The world is a scary place. Every day
we’re forced to make choices, no matter how small, that may be leading us along
a new path. Whether that path is heading towards something good, like a
promotion or meeting some special, or towards something bad, like an accident,
or even death, we can never know. In the end, that’s possibly the scariest
thing of all.
That’s why I need your help to guide
a character, or characters, through the possible dangers that await them
in #YourHorror, an interactive horror story that
will be shaped by the choices you make. Even I don’t know what will
happen, and I’m the writer…
From Monday to Friday, at
roughly 8pm GMT each day, there will be a new Twitter poll. These polls will ask you to choose between a number of options, each
of which may take the story in a new direction. Sometimes a decision will give
a bit more insight into the character, setting, or backstory, while other times
the decision will solely focus on driving the narrative forward.
Week 8
She awoke from her nap and squinted at the sun, now
beaming proudly from the centre of the sky. Yet again she had fallen to sleep
on the sofa, pulled into slumber by the sheer exhaustion of what had been
happening to her. Dark circles were more present around her eyes than they had
been only two days before, when her biggest problems had been the lack of an
internet connection and her desire to be the kind of person that made morning
smoothies. Neither were up-and-running yet.
After a few minutes, the memory of the phone call
that had beaten the energy from her came rushing back, like water exploding
from a cracked dam. Her eyes darted about the room, from the window to the
hallway to the window again. Could they be watching her? Had they watched her
sleeping? She could still hear the way the thing on the phone had smiled when
it taunted her.
If she stayed here, she might not be safe. She had
to leave. Now.
She leapt from the sofa and almost ran to the
bedroom, where a whirlwind of chaos and packing took place. Not that the place
had been tidy yet anyway; hell, she was yet to unpack a single box in its
entirety, but now it looked like the next sequel of Sharknado had made its way through here. Considering the budget
that the films seemed to be made with, she wouldn’t have been surprised. If
anything, it was out of their price range.
Only the essentials were worth shoving into a
rucksack right now. A few tops, a pair of jeans, underwear, toothbrush,
deodorant, her laptop, chargers. She could come back in a couple of weeks, when
she felt safe again, or maybe just send for her things if she decided that she
didn’t want to come back at all.
Her eyes swept her bedroom, which she’d barely slept
in since moving, and tried to find anything she might have missed. She spied a
box by the side of the bed and rummaged through to find one more item. It was
bright pink, ran on batteries, and was ribbed for her pleasure. Even a girl on
the run deserved to have some fun…
With that key item in her rucksack, hidden under clothes,
she pulled on her jacket, tugged on her boots – still slick with centipede
‘blood’ - and went to pick up her discarded phone from the sofa. She flinched
as she picked it up, half-expecting that raspy, teasing voice to ooze from the
speaker, but it was still dead. The phone was slipped into the darkness of her
pocket. It could be charged when she got home. Real home. She’d just have to stay with a friend, or maybe even
move back in with – shudder – her
parents. Just for a bit.
As an after-thought, she picked up her purse from
the counter. She wasn’t getting far without this, but it was strange how far
money was from your mind when you were running scared.
Time to get out of here.
She reached for the door handle, when a sensation in
her leg shocked her into freezing where she was. At first she thought it might
be the toy inside her bag.
(Well, it’s not really
the time for it, but if you insist…)
Then she realised it wasn’t anything quite as fun.
The phone in her pocket – the phone that had run out of battery and had no
right to be doing anything other than shutting the hell up – was vibrating.
Someone wanted to speak to her.
Maybe she’d turned it on when she put it in her
pocket? Sometimes phones seemed to find a minute of strength on 1% battery,
even after dying. Yeah, that’s what it was. Only one way to find out for sure.
She placed her rucksack down next to the door, ready to leave at a moment’s
notice, and pulled the phone from her pocket.
It was an unknown
number. She didn’t answer these at the best of times, let alone when her hand started
to shake at the very thought of who might be waiting on the end of the line.
Worst of all… it could be PPI claims. No, she hadn’t been an accident, and no,
they were not aware of said fictional accident.
(Unless they covered
nightmare burns*? Lucrative.) - *read Week 4!
The rational part of
her mind, no matter how shaken it was, tried to take over. It could be a friend
from home, calling from a new number; or maybe someone from the estate agents,
calling to check in on their newest renter; for all she knew, there was a
dentist appointment that she was missing back home.
Honestly, it could
be anyone, about anything. Unfortunately, based on what had happened in the
last 24 hours, it could also be a sickly-sweet stranger that enjoyed watching
her, a centipede that had dialled the numbers with its hundreds of legs, or
even her mirror-self, calling with another friendly warning.
(“Hai buddy,
whatever you do, avoid nightmares, insects and strangers, ‘kay?”)
No. She didn’t want
to know. She shouldn’t even have to
know. Not speaking to anyone was the main perk of a dead phone.
Something in her
head snapped. She’d had enough, and decided the phone could be deader still.
The phone was dropped to the floor, and she brought up her boot for the second
time in as many days. Her heel was brought down onto the screen with as much
strength as she could muster, and there was a satisfying CRACK.
The screen had split,
but the phone was still going. She did the same, stamping on the phone in a
frenzy no different to the one she’d entered when making sure that the
centipede outside her front door was truly dead. Her boot rose up and down like
a piston, stamping on the phone until it was hard to tell what the pieces had
once been. Teenagers everywhere began to cry. How would she possibly ignore
people when they tried to talk to her in person, or keep up with the
Kardashians? Blasphemy.
“Call me now,” she smirked. It was
strange how much better she felt after crushing the means to contact her.
(I should have done
this years ago.)
Feeling lighter
without the physical and emotional weight in her pocket, she turned back to the
door, picked up her rucksack and reached for the handle once more. She couldn’t
wait to leave this place.
Her shoulders
slumped, and the rucksack fell to the floor. Tears began to well in her eyes.
She could hear a
phone ringing.
The ringing wasn’t
coming from anywhere in particular now. It was all around her, and seem to come
from every direction, every room, every thought in her head. Incessant.
Never-ending. Ringing.
“Please. Please,
just stop.” She cried out. “I don’t know why you’re doing this. I don’t know
what you want. Tell me what you want.” No answer came back to her. The ringing
only continued.
She began to tear
through drawers, cupboards, anything that might be hiding another phone, and
clawed through or tipped the contents directly onto the floor. Boxes were
emptied. Pans clattered to the floor. Books, DVDs and souvenirs littered the
floor. Photo frames were smashed on impact. All the while, a phone kept
ringing, somehow distant and yet closing around her. It wouldn’t stop.
On the plus side,
she had technically unpacked.
She went back to the
hallway where her rucksack lay on the floor, and let the remaining pieces of
her phone pour between her fingers.
Shattered.
Broken.
Her back hit the
wall as she slumped down, head on her knees. Her jeans became a darker, damper
blue as she openly sobbed into them. A never-ending phone call taunted her,
daring her to give into the new world she had been dragged into.
A world of madness.
It wasn’t a call she
was ready to answer, but how long could she hold out? She was just one woman,
no-one to help her, as something she couldn’t even begin to comprehend closed
in on her from all sides. She remained in the hallway, rocking back and forth
with her arms wrapped around her legs, occasionally whispering to herself:
“Why me? Why me?”
There was never an
answer. Only the ringing of a phone that she didn’t think even existed in this
world. Someone, somewhere, wanted to speak to her. Someone, somewhere, wanted
to take away her sanity. Minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, it seemed
to be working…
