Saving Grace

6

The beach-house. Four a.m. The air would've smelt like salt and ice. Grace had just gotten home; her limo's engine would've still been warm. She came in the door, kicked off her heels, scrunched up another Mormon pamphlet stuck in the door and threw it with the rest of her things onto the living room couch. She always got a drink first before anything else, so she would've wandered into the kitchen and opened the fridge. The light would've made her wince and the air would've frosted her skin. Through the drunkenness and her polished French windows, I bet she could hear the wrathful waves crashing on the shore, eroding the rocks and stones and pebbles as the sand-dwelling critters scurried into the sea.

Just as she screwed the cap back onto the bottle of sparkling water, the phone rang. It was a paralysing sound, like a scream in the night, and her marble-white tiles would've taken it by the hand and dragged it down every corridor and into every room until the walls buckled. In her drunken haze, Grace stumbled up the creamy white staircase as it wound around her home, occasionally falling, clinging to the banister like a child. When she reached her bedroom, the shrieking phone rang only one more time before dying out. She frowned, took the phone in her hands, examined it.

Forty-seven missed calls.

She looked at the number, studied each digit, yet no memory stuck out in her mind. Exhausted and ready to pass out, Grace would've shaken her head, rubbed her eyes, and put the phone back on the hook. She would've peeled back the blankets her maids had tucked in that morning, climbed into bed and rolled over. She might have wondered: who is calling me at this hour, and so many times? Surely they would've got the message that I wasn't home, or simply didn't give a shit. Wouldn't they? And just as her thoughts started to dissolve, the phone rang again. Screeching, trembling on the nightstand. She would've been angry when she answered the phone – probably knocked something over when she ripped it off the hook.

"What?!" She roared.

Silence, eerie and unnerving, pinched the line. A second passed. He took a breath.

"W-who is this?" Grace asked Him.

His breathing seemed to curl in on itself, as if a terrible smile had stretched across His face. Grace's jaw clenched, her body seized. And then He hung up, just like that. No words, no explanation. Just gone. But Grace knew then, deep inside, that this was just the beginning, and that He had a plan out of which no good could possibly arise.

© A.G. Travers 2018