The Phone Booth

Ricky Garraty just wanted to get out of the rain. It was supposed to be a quick walk home from Walter's place. Walter offered to give him a lift, but Ricky wanted to walk. He didn't mind walking, and he thought the cool night air would be nice. Then it started to rain. It wasn't so bad at first, but when it really starting coming down Ricky pulled his jacket up over his head and started to run. He almost slipped and fell on his ass while turning the corner from Westgate onto Gardenia. Quick reflexes saved him from going down hard on the wet cement. 

He cut across the empty parking lot of the old Pearl's Grocery, but stopped in his tracks as something caught his eye. At the edge of the parking lot closest to the street there was a lighted phone booth. Ricky thought it strange; he remembered a phone booth being there back when he was a kid, but it had been taken down after the ubiquity of cellphones had made it obsolete. Why would they put a new one up? 

He had a decision to make--continue on in the rain or try and wait it out in the shelter of the phone booth. It was an easy decision, and he made it quickly, running across the lot to the booth and ducking inside, closing the folding door to keep the rain from blowing in. He took off his soaking-wet jacket and hung it over the phone unit, spreading it out to dry. 

The rain kept coming down. Ricky started rethinking his decision to wait out the downpour in the phone booth. If anything, it was raining even harder than when he had first decided to take shelter. He was trying to make up his mind whether to wait a little while longer for the rain to stop or to just haul ass home through the rain when the phone rang. The sound was muffled because his jacket was still spread out over the phone unit, but he heard it nonetheless. It rang a second time. He grabbed his jacket down and let it fall to the floor. The phone rang again. He reached up and took the handset off the hook. He listened for a moment with the phone at his ear, but he heard nothing. 

"Hello?" he said tentatively. 

There was no response. 

"Hello?" he repeated. 

Again there was no reply. He was about to hang the phone up when a voice finally responded: 

"Hello, Ricky." 

The voice had spoken his name, and that was disturbing enough, but the way the voice sounded was what really frightened him. It was like the sound of a thousand buzzing flies coming together to make some new sound that he recognized as words. Hearing it made his head ache. 

"Cat got your tongue?" the Voice spoke. 

"Who is this?" 

"I am no one." 

Ricky waited to see if the caller would elaborate, but they didn't. 

"What the hell do you want?" Ricky asked. 

"I want you, Ricky," the Voice buzzed. 

Ricky hung up the phone, picked his jacket up from the floor and put it on. It was still quite wet, and rainwater dripped off of it to the floor. He decided that he had heard more of that voice than he cared to, and he was going home. He tried to fold the door open, but it was stuck. He leaned into it; still, it didn't budge. The phone rang behind him. He turned around and stared at it. It rang again. He picked it up and put it to his ear. 

"You will leave when I say you can leave," the Voice said calmly. 

"Listen, I don't have time for games, man. Is this some kind of joke? Are you watching me right now? Ha, ha, you got me. Now tell me how to get out of this phone booth." 

"You want to get out? Simple. But first you have to make a choice." 

That terrible insectile voice made him want to scream.