A text from an unknown number starts something so much more. Supernatural realms, monsters, and an imaginary friend--who might not be so imaginary after all.
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In March 2017, I wrote a version of this for Wattpad's Tap messaging story app. If y...
Thanks for reading! I originally intended to pick-up where I left off in the version of this story I published on Wattpad's Tap app, but I've decided that it makes more sense to start at the beginning and work back to the end. I hope that this will be enjoyable whether or not you've read the Tap story.
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Hopeful Romantic
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O N E
Sometimes things happen that you don't expect. Weird things, the kind of things that you may have expected once upon a long time ago, but that you've long-since forgotten could even be a possibility. It's that kind of thing that happened to me one night at three in the morning when I'd forgotten to silence my phone. It was the kind of thing that seemed innocent and normal enough at first that I wouldn't have even said it was weird. A text message.
"There's something I have to tell you," it said.
See, this text wasn't from anybody I knew. At least not anybody I had in my contacts. So they had the wrong number. Naturally, I let the person know and proceeded to silence my phone. Well. I was about to, anyway, when another message popped up.
"Not a wrong number."
"It's three in the morning," I pointed out, "Who is this?"
Because if this was one of my friends' idea of a good joke, it wasn't funny. It wasn't anything except maybe seriously annoying. Annoying to the tune of a nice REM cycle interrupted. And I hardly got enough of those as it was.
"Actually, it's 3:45," the message came back, "And I know you're not sleeping."
I supposed I could have taken that two ways: One, assume it was a reference to the fact that I was obviously awake if I was texting, or two, some rather creepy, cryptic message about how they just knew I was awake. Like a psychic or something. I don't know. I assumed the first option. I'm not a crazy person--most of the time, anyhow.
"Well yeah, thanks to you. Do I know you?" I figured that ought to do the trick and settled off to go to sleep with the phone tucked safely back under my pillow. This time, silenced.
Unfortunately for what was left of my sleep cycle, I couldn't resist the white light of the screen reflecting onto the covers. New message arrived.
"Yes. We used to be best friends."
Great. I racked my brain for a memory of some lost best friend but couldn't think of any. Maybe if I just stopped replying, that would solve the problem. Well, yeah. It would if I did... I messaged back. Of course I did. How was I supposed to just fall asleep after that? I did try. But not for very long, I'll admit.
The thing was, I couldn't get a straight answer. It frustrated me to the point that I turned my phone off. I know. Right after I said I couldn't even fall asleep without knowing.
And then when I couldn't sleep again, I turned it back on. There were no new messages. But since I wasn't exactly great at the whole self-control of not checking messages thing, apparently, I turned the phone on vibrate and went to sleep.
There were no more new messages that night. Well, okay, that depends on your definition of night. The sun was rising when I got the next one.
And you know what? That was what the message said. "The sun is rising." The dude apparently was having a good time. And didn't like sleep. Or something.
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That's what he sent me.
And then he had the nerve to ask me if I was worried about him. As if that even made sense. As if he would even tell me what old friend of mine he was supposed to be. As if the whole thing wasn't just some stupid prank. I pictured my real friends sitting around and laughing about it together. Except, wait, who did I know that would be hanging out having a good laugh at my expense this seriously early in the morning? Didn't add up.
So maybe that's why I kept chatting the dude. I don't know. Why else would I have done it? Curiosity, I guess. That's all. And I knew I was going to regret it all day, too, on account of how tired I was.
But just when I thought for sure it had to be some sort of a joke, he told me his name was Arlen. Arlen? I didn't know anyone by that name. Now I got it. I'd been right all along. It was a wrong number. I almost didn't want to tell him since I figured he'd be embarrassed when he figured out the mistake he'd made. At least I'd got to the bottom of the mystery at last.
Except that's not how it happened.
Instead, he told me I did know an Arlen. That we'd met at the park. When I was five. Yeah, that's right. Five. You wanna know who was supposed to be getting up at her alarm in a few minutes so that she could go get ready for class? Me. For college class. That's how long it had been since I was five.
It was technically possible that I had met someone when I was that little. He said he'd been seven. Okay, so we could have met a time or two and then I forgot him. I did have the whole eye thing back then. I mean, I couldn't see very well. So probably I didn't construct very good visual memories at that age. And certainly I wouldn't remember the half-known name of a person I met only once or twice way back when.
All of this was fairly weird, but not weird weird. Not until the part where he told me about the scar on my shin. I got that scar when... well, the details are fuzzy. But I fell down an embankment in the park. And this Arlen guy was now trying to tell me that he was there. But he wasn't. I was alone.
So then he started telling me about how I had this babysitter, but she left me alone and then I got attacked by a giant moth. The kind of thing that sounds crazy because it probably is crazy. Except for the small detail that I had dreamed this as a child. I actually still had nightmares about it on occasion. What'd I tell you? I'm not crazy. Most of the time.
By this point, my alarm had already gone off and it was time to wake up. I snoozed it and kept messaging. It felt like I was still dreaming. I just hadn't figured out if it was going to be a nightmare yet.
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