Lost iPhones

Chapter 1- Did You Steal It?

James said he found the iPhone in the lawn as he was leaving the party. Afterward, we wondered what had really happened, how he had actually found it. But then, when he told us, we had no reason to not believe his story. He was walking out, he explained, completely hammered, and there it was: a pink 5C covered with dew from being out all night.

"You stole someone's phone? Not cool, James," said Hayley. We were standing it in our apartment's small kitchen, lit quite brightly by the early afternoon sun. James had just come over, but in his defense, it was probably much more like morning for him. I had only been up for a couple of hours, anyway. Spring semester had finished a few days ago and all the dandelions were coming out, yellow headed and alive in the few green spots in the city. Hailey's internship at the museum wasn't starting for another two weeks and my work in Professor Isle's lab was on hold until he came back from vacation, which meant we had nothing to do except talk too much and drink too much and sleep in too much and way, way too late.

James lived in our apartment building, on the bottom floor. I knew him from my fiction workshop. He had gone to boarding schools and wrote a lot of stories about the sadness of being rich. He DJ'd Monday nights at the college station, playing hipper than thou indie rock and dub reggae. I'm making him sound a lot worse than he is. He always had good hair.

In a plot twist that didn't surprise me at all, Hayley had slept with him ("I don't regret it Ariel. All great lives feature things some would call failures, but we libertines call them the forge that tempers our personal steel.") but only a couple of times. He had initiated extremely awkward hugs with me, but that hadn't evolved into anything more physical. Thankfully.

"I didn't steal a phone. I'm not, like, a thief."

"And yet here you are," Hayley said, "with that phone you didn't buy."

"You act like I'm breaking windows and snatching shit."

"Are you?"

"No, Ariel. I am not breaking windows and snatching shit."

"Thank god. Don't think we weren't worried," said Hayley.

"Do you guys want to know why this phone is weird?"

"Sure," I said, "show me."

He slide the phone on and punched in the security code.

"Hey," said Hayley, "how do you know the code."

"I didn't," he said, tapping at the screen, "but this morning I just put in some random numbers and it, boom. It worked."

"What numbers?"

"4444."

"What a crappy pin," I breathed. "that person's email password must be password."

"Maybe it is, but it's not on their phone," said James, "they don't have an email set up, or any apps, or contacts."

"What the fuck do they even do with their phone then," demanded Hayley, "only make phone calls?"

"No. No calls in the history. Received or outgoing."

"So there's nothing on it?" asked Hayley, "maybe it's a new phone or something?"

"It's not a new phone," he flipped it over. The back of the phone was covered in scratches, tiny spider web cracks running in and out. "See? Somebody has had this forever."

"So, there's nothing on it and it's got a shitty password. James I hate to complain about your attempts to bring mystery and excitement into our lives and our, you know, our kitchen," Hayley gestured at the tiny room we were all packed into , "but this isn't exactly Cicada 3301."

"There's not nothing," he said, indignant, "there's a video. you want to see?"

"Not nothing is a double negative," I said, "you would say "there isn't anything" or, maybe, "there's something on it" instead. Does that make sense?"

"I hated your pedantic criticisms in workshop, Ariel, and I dislike them in real life too. People sometimes talk because they like how words sound with each other. They aren't always in blind thrall to the completely imaginary, class-centric, often internally contradictory rules referred to as "grammar." Now, did you want to watch this? Because, it's a little, umm, fucked up. To be honest."

Hayley and I looked at each other. She shrugged.

"Obviously we want to watch," Hayley said, "right? Why wouldn't we?"

"Right," I said. "Let's do this."

The video started to play.

Images of the ground appeared: rocks, dirt, leaves. The camera was shaky. Shoes appeared in and out of the frame, just the uppermost tops of shoes. They looked like chucks. You could hear footsteps, breathing. It was obviously someone filming themselves walking.

"Did you already watch this?" Hayley was staring at the screen, her brow furrowed.

"Yeah, I did, be quiet though."

The walking stopped. The camera panned up and swung left, revealing a heavily forested landscape with the same path the person had previously been walking on running out into the distance, and then the camera swung to the right. There was a hill's edge there, swelling out over a precipice, overlooking a not insignificant drop off.

"I recognize this," I said, "where is this? Have you guys see this before?"

"Me too," said Hayley, "it's out in Machen park. I've gone jogging out there."

"Watch," said James, his voice tense.

We did.

The screen shook as whomever was holding it lowered it again. The breathing rasped. Then, there was another noise. Something that sounded like running. The camera swung up, there was a blur, a shadowy motion, some kind of noise, and then the person and the phone were moving. They went over the cliff, together. Then there was an awful noise and something far away, a weird familiar screaming.

The screen went black.

I looked at Hayley, who wasn't saying a word, biting her chipped florescent green nails instead. James looked up.

"I told you," he said, "it's a little fucked up."

****

Three hours later, we were in the woods.

"Bad idea, Hayley," I murmured, walking on the path. "You've had bad ideas, but this is the worst."

"Really? The worst?" She frowned. Mosquitos were starting to appear in the near dim. One bite me and I slapped it, leaving a long smear of bright red blood on my left forearm. "Ok. Maybe the worst. But don't you want to see?"

"For sure. But I wished we had waited. Or asked James if he wanted to go."

"He had to work," she shrugged, "so I ain't trying to hear that. I want to see what's happening."

We kept walking down the dirt trail. Most days there were joggers or other hikers, but we hadn't seen anyone else. Everything felt static, like we were looking at a screenshot instead of real life.