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Latest Stories

March 19, 2024
Fantasy Stories Wondering Monk

Just My Imagination

The alarm clock went off and started playing an awful tune. Tom opened his eyes and closed them back, squinting. He reopened one eye and stood up to stop the torture. The phone was on the desk, in the furthest spot from the bed. Although he changed his way of…
March 19, 2024
Science Fiction Stories Ocelotlzin

Earth Is Dead

Recording… It doesn't matter who I was; I probably lived a long time ago, and I am now just a voice someone added to the audio-visual records. What is essential is the recollection of events that lead to the current state. So, a little history needs to be…
March 08, 2024
Flash Fiction Benoit

Some Enchanted Evening

It was a rugby tackle with tears: Chrissy burst in, sobbing and babbling, hugging James. Her face was all wet, eyes wild. What…? My parents split up, Dad has moved in with his boyfriend and I cannot join them. I am shut out. I have lost my dad. Torrent of…
March 08, 2024
Horror Stories Marvel Chukwudi Pephel

In The Hands Of My Legs

The car pulled up in front of the large salon. The neon sign, that sexy broad thing, on the salon'sroof read "Mr. Gil's All-night Salon". The exhaust pipe of the car was pumping solid smoke, theswirls moving from the car and towards the salon.…
March 07, 2024
Mystery Stories Vanessa Leigh Giles

Casualty of Love in the Time of Coronavirus

Chapter 1 Until Death do us Part ‘Ring, ring!’. I answered the telephone and asked, “Hello, good evening. Who’s this? “Hello.” This is Dr. Smith from Red Cross hospital. “Is this Mr. Locke, John?”, he asked, hesitantly scratching his bald head. “Yes, doctor.…
March 07, 2024
Crime Stories Robert Pook

Bar Room Trigger

Another return journey on footpaths so familiar. He strides across each crack in each paving stone. Regular loose drain covers sidestepped. Mapping long ago mapped in Richard’s desolate mind. His pace hastened by the sight of the oncoming storm. Quickening…
March 04, 2024
Horror Stories Ano Chinemerem

Sanctity

Where should I begin? I could begin by telling you about this comely boy, whom every notable person around the streets agrees his smile could charm the bills off one. Between one smile, there was his goodness, his dreams and humanity—a little far ahead?— but…
March 04, 2024
Flash Fiction Emanuel Diaz

Et Mortui Partium

As Rafael stepped out into the rain, it wasn't the ordinary drops that fell from the sky. Instead, it was a storm of souls, each one taking the form of shimmering jewelry as it cascaded toward the ground. Rubies, diamonds, and sapphires twinkled amidst the…
February 29, 2024
Poetry Jing Li Ava

London

‘Am I in London?’ "I am." Where is Elizabeth? Happy living story All of your chapter Bounlance joy Please my heart Power hand Wise mind Our baby Vow vow Love all love Miss I miss Endless wonder Bring us together Love all love Miss I miss For everything My…
February 29, 2024
Flash Fiction Rob Pook

Life Sentence of The Smith

Born nine months after his country won the World Cup.A child prodigy.Cast off at age twenty-four.Husband, father, emigree, away on the other side of the world.The blue-collar life.The dreams of success.The search for fulfillment.The long years of empty…
February 29, 2024
Mystery Stories Joshua Lowther

The Operator

Jason looked over to his right, his eyes barely able to focus themselves on the subject of his attention. His neck ached terribly from the strenuous movement. He was tired. The captain’s gaze came to rest on the rookie sonar operator sitting tense at his…
February 29, 2024
Flash Fiction Salvatore Difalco

The Chute

At dusk, we left our unit with a soft pink bundle. I carried it through the wet streets and into the black woods. I said I’d take it all the way, the bundle, but that we had to drop it in together. My wife’s green eyes flashed. “Don’t make me do that.” I…

I didn’t even want a cell phone. My wife Lea got it for me when she renewed her plan.

I would have left it on the kitchen table and never charged it if she didn’t insist I carry it with me. What’s the point of having a phone at home if you’re going to make calls from the car, I argued unsuccessfully. She occasionally called under the guise of making sure I hadn’t forgotten to do this or go there, but we both knew it was really just to make sure I had the phone and to prove it useful. Even so, I still insisted I didn’t need it, so I never gave the number out or used it to call anyone but her.

That’s what made it so infuriating when people started calling.

The call wasn’t Lea’s office number or cell, and the prefix told me the call was from Danville, about an hour and a half from where we lived. I wasn’t going to answer but I figured something might have happened and Lea had someone calling me for her.

The caller was a woman, who asked for someone I didn’t know and whose name I didn’t pay attention to since it wasn’t mine.

“Wrong number,” I said.

“Oh, sorry,” she said. And we hung up.

The next time it was a male voice on the other end.

I laughed when I started getting calls from the Danville jail, always hanging up without incurring the cost of the call.

Most times I didn’t answer, and since I didn’t have a greeting, sometimes people would leave a message.

That’s when I realized I had been given someone else’s life. Through these errant calls and voicemails, I had access to all the previous holder of this cell phone number’s friends, and their desire – and his -- for their friendship.

“Call me,” a woman said sensually.

“Come pick me up,” a broken down friend pleaded from the side of the road.

There were invitations to parties, requests for rides to the store. Someone called seeking a shoulder to cry on. They all left messages, and I listened to them all with a shameful voyeurs’ interest and a chuckle, always thinking, ain’t happening.

It wasn’t long before these calls fell away.

And that’s when she called.

The first few calls I didn’t pick up and the caller didn’t leave a message. But the calls kept coming, and she started leaving messages: “Are you there, Shawn?” …. “Why won’t you pick up, baby?” … “I wish you would pick up.” It got to the place I started recognizing the number. There was a pleading, placidness in her voice, and she sounded like an older woman, maybe even elderly – and that she was elderly was the only reason I didn’t just delete her messages and forget about it. My mother had died just a couple of years earlier, and I felt sympathy for this woman in a way I probably wouldn’t have felt before. I decided this was something I had to deal with, and finally I answered with the intention of telling her that she had the wrong number. And that’s just what I told her ... the first time … the second time … the third time … the fourth --.

When it started she would apologize and get off the phone. But later, there would be no response. No request to talk to anyone. No voice at all. She would just sit there. Occasionally, there would be the sound of a television in the background, but most of the time there would just be silence. And she never hung up. That would always be left to me after several unresponded to hellos.

Just to make conversation, I finally told Lea about it over dinner.

“How sad,” she said.

“Not at all,” I said. “That’s what happens when fat fingers meet bad eyesight.”

“Maybe there’s more to it than that,” she said. “Maybe she’s an older woman who doesn’t have any friends and is reaching out to someone; trying to find someone who cares or someone she cares about.”

That’s what happens when you marry the softhearted, I thought.

For another year, the calls kept coming – more sporadically, once or twice a month. There was no reason for me to keep answering. She seldom spoke, and when she did she asked for Shawn – and I wasn’t Shawn and couldn’t help her find him. I wanted to ignore these calls but Lea had shamed me enough that I just kept answering.

“May I ask your name?” I finally asked one evening into the sound of a news broadcast that served as background for the silence.

“I want to talk to Shawn?” she asked.

“May I ask your name I repeated?” I was trying hard not to sound perturbed.

“Sherry,” she said, hesitantly. With that out of the way her voice was stronger as she said, “I just want to talk to Shawn.”

“Sherry,” I said, “I’ve told you before this isn’t Shawn’s phone. You’ve got the wrong number.”

She continued to sit there in silence, like she was waiting for me to burst into laughter and say, “Hold on, he’s right here …” and then hand the phone to Shawn. But that wasn’t going to happen, so after a few more seconds of listening to the background of news, I hung up.

I wrote her name down. I wanted to tell my wife I had gotten more information about “The Lost Caller,” as Lea had dubbed her.

I forgot to tell Lea over dinner, and I didn’t give the scrap of paper I’d written the name on a second thought. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t long after that the calls stopped. It had been a couple of months before I even realized it.

Actually, I didn’t think about it again until one Friday night when my wife asked if I had heard from The Lost Caller lately, and fretted about her. It was only then that I remembered the piece of paper and got out of bed and went in search of it. I dug it out from the middle of a stack of papers on the end of the dining room table and brought it back to Lea, who set it on the nightstand on her side of the bed.

The next morning I found her at the computer in the guest bedroom when I got up to take my first pee of the day.

“I found her,” she said, her glaze locked on the computer.

What I had to do couldn’t wait, but she was still reading when I got back.

“Found who?” I asked. She was always talking about something and then acting like she had already told me but I hadn’t listened. I listened -- I’m sure she just wasn’t telling me all the stuff she claimed she was.

“Sherry … Sherry Kearney,” she said. “I found her. It’s her obituary. She died about a month ago.”

I stood over her shoulder and read. How she died and where wasn’t immediately mentioned, but it did say she was fifty-five years old, from Danville, and a secretary. That was as far as I got when Lea noted, “I found Shawn, too.”

She clicked the mouse and another window came up as she said, “He’s dead too.”

He was twenty-one years old and had died in a car wreck two years ago. It was a single car accident. He was speeding and hit a tree, just being reckless and irresponsible. Then again, that’s what young people are.

“Of course, I can’t say for absolutely sure … but I’m pretty sure this is them,” she said. “Right names; mother and son from the right area.” Lea looked up at me. There was nothing more to say.

If this was her, and this was them, maybe she died of a broken heart. No parent wants to bury a child and no parent really ever accepts it – you don’t have to have children to know that. Maybe now they are reunited; maybe before she died she found acceptance; maybe now she found peace.

Why had she decided this was the phone number of her son? Maybe it had been his. Maybe she had been calling this number hoping – wishing -- it would be his voice to answer one day. “Hey, mama,” I imagined she dreamed of hearing. “I’m on my way and I’ll be home soon.”

I could not suppose what she was willing to give for the last two years to hear the voice she wanted on the other end: the rest of her life … die happy that moment? But, of course, that hadn’t happened. She had always gotten me … a stranger. And yet, she kept calling.

I didn’t know if I had done a service or disservice each time I answered. Before I would answer maybe she was enjoying a futile moment of optimism that this time she would hear the right voice? Or was I making her more morose when the call was picked up and she heard my voice, the wrong voice, the voice that confirmed to her that he was never going to answer again? I guess it doesn’t matter now.

It bothered me that my wife was right and that I had been so uncomforting – even if I knew there hadn’t been anything I could have done. I decided to go for a walk.

THE END

Jamie C. Ruff is a former reporter, native of Greensboro, NC, and author of three e-books: the western “Colby Black: from Slave to Cowboy,” the contemporary tale of camaraderie and personal conflict “Reinventing the Uninvented Me,” and, most recently, the coming of age story “The Peculiar Friendship.” All are available for download at Amazon.com. He is also a contributor to short-story.me.

 

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