Phantom Bride

Chapter 3- Persistence

My roommate was gone when I pushed open the door and dropped my keys on the table, her door ajar and her room airy in the quickly darkening night. Something felt off as I slipped out of my shoes and padded down the hall to my room. The baby hairs on the back of my neck began to prickle and sting as they stood up.

I slipped out of my room quickly once I had changed into slippers, somehow feeling like eyes were trained on me and unwavering. The hallway felt too narrow and too dark, so when I turned on the light to the kitchen and whipped my gaze around to the dark corners, finding nothing, I had to take a second to let my breathing return to normal. My heart thumped against my rib cage painfully and I breathlessly laughed at myself and got out some dinner stuff and started cutting vegetables.

You're just being silly. Relax Brielle, there's nobody here. It's a weird day, the anniversary of you waking up over your parent's corpses. Yeah- it's normal to feel a little weird and not want to be alone.

I flinched away when my phone began ringing and shocked me out of my thoughts, whipping my head around to throw glances over my shoulder. I peered through the dark glassy pane of the window into the cool, shimmery blackness as I answered it and gathered myself. "Hello?" My voice was firmer than I thought it would be, surprisingly, and I let it fill me with courage as I turned my back to the window and stirred my cooking vegetables.

"Hello?" I asked again of the undulating silence that crackled back over the phone to meet me. After a few seconds of stifling hope, I let anger color my thoughts and slammed the phone down on the towel on my counter. You can't keep doing this at every wrong number that calls you. He's gone. Forever. You have to accept that.

I wiped my nose and sniffled angrily, throwing my eyes to the ceiling and furiously refusing to cry. My vegetables sizzled and popped in the pan, the corn bubbling away in its' bath of hot water. Someone walked across the floor in the apartment below me and across the hall I heard some yelling, some laughing. The wind moaned against the windows and drying leaves raked against each other. I let the sounds of the world around ground me in this moment, stopping the spinning and helping me focus on the steady thrumming of my heart in my own chest.

Nodding, I came back to reality and took my food off the stove. I bustled around the kitchen, grabbing some pepper and hot sauce and a plate, a cup of water and a fork, before plating my steaming vegetables and plopping down. I had my hand on a bunch of bananas, about to crack one off, when my phone began ringing again. I dropped my yellow, sugary fruit and stomped over to the counter, picked up the phone, and answered it by the second ring.

A few seconds of listening to the hushed static of a dead line to make sure, and I snapped. "Stop calling me. If this is some kind of sick joke, it isn't funny. I know you're there and I know you aren't just calling to hear me say "Hello?" like an idiot all by myself two or three times, so that leads me to believe you know what these calls mean to me. I don't want to have to turn my phone off or change my number, but I will. Understand? So stop." I growled into the phone, glaring out the window like I could see whoever was connected to me in this moment. Of course, no reply came back. I humphed, disgusted, and pulled away to hang up when..

Cowmmrewesnnhreeiitt.

Ice ran through my veins and I crushed the phone back to my ear, slightly unsteady as I intensely focused on the fuzzy silence coming through the phone again. Unchanging and broken, nothing happened. I hurriedly urged, "What? Did you say something?" of the static. I searched the hushed flat tone, my eyes narrowing and dropping to the floor, and I was about to give up again when-

"Come. Tonight."

and then three staccato, emotionless beeps of the hang up tone. I let my phone slowly fall from my ear, gripping it tightly and staring wide eyed at my lock screen. The voice had been melodic, gruff, seductive, deep. There was a silkiness to it almost, a soft and sensual importance behind it.