Sincerely, Red

Chapter Nineteen

"Was that your phone?" Claire asked. "Didn't we give it in to the police? What if someone threatens you? What if-"

"Claire," David said quietly. "Calm down. It's just a text."

"Yeah," I agreed. "They're probably even monitoring whatever gets sent and received. Nothing worse is going to happen to us."

"But what if-"

"Claire," David interjected again. "Let's find out what it is first. There's no point in panicking before we even know what's going on."

"But-"

"Liv, could you check the phone please?" he asked. "I'll take your mum to the kitchen and get her something to drink. Maybe she'll calm down a bit if she gets away from this part of the house. I mean, it is pretty full of bad memories."

I nodded. "She likes fizzy water. There's some in the top left cupboard, I think."

"Okay," he said. "I'll get that."

Nodding again, I started to make my way back over to the sofa.

Claire's panic echoed in my head with each step I took. Now that I was alone in this part of the house, everything seemed to be that much scarier. The wind snarled at me from outside and a cloud covered the sun, making everything momentarily dark. Even the weather was against this text.

My breathing was ragged and my footfalls were loud in the empty room. My lungs constricted airflow and I had a lump in my throat, which was aching painfully. As usual, my hands were red and shaking. If I dug my nails into the skin, it became paler and then faded out.

I didn't know why I was so scared.

This was just a phone and there'd been more terrifying situations than this. The phone couldn't jump out at me or twist its hands into twin fists. It couldn't wrap around my neck and stop the oxygen coming in and the carbon dioxide going out. It couldn't even speak and etch little moments of fear into my brain.

No. It couldn't do any of that, but it still scared me.

In the end, I made it to the phone in seven steps exactly. That number seemed to stick in my head and significantly change the path my thoughts had taken. They distracted me enough to pick up the phone and switch it on.

It took me a while to enter the password and then I accidentally found myself looking at a calendar.

There are seven days in a week, I thought.

Ignoring that, I got back to the background which was made up of a cartoon rainbow, with an annoying smiley face.

I almost smiled. There are seven colours in a rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.

I touched the text messages icon and the fear made my brain ache. All of my thoughts became increasingly muddled. I felt like I was going backwards, instead of making progress with life in general and moving forwards.

Violet means the future to some people. It's a spiritual colour, I remembered reading. It helps those who seek the meaning of life.

I didn't know what life meant.

Right now, it was just a mixture of thoughts, which occasionally crossed paths and interconnected. Life wasn't exactly describable, because it was constantly adapting and changing. The only reason it did that was to fit our mindsets and capability in different situations. Life was untameable, uncontrollable, beautiful and devastatingly shattering. It contradicted itself on so many levels that it was almost impossible to keep up.