Reverie

by Ryan La Sala

More than once, he found himself seated on the edge of his bed, her phone number glowing on his laptop screen. One morning after he woke up with his burns on fire and his sheets twisted around him, he actually called it. It wasn’t like he expected anyone to pick up, but then someone did. “Hello?” Hi would have worked, but Kane hadn’t expected anyone to answer the phone in a house he thought was empty. It wasn’t Maxine’s voice, but it was somehow familiar. Small, questioning. “Hello? It’s very early to be calling. Hello?” There was a long silence in which the static between the two phones whirred, and then the voice asked, “Maxine? Is that you?” Something clicked. Through his shock, Kane recognized the voice: Maxine’s friend. The one who talked about the eggs. The one who didn’t know Maxine was dead. “Please,” she said, and behind her voice rose a strange din, a whispering that swallowed her just before the line went dead. Through it, Kane could hear her pleading: “Please, Maxine, just come home.”

This is so haunting and sad