Skip to main content

Night Shift

 The phone clangs. Whitman glances at it with the same mixture of astonishment and fear that he images Moses experienced when a singular blazing bush began to speak. It’s 11:30 at night. Whitman shifts uncomfortably in his chair, trying to remember when they last had a call this late and the slowness of his thoughts is reminiscent of ancient monolithic efforts; dragging huge, slow stones across barren expanses. 


The phone rings again. Wipes away the desert sands and confusion from his empty mind. Whitman answers. 


Whitman, what can I do for you?


At first, Whitman can’t hear anything. Not because there is silence, but because the voice is quiet. Almost reverential.  


Twenty five. Fifty eight. Ninety nine. Six. Eight. Fifty four. Fifty six. Fifty eight. Two.


Whitman doesn’t waste time hanging up. In a few moments he’s already forgetting the odd voice and it’s numbers. The only thought lingering is that if it was his damn kiddo making crank calls this late, there’d be hell to pay, that’s for sure, just like when his old man had— 


The phone rings. Whitman stares. It rings once, twice, three times, it’s tinny voice eerily sounding like a mechanical wail. Whitman glances around the police station, spends extra time studying the dark corners that amass a little beyond his singular amber-colored lamp. Whitman answers. 


Seven. Ten. Twelve. Ten. Ten. Ten. Sixty five. Eighty. Seventeen. Nineteen.


The voice is enough to make Whitman shiver. It doesn’t sound like a man or a woman, but between, and it’s pace over the numbers is seemingly too fast for the calculated way it says them. It’s reading is like an unnatural lulling. Whitman feels himself drift, oddly, before shaking his head and gripping the phone before getting ready to slam it back into place, gripping tight— 


Wake up down there!


The call drops in a wash of static. It sounds like what Whitman thinks a seashell would if he’d put one to his ear, calming and tranquil in its reminiscence of the ocean.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Find Your Own Way Out

 Find Your Own Way Out What if things could be undone before you’d done them? Or after? What if you could be rewritten, and never know it? What’s beyond time, what’s beyond death? What lies out in the places between places, above and outside of places? What’s in the basement and the attic of God, the places he won’t look, won’t open up to us? That’s what the note said in the empty, cold house.  It’s handwriting was rushed, the letters looping and stretched, trying to run away from the page to somewhere else. Somewhere else beyond the ominous meaning, the fate of whoever wrote it.  Water drip-drip-drips  from the faucet. Trying to fill that uncomfortable, hungry silence. Something thumps  in the attic, wood creaking before abating back into the quiet.  There are things in the house. There is nothing in the house.  Empty picture frames that you can feel unseen smiles from. If you’d run your hands across the walls there would be the essence of dust from a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review

 “It’s you this time.”  Look at everyone. All the staring faces. So many wide, watching eyes trying to mask their terror. The macabre interest hidden just behind is all to obvious— because you’ve done the same thing when the Calls came. It was you a few days ago, watching the Selection, feeling the strange thrill spasm through you. Fear from the potential, arousal from the promise, and all of it mixed by relief when someone else was chosen. You too had been part of the many quiet whispers and loaded, meaningful wordless looks. Thinking. Who would it be this time? Who? Why? Why were they chosen?   Someone coughs and all your thinking implodes. That was then . This is now. It’s you. The stares, the quiet whispers and exchanged glances; a solar system of human emotion all about what you will undertake. You lower your gaze to the Phone.  That’s just what it is. A Phone. Sharp, elegant glistening black. It should be worn, scuffed from all that usage, it’s paint changed fr...
Post a Comment
Read more

Traitors Folly

 Traitors Folly Dad always dragged us to roadside attractions. But, while I’ve forgotten the tallest stack of butter and the fattest cow and a million other tidbits of oddness, I haven’t  forgotten the Monument to Insurrection.  I don’t think I ever will.  Whatever internet searches might have you believe, there are roadside attractions in the East Coast, they’re real common. Of course, I can’t tell you exactly where we were— no one can seem to remember, or doesn’t want to remember. Just that, heading back from relatives in Philadelphia and about five more hours from home, dad was excitedly pulling us into some lot. It was morning, maybe seven or eight, and no one was really there.  “All the better!”, dad practically cheered, and we were out, stretching legs or twisting backs. Dad went on ahead, of course, but not far. I could see him, standing in the shadow of what must’ve been our reason for stopping: a bronze statue of a man, maybe thirty or so feet tall....
Post a Comment
Read more