In between calls, he waited in his downtown apartment. When he wasn’t talking on the phone, the living space was devoid of sound. Every so often, he could hear the muffled thud of a door or the stumbling giggles and footsteps of drunk residents outside in the hallway. To Lewis, those sounds were an eerie reminder that his personal tragedy was but background noise to so many other lives. Depending on the person, he wasn’t even that. Lewis sighed, looking at the picture on the nightstand. Seeing the bright and happy faces staring back at him made the dim lighting of the bedroom so much darker. Vision growing hazy, he reached for the phone without breaking eye contact with the people in the frame. Much like how he felt, they frozen in time, immortalized on cheap office paper. For the first time he noticed that the colors bled into each other, a defect caused by either the old inkjet printer that resided in his office or the water in his eyes. Or both. Forcing himself to look away, Lewis pulled up the contact list on his phone and went to the next name on the list. Mom The Sequel. *God*, he thought. *This is going to be hard.* Lewis selected the name and hit the call button after a moment’s trepidation. As the phone played a ringback tone of Earth, Wind & Fire, he grabbed for the pack of cigarettes on the other side of the bed. It took several tries, as there were a few already-empty packs littered about. The phone call went to voicemail as he found the target of his search. >“You have reached the voice mailbox of 310-459-9360. **Allison Graham** is unavailable to take your call. Please leave a message after the tone or press pound for more options.” The following beep followed in time with the lighting of the cigarette. For a few seconds, Lewis sat in silence while taking a drag and gathering himself. “Hey Allie,” he started. An exhale of smoke lead into a sigh. “It’s Lewis. I’m sure you’ve probably heard by now and I’m sorry for not contacting you first. I’ve been going down my phonebook alphabetically. Prioritizing isn’t the most prominent skill I have, you know this.” Another drag of the cigarette. “Something happened tonight. Kris… Kristen was taken to the hospital tonight.” The words came out of his mouth as the memory flooded his vision like a wave. “We went out to see a musical.” They were in the theatre, watching a production of RENT. Her face glowed with glee as the actors on stage sang of Christmas bells, protests, and love in polyphonic harmony. “I know you’re against the whole theatre scene, but she took to it like a fish to water. You should’ve seen the look in her eyes.” Back in the nosebleed section of the theatre, Lewis and Kristen sat enraptured. As the singing crescendoed towards a chaotic climax, Kristen had slumped back into her seat suddenly. Absentmindedly, Lewis ashed his cigarette and stifled a sob. “She fell unconscious. They called an ambulance and took her to get checked out.” The ride itself was a tumultuous blur of motion. Paramedics attaching things to Kristen as she lay on the gurney. Lewis asking questions and not receiving answers. They were busy trying to help his Kris, he knew, but being in the dark was the worst part. “It was something with her heart,” he clarified to the silence of voicemail. The doctor in the waiting room came to him after an hour of pacing. She was an older woman, with lines on her face that indicated a lot of smiling. Happy lines. Those lines would not be getting any deeper. “I was able to go see her. God, it hurt. Seeing her there, but not.” He took another drag and recalled Kris in the hospital room, breaths gasping into an oxygen mask. The incessant beeping a constant percussion in his memory. “She didn’t look like she was in pain. She wasn’t awake for any of it.” “I know how much you cared for her. And so soon after Jean… I don’t know what to do. I’m so lost. I just… I don’t know.” An exhale of smoke. He sat in the hospital room in silence holding Kristen’s hand. Her small, delicate hand. Tears fell then, as they did in the apartment. Lewis felt the dam start to break. “I love you like my own mother,” he stated through ragged breaths. “You know how my parents are. I can’t… as much as it breaks my heart to say it, you’re the only thing I have left now. But you have to know.” “Please call me back when you can. My little girl… your granddaughter is dead. I’m so sorry.” Lewis quickly hung up before falling back onto the bed, breaking into tears yet again. The cigarette burnt to its end, he stared again at the picture at his nightstand. Lewis, Jean and Kris. Husband, wife and child. Husband and child. Husband.
Obligatory "all my writings are archived here" post: http://www.reddit.com/r/minusxero I've been off the ball due to the holidays and depression and deaths in the family, but I'm picking up with installments of some projects that are still ongoing and new stuff. That particular piece was a speed writing prompt. Me and a few friends met up at a coffee shop and picked a random sentence out of a newspaper. We had 45 minutes to write a story that started with that sentence. The rest of the posts at that link are responses to writing prompts thought up of by other redditors at /r/writingprompts. And because I don't want to get the thread off topic, Ctrl + V for me is: http://www.reddit.com/r/minusxero I didn't mean that to be a plug I swear.
Let's see how good their facial recognition is. Let's have Zooey Deschanel harass one and see if they attack Katy Perry.