The Caller

Prologue

As I peer deep within the tainted glass that lies herein, I see the darkness of a soul so bare the devil tempt it not.  I stumble backwards, my feet betraying me as a rampage of seemingly interminable questions  flicker through my mind like light bulbs turning on and off, as though a crevasse were allowing them access, allowing them the ability to lower themselves into the depths of my brain and flummox me further. But I knew better than to try answering them, for I was no unwise troglodyte.

I unwillingly crane my neck sidewards, forcing myself to take a glance at him. He lay there frozen in time, his eyes peering deep into my own, almost like he was looking through me. His cold, protruding eyes would dispirit the gallantry of a knight. The flames which burnt in the ebony black background of his pupils casted his victims to a torture far worst than that of my comprehensibility. His eyes were death itself, pure evil. My heart rang in the back of my head, as I raced up the staircase, knowing deep down in my mind that all my efforts would end up in vain.

A sharp, metallic clink echoed through the floor below, filling the house. The only thing I could take comfort in had been penetrated. I grabbed the house phone from the table it stood on. It seemed to wear the aspect of charity, a black slender angel that would save me. I took shelter under the bed, feverishly tapping at the phone. For a moment I wondered at the inevitable possibility, that fate would condemn me to a painful death in my own premise of safety. I felt my breath, heavy, leaving a trace of fear in the darkness under my bed.Then I heard it.

His footsteps patted the timber floor, its resonance shaking the ground beneath me. I clasped my mouth, trying to stay silent. Very suddenly there came back to my soul motion and sound -- the tumultuous motion of the heart, and in my ears the sound of its beating.The phone rings, breaking the silence under the bed and and I knew it was all over.

A long pause then followed. A pause, which seemed to last for eternity. A pause which meant only death would follow.‘Surprise, surprise.’ I tilted sidewards, not opening my eyes to face the cold reality that was facing me in front. I hear him fashion the syllables of my name, and I shudder, because no sound succeeded. And then my soul lapsed into a state of nothingness, as a metallic sound clinked against what I remember to be my head. Then silence, and stillness, and night were the universe.