Monday
I looked at the missed calls. There were five all within precisely a minute of each other. I didn’t recognize the number, and resolved that if they called back I’d politely let them know that they had the wrong number.
I shrugged it off and popped two pieces of bread into the toaster while pulling out a tub of margarine from the fridge. As my toast was toasting, I flicked on the news to see the day’s reports.
A fire, a cat stuck in a tree, no car accidents (fortunately), and a two year old boy who had been hit by a bicyclist and died, named David Brindlow. I bit my lip, as I thought of the waste of such a young life. What if that boy had been me? I used to ride my pink tricycle everywhere when I was little…
I shook the thought out of my head and continued nibbling on my toast in relative silence, with only the droning of the new reporters to keep me company.
I lived alone in my own apartment, not far from campus, and though I had neighbors, they were often out on vacation or outright recluses. Not that I’d particularly want to hang out with them anyways. Still, it was lonely in the leaden silence of the building. As I pulled my bike out into the hallway, so that I could get to my first class, the drop of a pin could have been heard falling on the floor.
It was a silence like death.
I looked down at the slightly rusted chain on my bike and gulped. Death wasn’t something I should keep on my mind today. Instead, I should think about the presentation I had to give, as well as the fact that I was volunteering at the hospital once again tonight.
When I returned home, I noticed a bit of graffiti that had been sprayed on the side of the building in bright red letters. Though the letters were written in the highly compacted and abstract form, typical to graffiti, I could have sworn that on the wall were the letters, A, B, C, D…
I clenched my teeth, and felt a shiver travel through the course of my body. I was on edge, and felt as if someone was watching me from some dark corner of a nearby building or lamppost. I hustled into the building while being incredibly conscious of the soft padding of my footsteps. There wasn’t any reason to linger outside this close to midnight.
YOU ARE READING
Thanatophobia (fear of dying)
Mystery / ThrillerI tried to control my breathing, so that the knife wouldn’t be dug further into my skin by the frantic movement of air into and out of my lungs. I looked up towards him. His eyes didn’t look angry; they looked sad. But my stomach churned at the dete...
