneering 3:11am back at me had me groaning. This had better be good.

"Hello?" I snapped again, running a hand through my hair, but only crackling silence met me through the phone. A few hushed scrapes floated across the void in between us, barely making it to my ear. Exasperated, but still on the line, I lied to the fuzzy static that taunted me. "Okay, funny. I'm hanging up now."

Normally I would have dismissed it as another accidental call, a misdial. But something felt... special... about this call. I held my breath as I waited for a response of any kind. For some reason, I was wide awake now.

Calling my bluff and not speaking, the person at the other end of the line let out the smallest of sighs. Not enough for me to make out anything about the caller, but just enough to let me know I'm not crazy. So there is someone there. Will you just say something??

And as abruptly as our one sided conversation began, it ended. I was left as alone as ever in the empty, somber static.

I slammed my phone back down on the desk beside my bed and stared at my hand resting on a cantilevering stack of textbooks. I let out a bone rattling sigh and collapsed onto my bed, feeling the adrenaline still pulsing through my body. Stupid. You've got to stop doing this to yourself- it was a wrong number and nothing more. Give up. Let him go.

Knowing there was no way I was going to be able to fall back asleep now, I dragged myself out of bed and heaved the giant stack of books into my arms. I lumbered into the kitchen and dumped my books on the counter, flipping open pages to my bookmarks. I pulled my hair into a bun and collapsed over my books, studying and flipping pages until the neat, even lettering of the words began to blur together in a warm, fuzzy mess before my burning eyes. The copper kettle speckled with years of love and use started whining, screeching, howling into the solemn mist of the early morning.

Suddenly, the soft yellow rags on the counter became dusty, crunchy dead leaves. The neutral cream colored walls faded to weathered wood, the ceiling of the kitchen sky rocketing into the hay loft of the old barn. The pages on the Matthew Effect and social relativism grinded into splintering doors under my hands, falling away as I pushed into the barn. The shrill bleating of the kettle became a woman's screams. My mothers screams. It's not too late. He called me just in time. But who is he? If I can just get in there... find a weapon. Brielle. Find a weapon.

"Brielle!"

I startle, knocking a notebook off the counter and flip around. My roommate, Shannon, is glaring at me. She marches over to the stove and takes off the screaming kettle, instantly hushing it and releases the pent up steam that comes out in a long, sharp hiss. Shannon flipped some mousy brown hair out of her face and rested a pearl nail painted hand on her ample waist, raising a plucked and barely filled in eyebrow at me. "Could you not have taken that off? It's 7am. Jesus." She snapped, getting out her coffee and travel mug. "I asked if you could watch it and take it off for me because I was showering."