Page 3 of When He Calls

The line stays quiet.

I wait until the next shift comes in and then I go home.

Chapter One: Milo

The laugh lasts four seconds.

Looping, the jaw of a plastic skeleton dropping open while red LEDs flare in the sockets and the motion sensor on the base catches whatever tripped it, cat or wind or nothing at all. Four seconds. The jaw resets. The LEDs die. The sensor goes dormant. Something must have triggered it in the dark.

That was eleven minutes ago.

The tile is cold through my sweatpants. Bathroom floor. Back against the tub, knees up, hands in my lap. My hands feel fucked, look fucked. White at the fingertips, gray at the knuckles, the blood gone somewhere else, rerouted to my chest and my throat and the back of my skull where vision recedes into something older than thinking. My hands just sit there, attached but not mine.

Bean is in the doorway. Twelve pounds of wire-haired mutt sitting with her ears flat, watching me the way she does when the floor is where I end up. She doesn't come closer. She learned months ago that crowding makes it worse, so she sits just past the threshold and waits, her eyes tracking my hands for any signal that the worst part is over. She'll need to go out in an hour. She always needs to go out, because her bladder is the size of a fucking pea and she needs a bathroom break every few hours, even at two in the morning.

It’s exhausting but she’s my girl so sacrifices are made.

Including walking past Satan's Asshole, which is what I call the Halloween hellscape my neighbor has up.

Ellis installed the skeleton two days ago. The neighbor. He tested it three times while I stood behind the blinds and timed each activation. Four seconds. The jaw, the lights, the laugh. The skeleton is on the walkway, three feet from the sidewalk, which means it goes off every time I take Bean past his house, which is a lot, thanks to the pea. Two days of this so far and every pass costs more than the grounding exercises can put back together.

Eleven years of therapy, medication, exposure protocols, grounding techniques, the five-senses exercise that Dr. Maren taught me and I ran so many times I could do it in a coma. Five things I can see: bathmat, toilet base, grout that needs re-sealing, toothbrush, hands. Four things I can touch: tile, tub, kneecaps, phone.

Six years old, locked in a dark basement while my older siblings came at me with skulls and rubber spiders and red lights. Every time I screamed for help, my parents laughed through the door and told me to man up, it was just a joke. It sounds so fucking petty when I say it out loud. I know it does.

Apparently, part of initiation into manhood is being terrified and alone.

I’ve never forgiven them.

Any of them.

It wrecked me until I started therapy, and if I'm honest, it still kind of does.

My phone is in my hand, and I don’t remember grabbing it.

Dr. Maren moved to Portland in August. Referred me to a Dr. Kaplan, three-month waitlist, office across town. Haven't called. My anxiety prescription lapsed in September because renewal means an in-person appointment and the medical office put a skeleton at the reception desk last year wearing a lab coat. Sat in the parking lot for twenty minutes.

Drove home.

Bean shifts her weight in the doorway and whines. Her leash is on the hook by the front door. The walk that should have happened at midnight hasn't happened because the skeleton went off while I was getting my shoes on, the sound carrying through the front window, and my shoes are still by the door with one lace half-tied where my hands stopped working.

The skeleton outside goes off again. Same laugh. Same four seconds. The bathroom shrinks. Not the walls moving, just my vision pulling inward, everything collapsing to the size of one tile with a crack running diagonally from one corner to the center, a crack that has been there for eighteen months and never mattered until right now when it's the only thing that exists because my brain has to go somewhere and it went here, on the crack, on the grout, on anything that isn't the sound of that laugh still ringing in the bones behind my ears.

I’ve been in the bathroom for almost two hours now and Bean hasn’t piddled yet. She’s such a good girl. For a moment, I’m distracted and then the sound.

Something is triggering this fucking thing, and I need it to stop.

The phone screen is bright as I click it on. Contacts list, open, scrolling. Noor would answer. Always does. She called twice this week already, sent a care package last October (fuzzy socks, a candle that smelled like laundry, a note that said I know this month sucks, call me), and she'd pick up on the first ring at 1 a.m. without complaint. But Noor doesn't know about the basement. She knows October is hard. She doesn't know why. Calling her would mean explaining, and explaining would mean watching the word Halloween rearrange her face into something careful and soft. She'd try to hold the pity together and she'd almost manage it and the almost would be worse than if she hadn't tried.

Past Noor. Past the long list of DO NOT CONTACT family members I cut off as I got deeper into therapy, Mom and Dad included.

At the bottom of the contacts, below everyone, HARBOR CRISIS CENTER. Saved three years ago. Never dialed. Dr. Maren gave me the card and said it was for bad nights and the information went into my phone and stayed there because the card was a safety net and safety nets work best when you never need them.

The skeleton laughs again. My vision goes small. The crack in the tile disappears and comes back and disappears.

My thumb hits the number.

Two rings. Three. A voice.