Morning all. I hope your October is starting off right. I still have tomatoes ripening in my garden so it hardly feels like October but the leaves have started to fall. It’s like clash of the seasons in my backyard. But the calendar page has turned. So let’s see what today’s prompt brings us.
Not sure where this is going but kind of want to find out.
Wednesday, October 2nd: The phone rang.
The phone rang. I looked at it in surprise as it sat on the corner of my desk. My phone never rang. I didn’t call anyone and no one called me I had it because I was supposed to have a phone at least by current standards. Not having one made me stand out. So I had one. I paid the minimum monthly charge I could get away with and occasionally used it to look up the weather.
It never rang.
The phone rang again.
I reached for it and looked at the screen. Unknown number. I smiled. Even if it had displayed the number, I wouldn’t know who it belonged to. ‘Telemarketer,’ I thought.
I pressed the button to answer it a I didn’t want the trouble of dealing with voicemail. I remembered a phone I had some time back that would beep when I had an unchecked voice mail. It would beep periodically until I cleared the voicemail. For a time I thought it was a faulty smoke alarm and changed the batteries repeatedly. It turned out to be someone wanting to sell me new siding for my house.
As my house was made of brick the call was pointless. I had to look up how to check and delete voicemail before the beeping would stop. That was several phones ago and I had yet to look into the voicemail procedures for this one. It was better to answer.
I put the phone on speaker so I could leave it on the desk. “Hello,” I said.
“Do you know how hard you are to find?” a voice said. My eyes narrowed. It ddiddn;t sound like a telemarketer but the voice was unfamiliar.
“I was unaware anyone was looking for me,” I replied.
There was a snort on the other end of the line. An old memory tickled the back of my brain. I had heard that snort of derisive amusement before, but I still couldn’t place it. “Well I hate to break into your fortress of solitude but you are needed. We are in town and at the café. The one by the square. Wat is that statue supposed to be by the way? We’ll expect you in ten minutes.”
The call ended before I could say anything else. I knew which café he meant. I knew which strange statue he was assessing. I still did not know who called me. ‘And who is we?’
I somehow didn’t think the man was referring to himself in the plural. ‘So more than one person,’ I thought.
I thought over the words. If they were in my town square and knew that I could get there in ten minutes then there was the distinct possibility they knew where I lived. I wasn’t hiding from anyone, but I liked to keep my private space private. I didn’t host visitors any more than I got phone calls. I wasn’t entirely certain who called, but I suspected that if I didn’t show, they would visit me here.
Going to the café was the lesser of two evils.
I stood and assessed my clothing. Jeans, a loose button down shirt and socks. I could put on shoes and throw on a sweatshirt against the chill and still walk to the café in less than ten minutes. I moved to my closet and retrieved my shoes.
Ten til Midnight 