Telephone

• Aria Richter, Grade 5
• Short Story
• 2018

Telephone
The phone rang from beside me, and a feeling of overwhelming nauseousness enveloped me. His sadistic look extinguished my ability to think straight and I could feel the sweat on my hands taunt me to answer.
The two sides of my brain were fighting for dominance over my body, neither willing to let go. Whichever one accomplishes its mission, it going to cost my sanity. My hands moved on their own, the only part of my body not succumbing to the paralysis, fear gripped my heart, provoking me more to answer, threatening to rip itself out of me.
The glossy red shell of the phone made my feet walk towards it, an unavoidable trance that won’t let me escape. Years of dreading for this moment, years of waiting, and I try to swallow the large lump growing in my throat.
The phone doesn’t stop ringing, it should’ve stopped by now. I didn’t listen to them. I spent ages waiting in this house of mine, letting it painfully scrape away at my stability. Letting it grow me old and clueless, blind and deaf. Oblivious to the chaos going on outside that door. I was too caught up in my own little problem, then to simply destroy the phone myself, then to rid of him and stop him from weaving his way into my life and house.
I couldn’t take it anymore, my hand beelines to the phone. I hesitated and put it to my ear. He brushed his fingers along my hair and whispered in my ear, “Good.”