The Phone, part 2

The entire drive back was silent, as both driver and passenger were last in thought. As they pulled back into the driveway, they spotted Leslie coming out of the front door. Kati Jumped out and ran over to her. "Hey Les. Where are ya headed?" She immediately realized it was kinda a dumb question, since Leslie had her hair pulled back in a pony tail, and was dressed in her usual workout attire.

Leslie smiled. "I'm headed to the gym on campus. It's that time of the day."

Alexis was just catching up, having finished parking and getting the car settled. "Hold on, Les. We need your help with something. Sara's gone missing, and we're trying to find her. Plus, we have a puzzle for you."

"And it's a hard one" added Kati. "Seems to be a code of some kind, we just don't know what, or what the key is. And we know how you like puzzles. Get ready for one that'll be challenging and help your roommate."

"Alright," said Leslie. "Just let me go back upstairs and get changed. I'm not dressed for puzzling."

"OK," said Alexis. As Leslie started up the stairs, Alexis added "Oh, hey, can you get Heather, if she's up there? I think we should all work together on this one."

"Yeah, sure," called down Leslie.

A few minutes later, Heather came running down the stairs. She was wearing her PJs still, but her hair had been cleaned up a bit from bed-head to slightly-out-of-control. A few minutes after that, Leslie ran down to join them, now in a floral print skirt, weird tie-dye shirt, and with her long hair let back down. Most people would have just assumed she was a hippie, straight out of the 60s, but really she just dug the style.

"Alright, why don't we start from the beginning," she said. "Some of us haven't been filled in all the way, yet."

Kati and Alexis proceeded to run through everything they knew, thought they knew, and suspected about the previous evening, as well as the steps they had taken to learn it all. Finally, they presented the note and the phone to the others, and opened up the floor.

"Why the phone, though?" Leslie was obviously as stuck on this point as Kati.

"Maybe it was just a good way to ensure the note was found," said Heather.

Kati spoke up again. "Maybe, and we thought of that. But there had to be a better way of doing that, if that was all it was for. Why not give it to the bartender, or send it as a text message to one of us? Surely one of those would be an option, and would let her hang on to the phone for use today. I still think she left it as a hint to the meaning of the numbers, or a clue for us, in addition to making sure the note was found. Maybe it has the key to whatever code this is on it."

Alexis continued, "And we thought of that too, but if the key is on there, it is extremely non-obvious. Which I guess makes sense. If you put the key with the coded document, then it has to be a well hidden key. Which still leaves me wondering about the note with the hamster. What is up with that? Is that the key?"

They stopped for a moment to think about that. Finally, Heather spoke up. "She told me once that she had a pet hamster growing up. I think she said his name was George.... maybe." She paused for a moment, trying to remember. "Maybe it was Greg. Anyway, it was a G name, for sure."

Leslie picked up the phone, and started flipping through the names in it. "Huh. That is odd. She has an entry in here labeled 'Greg from childhood.' The number is 411."

"Anything else odd in the phone book?" asked Alexis.

"Well, maybe. There seems to be about 20 entries that start with a period, which puts them at the front of the list, but they are all 555 numbers," responded Leslie. She sat for a moment thinking over the consequences of this setup, when it dawned on her. "The note! Of course, she had to leave the phone because it has the key, which is the phone book. The first however many entries are the key. The numbers are in pairs because the first number gives an entry in the list, and the second a letter in that entry."

With some effort, the girls decoded the message, Alexis reading numbers, Leslie finding the entry and letter, and Kati writing them out on the whiteboard. Through their team effort, they put together a translation of the note. It said "Send help. Jack is back. Has a posse. Seems to be stalking me. Followed me to this bar after three others."

Great, thought Kati. Jack. He was always trouble, but disappeared a few months back after a run in with the cops. He used to live near here, and had always hit on Sara. She had always turned him down, but he kept trying. Finally, he seemed to get the hint that she wasn't interested. Or so it seemed. A few weeks after that, he had started following her to parties and the like, until he ran into Nick at a Kappa Phi party, and Nick shoved him through a table for something Jack had tried to do with Nick's girl. After the cops came, they tried to pick up Jack on some outstanding warrant, and Kati thought it was over. Apparently not, since he was back.

As they sat there staring at the board, Heather was the first to speak up. "Maybe we should let Nick know. I bet he wouldn't mind kicking Jack around again."

Kati frowned. "No, that won't work. He graduated in December, moved out of town. Not much he can do about it. The police might be some help, though. Jack was arrested last time he was here for something. Whatever it was, I doubt he finished his time for it."

Leslie jumped in. "But she could have gotten a message to the police. Went in to the bathroom and gave them a call, or something. If the police could help, they would be in this already. Might not hurt to give them a call and see if Jack is still wanted. One of us could call and say we thought we saw him at the bar last night."

Kati leaned back on the couch. "I don't know. I think there is more going on here then is obvious. After all, Sara wouldn't have just given up. And she tried to make sure we could get this figured out."

Silence returned to the room, as the girls tried to think of what to do next. Kati kept returning in her mind to the phone call she couldn't remember from last night. There must have been something important there, but she couldn't think of what it was. She tried to remember, and as she struggled, she started to remember only bits and pieces. She remembered Sara saying "This will be a night to remember" and "There he is again. You have to do something! Help me, Kati, please!" The words began to come back to her, starting from where the last sentence left off.

"There is nothing I can do for you, Sara. I'm way too drunk to come get you," she had said.

"You have to, Kati. Call Alexis. Call Heather. Call Leslie. Call the cops. Call McGuyver for all I care, just call someone and get me some help, Kati."

"I don't even know how I called you. Like I said, I am way too drunk. Plus I think someone put something in my drink. My head is so fuzzy right now."

"Kati, he's here. I think he sees me. He's coming this way. Look, I left you a note here. I hope you're not so drunk as to forget this call. I have to go, try and run. Just remember, Jack is here again, and he's coming after me again. I'm going to try and get to the old church on fourth, and slip into their homeless shelter. Come find me tomorrow." Then a click. Silence. She must have hung up.

Leave it to Sara to carry duct tape in her purse, and use that to plant a note and a phone.

As she focused back on the moment, she realized Leslie was speaking. "... have to search the area, see if anyone law anything last night. Any ideas where to start?"

"The church on fourth. She said she was going there on the phone last night." The others looked at her, with a look that said "why are we just hearing about this now?" Kati took a moment to collect her thoughts, and replayed the conversation she remembered for them. "I'm still trying to figure it all out. We were on the phone for an hour last night, but I don't remember any more then just the end part there. I guess whatever I had was starting to wear off. But I don't know who spiked my drink, or why. I mean, if you go to that much trouble, why not do something to me while I can't remember it? Why just let me talk on the phone for an hour? I know I don't look that bad."

"That is a good question," said Alexis. "Maybe whoever did it was working with Jack, and just needed to get your mind blanked for the night. Sara would've known that the rest of us had things to do today, and wouldn't have been up late enough. So you were her only option for help. If jack knew that too, he could have had someone make you helpless too. But I do agree, why stop there. He must have whoever did it pretty freaked to make them afraid to try something more, especially when you were that vulnerable."

Leslie jumped in. "Before we get too carried away on that, we need to check the church. Sara may have made it there." She paused a moment. "OK, Heather and I will take the church. Lexi, take Kati and go back to Emily's. Try and figure out what happened with her drink, and what happened to her on her way home. Kati, keep trying to figure out what you talked to Sara about. There had to be something more to it. While we're going to the church, we'll drop by the police station, and see if we can't get some information about Jack's criminal record."

"Sounds like a plan," said Alexis.

"OK," said Heather, as she got up and started heading up the stairs to change.

Kati got up, and started to head for the kitchen. "I'm just going to get a drink first. I need some water to clear my head a bit." She got in, grabbed a glass from the cabinet, and filled it from the tap. The bubbles in the water flowed up, reminding her of all the booze last night. The bubbles filled the cups, little white balls on a sea of amber, surrounded by white walls of plastic. Her mind caught on the bubbles, seeing them over and over, rising and bursting. As the water flowed over the edge of the cup, covering her fingers. Snapping back to the moment, she turned off the tap, set the glass down on the counter, and grabbed the towel from the oven. She wiped off her hands and the glass, then gabbed it and took a drink.

Alexis came in as she was taking her second drink. "You OK? You look a little out of it still."

"Yeah, I am. My mind was wandering, and I spilled water all over my hands. I don't know how I got so distracted."

"Let's go. I imagine that as you remember more of last night, you'll start to feel a bit less out of it. Hopefully, we'll find what happened to you last night."

Alexis headed back towards the door, and Kati turned to follow. She let her mind think back to the bits of conversation, trying to grab more threads of the discussion, but they all seemed just out of reach. No matter hew much she tried, she just could not get a good grip on the words that she and Sara had spoken the night before.

The Phone, part 1

As she passed him, he knew she was someone interesting. She strode by with confidence, looking amazingly beautiful. He thought to himself Surely this is what an angel must look like.

She barely even noticed him. That isn't to say she thought he wasn't worth the notice, but her mind was elsewhere. For all her confident stride, her mind was rarely where her body was. As she was walking, her thoughts kept returning to the previous night. Why couldn't she remember the end of it? She hadn't had that much to drink.

She remembered the party. It was a big one. Her best friend had just turned 21, so they had to celebrate in style. And celebrate they did! They had several kegs, and lots of people to share them. She remembered Emily, her best friend, starting the night off with some of the good stuff. She remembered the cops coming at about 1, giving them a warning about the noise. And she remembered deciding it was time to sleep, and leaving to go back next door to her house. But she didn't remember walking there, or getting in bed, or anything. Where did that hour go?

"Hey." A man's voice interrupted her thoughts. "You alright there? You seem kinda out of it."

"Yeah, I guess." She responded. "Just lost in thought.... Do I know you?" The guy in front of her was young, a bit scruffy, but in a rugged sort of way. Not quite the lumberjack beard, or build for that matter, but a bit rough on the jaw, and a bit ripped in the arms. She thought he looked handsome, in a way, but rough.

"No, I don't think so." He answers, looking at her with a bit of a curious expression. "I wouldn't mind changing that though. I'm Ben. I see you here everyday, but I never say anything. Today you just look like you could use a friend."

Ugh. This guy seems kinda stalkerish. "OK, no, I don't think that'll be needed today. I'm kinda on my way out of here anyway."

"Right. Well, have fun, and I hope that you figure it out, whatever you were so lost in thought about." And with that, he got back on the move, heading back the way she had come from. Weird, she thought. That guy seemed so familiar. Was he at the party last night?

She ignored it, and turned her thoughts back to where they had been. She dug back into her memories, trying to sort through the events of the previous night. It was all blurring together more and more, especially as the events got further into the past. She continued on her way. With each step, the events grew blurrier. With each person she passed, the images grew darker. She knew she wouldn't figure it out. Time to get desperate.

She dug into her purse and grabbed her phone. Checking the call log, she looked to see who she called late that night. She saw that she had called Sara around when she left, so time for another call. Pushing the button, she heard the phone ring. And again. After the third, a man's voice: "Hello."

"Hey, this is Kati. Can I talk to Sara?"

"I'm afraid she isn't available right now. Is this her phone?"

"Yeah. What kind of question is that? Who is this, anyway?"

"I'm sorry. My name is Eric, I work at The Burnt Lounge bar. We found this phone here last night. Can you tell Sara to come pick it up?"

"Sure thing. I'll let her know you have it." With that, she hung up the phone, and started trying to think of what to do next. First things first, she thought it might be a good idea to get in touch with Sara's roommates. Flipping through her contacts list, she started searching for them. She called all three, but got no answers from anyone. So, since she was heading home anyway, she decided to drop by their place.

The bus ride was uneventful, and when she got off at the stop, she started towards their house. It was a fairly nondescript house, and there wasn't anything different today then yesterday. There wasn't anything in particular about it that set her on edge, but for some reason today it felt weird. She walked up to the door, taking a look around, and gave the doorbell a ring. A few minutes later, Alexis answered. She was average height, petite, with long black curls around a light face. She was dressed in blue jeans and a tight black shirt with "Love" written across her chest in sparkly silver.

"Hey Kati, whatsup?"

"Hey Lexi. Is Sara around? I'm trying to find her, if I can."

"No, sorry Kati, I haven't seen her. I don't think she came home last night. I'm a bit worried, she isn't usually like this."

"Well, her phone is at The Burnt Lounge. I was supposed to tell her about it, but I think now I'm going to head over that way and see if I can find out what happened to her. You're right this isn't like her."

"Alright, let me grab my shoes, and we can head over there together. Hopefully we can find out what happened."

Kati followed Alexis inside, and took a seat on the couch. Alexis runs off up the stairs, and comes down a minute later in shoes. "Alright, let's get going. We can take my car."

Kati followed her out the door, looking towards the driveway. They headed for Alexis's car, an old blue Accord, and then headed downtown. When they got downtown, they started taking turns looking for The Burnt Lounge. When they found it, they pulled into the parking lot, and headed inside. Beside the doors were a couple of largetiki masks style decorations, part of the Hawaiian theme they had going here. As they headed in to the bar, Kati started to look around. She hadn't actually been in here before. There were largetiki masks on many of the walls, and there were some artistic flowers and seascapes painted on the walls. Over the bar was a fake roof, with the straw style of atiki hut. Kati thought the whole place looked kinda corny, but it worked for the style.

As they walked towards the bar, they noticed that the place was much empty. There was one guy behind the bar, and no one anywhere else on the floor. So they headed for the bar. The guy saw them come towards him, and waited patiently while they crossed the dance floor and table space. When the got there, he said hello.

"Hey" Kati responded. "I want to pick up a phone you guys found here last night. It belongs to a friend of mine, and we're trying to track her down. We're hoping the phone will help."

"Yeah, OK. Can you give a description of the phone?"

Alexis described it, including the stickers on the back, well enough for him to hand it over. Once they had it, the girls started looking through the call log for some hints. There was nothing unusual, so they decided to ask the bartender for a bit more information. Alexis waved him over. "Hey, can you tell me where in the restaurant you found this? It may help."

The bartender looked at her, not quite sure what to make of her, and finally decided. She looked trustworthy enough. "Yeah. I found it taped to the underside of one of the tables on the far side of the dance floor. I just happened to put my hand on it when I was moving the table back out there. It was that table right there." He pointed to a table near the restrooms, towards the back of the bar area.

"Thanks," said Alexis. "If you don't mind, I think we're going to go take a look."

"Sure, no problem. Just don't flip it and don't break it."

"We won't" said Kati, and they went over to the indicated table. It was just like all the other tables, so they took a look underneath. Sure enough, there was a napkin taped there too. Carefully removing it, Kati put it on the table, and they both sat down. It was a set of number couplets. 7-4, 13-11, 2-9, 18-4. They didn't know what to make of it. Alexis started playing with the phone, while Kati tried to figure out the numbers. They had to be a code of some kind, but what did they mean. There was no way to be sure.

"Hmmm, that's odd," said Alexis. "The phone is set to extra loud ringing. Sara never set it that loud, because it was too annoying. Even when she went out."

"I guess she did it when she taped it to the table. Had to figure one of us would call her today, so that would make sure someone found it when we called."

"That makes sense. But why not just call one of us? Why the napkin full of numbers and the phone taped to the table?"

"Still working on that. Maybe she couldn't call because someone would notice, so she wrote a note. But, she wanted to make sure only we would figure it out, so she put it in code. And maybe she had to leave the phone so we could decode it. Quick, see if there is anything in the notes section of the phone."

"Just one thing. It says: 'If this note is found, there is a code. If not, there is a hamster.' What on earth could that mean?"

"A hamster. Good question. Why don't we go home and see what the rest of your roomies think? I'd hate for them to miss out on all this fun."

"Right. Fun. But yeah, maybe they can help." Alexis turned to the bartender. "Thanks for the help" she shouted.

As they headed to the car, the numbers and their meanings were still bugging Kati. She thought for sure she should know what they meant. She checked her phone again. No missed calls. But something still felt off. She checked the call record for the previous night, and saw that she had been on the phone with Sara for nearly an hour that night. Why didn't she say anything then? Maybe she did, and Kati just couldn't remember. But why not? The questions just kept coming.

Sorry, no story this week

So, unfortunately I haven't been feeling too good this week, which is kinda making it difficult for me to write a good story. So instead what I'm doing is just posting a little note to say I'm not writing a story this week. I hope that this weekend I can get a little bit of free time to write a couple stories, then I can have a little backlog in case I get sick on a weekend and lose all the time that I would usually take to write my stories. Anyway, that is pretty much the short of it. Hopefully I don't have to do this again. But, I make no guarantees.

Multipart stories

When I first started this, I wanted to post only shorter stories, things that could be easily handled in a week, and would be good to read. But this past weekend, I've spent so much time on two stories that have been ongoing almost since I started this blog, and they are way to long to post in just one week. So I'm going to start allowing myself to post partial stories, which are a bit longer, with the follow ups in the week to come. Who knows, maybe I'll even past a novel that way. But some of my stories will be long enough to need more then one post, and I will make the effort to make them break at reasonable places. I think I'll target a length in between "The Warrior" and "The Escape" for most of them.

The Ice Monster

One by one, the street lights were clicking on. Jenny imagined that there was a switch and a hand in each one, connected to an eye that looked for the sun to drop too low, and made the hand flip the switch and turn on the light. Jenny had always been like that. She had loved the fantastic, and as she grew up, that stayed with her. She would invent the most amazing explanations for the mundane, and even when she knew how things worked, she would love to spin a tale of fantastic devices that did it instead.

She was walking down the street, and as she did, everyone she passed looked away. She pulled her torn jacket closer to her, trying to fight off the bitterness of the cold air, and the chill of the breeze. Her clothes were dirty, and her hair was a mess. What was left of it, anyway. It was spotty, falling out in places, showing the bald scalp. Whatever color it was supposed to be, you couldn't make it out know if you tried. Of course, that didn't matter.

Her jacket quite clearly used to be tan, but it was covered in darker brown spots of dirt, and black spots that looked like soot. There were flecks of ash, and all the colors just seemed to blend together, like camouflage on a soldier. Through the holes in the jacket, a dirty blue sweater could be seen, covered in the same mix of dirt and soot and ash, making it blend well with the jacket. Her jeans looked cleaner, but they had their holes as well, and through those, her skin showed. She was obviously in need of a bed, warm meal, and a change of clothes, not to mention a shower, but no one would give it to her. They all just looked away.

They didn't know her. They didn't even want to. She was just another thing to ignore. But before you assume she was crazy, with her fantastic world in her mind, dear reader, let me assure you she was not. She knew just as well as you or I what is real and what is not, she just had an imagination. She let it work to create the fantastic world around her as a distraction from the pain, and the cold, and the hunger, but she never mistook it for reality.

Anyway, she continued down the street, being ignored by everyone around her, and thinking about the little hands, and the eyes, and the switches in the streetlights. She hoped to one day share the fantastic things she saw in her minds eye, but she knew that day would probably never come. As I said, she knew her reality.

So she looked about for someplace just a little warmer. She had accepted that no one would take her in, no one would even pay any attention to her. But as she walked, looking for a little bit of relief from the cold, something surprising happened. She met a man, someone who didn't ignore her. Someone who said hello to her as she passed. She was still dirty and smelly, but this man said hello. She looked at him, and saw a man who stood upright, with his head held up. She wasn't sure what to make of him, but she saw that he was looking directly at her.

"You look like you could use a night away from the elements, friend." The man said to her. As he spoke, he smiled, and she thought... well, honestly she didn't know that to think.

"Yes, but where can I go? No one here but you will even talk to me, and they certainly won't take me in." Her voice was raspy, and she sounded like she was on death's doorstep.

But the man didn't care. "Follow me, friend. We have been working all week on setting up a place for people like you to rest." Her eyes lit up like torches, and she knew this was going to be a good night. "By the way, I'm Bill, and I'm from the church shelter on 5th street. I'm surprised you didn't hear about it."

"No," she said, "but I am excited. I haven't slept inside in many years, and these nights have gotten so cold lately. I can hardly believe I've survived as many of them as I have. And I'm Jenny." He turned, leading the way to this new place, and as she followed, she let her mind wander to see something wonderful. She imagined the man in bright, shining armor, standing before a monster of pure ice, which for so long had held her prisoner, freezing her blood by simply being in the same place. The ice monster gave him a look of anger, almost heated, though that was hardly a good description, as he cut the ropes that held her, and slashed at the bars of ice that imprisoned her. The monster came closer, swinging his hand back for a fantastic blow. But he would not be destroyed.

As they walked the four blocks to the new shelter, Jenny tried to find out more about this man. She had not heard anything about this church and their shelter, nor this man and his God. He answered what questions he could, and when they arrived, he showed her in to the beds. She had been on the streets so long, she imagined that she didn't remember what a bed was like. How wonderfully soft and comfortable they looked before her, not like the sidewalks she had become so accustomed to. And as she looked out across the sea of beds in this room, she saw many others in them, people she had seen on the street, but who she had never really talked to. Every one of them looked so excited, because they had a place to sleep, that wasn't cold.

As the weeks went by in the shelter, she learned more about this man and his God, and why they cared. She began to understand more of this church, and began to stop thinking of "his God" and start thinking of "The God". The church helped her to find work, and eventually she found herself a home. But she always came back to the shelter, every weekend, to tell the street children a story from the fantastic world in her mind. And when she saw Bill, she would say hello, and they would talk for a while.

I remember it like only yesterday, Jenny's first night here. And that was so many years ago. She still comes by and tells her stories, of fantastic worlds and amazing creatures, of daring heroes and heroines, of the amazing things that there are in there. And every time she tells one, the children are so excited, to hear of the worlds in her head. But I am excited too, because I know the ones she won't tell them, about the knight and the ice monster, and the king who sent her to that monster. But every now and then, she'll tell that story to a few of us who work there, and it reminds me why, when no one else cares, we do. Because of the people still out there with that ice monster.