She walks past it again and again, promising that next time, she’s going to ring up his number and leave a message. From a number they can’t trace. Where were you last night, he’ll say. At home, she’ll lie, hoping for your call. She circles round again. Anonymous. Shadowed. Waiting.
10 comments:
Of course it isn't just a phone box, she knows that. It's really a transporter and when she shuts the door it will whisk her away across the world to somewhere hot and exotic. Only thing is she isn't quite ready to go yet. One day though, she promises herself.
Truman found a scribble on a scrap of paper in a phonebox. Not one of those tits and ass adverts, but a bus-ticket-tear someone had left behind. A number and a name. Truman kept the paper folded into his wallet, and invented calls he could make to someone called Julianne.
A call from a phone-box, the operator said. Somewhere up Middleton. Only he keeps ringing. Saying the same thing over and over. And he knows who I am. ‘Sarah,’ he says. ‘There’s mud on your shoe and only three days to go.’ He speaks truth, but how does he know?
Ta-ta-ta-taaa-tarrah!
I think there should have been a wee fanfare for that last 50 word flash of mine... cos it was my fiftieth here on your site, Sarah.
Thanks for continuing to let me play.
D
The telephone box had absorbed many a poisonous call from a mistress. It had heard the pleas, the sobs, the blackmailing, felt the hopeless backs sliding down the inside of its glass walls, the receiver swinging, a product of shattered dreams. Tonight, the box of poison burned in her pocket.
Congratulations, Douglas! Aren't you organised? I don't even keep mine. Perhaps one day, I will search for them.
Thanks Kathryn. I do the 50 words off-line... so I can do the word count without having to run my finger under every word. So doing them in a word file, it is then easy to just chuck them into a folder in one corner of my computer. I'd like to think I was organised... but not really... and I know I've done fifty cos that's how many documents it tells me is in my folder.
btw, I love in your piece 'the hopeless backs sliding down the inside of its glass walls'... I've seen that happening in a phone box... years and years back, before they smelled of pee and used condoms.
Here's to the next fifty!
D
It kept on ringing. The phone on the corner of our street. No one was there to answer it, so I did. And it was for me. That was strange. ‘Is that you, Steve?’ That's what she said. Then, ‘Bastard,’ and ‘I’ll bloody kill you.’ Then the line went dead.
There were pictures stuck on one wall of the phonebox. Girls with few clothes on and looking at him. Numbers to call underneath. And the word ‘sex’ in big letters. Or ‘suck’ or ‘blow’ or ‘lick’. And one picture there that he recognised - not calling herself daughter or Emily anymore.
Ta-ta-ta-ra-ra-ra-tata-ra for Douglas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (That's 50 exclamation marks btw!)
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