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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Mystery
- Subject: Horror / Scary
- Published: 10/24/2017
Wrong Number
Born 1964, F, from Gordon, ACT, AustraliaThe alarm dragged Dianne out of a deep sleep, and she slapped her hand on the bedside table in an attempt to turn it off. She couldn’t for the life of her think why she would set her alarm for 3am. In her disorientation, it took a little while to realise the alarm was actually her phone ringing, and a sudden fear brought her fully awake.
“Oh God, who’s died?” She muttered as she poked the answer button. “Hello?”
The male voice on the other end of the line sounded decidedly drunk. “Hi Roxy. It’s Kevin,” he slurred. “I know it’s late and I’m sorry. I just needed to hear your voice.”
Dianne squinted at the clock. “You’ve actually got the wrong number, Kevin. But thanks for waking me up,” she added brightly. She missed the old days when you could slam a phone down. Violently thumbing the End Call button just didn’t cut it.
Shock still coursed through her system, making her heart thump and keeping sleep at bay. Deep breathing and meditation eventually put her into a relaxed state, and she felt herself drifting away.
Until the phone call jolted her awake again. Un-frigging-believable!
“What the hell?” she snapped. “Thanks for waking me up again, arsehead. I told you, you’ve got the wrong number. There is no Roxy here. Don’t call again.” She hung up, turned the phone off. This time, sleep was a long time coming.
Her real alarm woke her at 7:30am, and she sat up in bed, feeling vaguely hung-over with tiredness. She rubbed her hands over her face and pretended she was awake. Damn that idiot last night.
She turned on her phone and had a shower while waiting for it to boot up.
Thirty-six missed calls! She stared at the screen while towel-drying her hair, amazed that anyone could rack up so many calls in such a short time. Thirty-six missed calls and thirty voicemail messages. She wondered if thirty was the cut-off, or if Kevin had just grown tired of his own voice.
Curiosity won over common-sense, and she dialled into her messages while she dressed.
“Hi Roxy. It’s Kevin. Come on, honey, please pick up. I just want to talk.” Silence. Expletive. Dial tone.
“Roxy, pick up the phone, pick up the phone, PICK UP THE GODDAMN PHONE. This is ridiculous. I just want to talk, for Chrissake!”
“I don’t believe this. You better not have turned off your phone, you dirty, stinking whore. How about I come around in person, huh? Is that what you want? Is that why you’re not answering?”
And it went downhill from there. Dianne listened in horror to the escalating threats and foul language, her stomach churning with fear. Kevin was obviously a very disturbed individual, no wonder this Roxy person had left him!
A bang on the door startled her into a scream, and she fearfully peeped through a gap in the curtain to see who was there. It was just her friend, Kristy, thank goodness! The girls had a carpool arrangement and, thanks to Kevin, Dianne was running late. She ran downstairs to let her friend in.
“Sorry Kristy, I’ll just be a minute. You would not believe the morning I’ve had!” Dianne filled her friend in on current events while she made herself some toast and lathered it with butter and honey. Not a great breakfast, but better than going to work hungry.
Kristy was satisfyingly horrified. “Oh my God, Dianne! You need to talk to the police, or something.”
Dianne nodded. “I deleted all the voicemail messages, but if he calls again … I dunno. It was from a blocked number. Can the police find out who was calling if they’ve blocked the number?”
Kristy shrugged. “Still wouldn’t hurt to get some advice.”
Dianne nodded again. “I’ll wait and see if he calls again. He was pretty drunk, he probably doesn’t even remember calling.”
At work, Dianne kept nervously checking her phone. There were no further calls by lunchtime, and Dianne cautiously relaxed. By mid-afternoon, she had all but forgotten about the mysterious Kevin. The whole thing seemed vaguely dreamlike.
The phone rang just before five o’clock. Dianne answered it unthinkingly, and her blood ran cold when she heard Kevin’s voice.
“Hi Roxy. I’m coming to pick you up from work. I’ll give you a lift home, and we can … chat.”
Dianne opened her mouth, but couldn’t form any words.
“Are you there? Roxy? Look. I’m not here to mess with your life or anything. I just thought … maybe we could go out, have a nice frigging dinner or something.”
Dianne finally found her voice. It was a little croaky, but at least it worked. “Look. Kevin. I told you before. My name is Dianne, I’ve never heard of Roxy. I don’t even know any Roxies! Please stop calling me, or I’m going to call the police.” There, that should make him stop and think.
Kevin laughed in her ear, a harsh, disturbingly intimate sound. “Because it worked so well last time? Stupid STUPID bitch! You just come out here now, and …”
Dianne jabbed the End Call button and cut him off, weirdly afraid that she had upset him.
The phone rang again, and she let it go straight to voicemail. Then turned her phone off.
Kristy went with her to the police station.
A bored officer listened to the torrent of abuse on Dianne’s voicemail and shrugged his shoulders. “Sorry, miss. I don’t know what you want me to do. It’s a blocked number. Also, it’s a wrong number, so he obviously doesn’t know who you are or where you live. Just ignore it, get another number.”
Dianne felt like slapping him, but figured that jail really wasn’t the way she wanted this day to end. “Okay, so what about this Roxy person? I really think she might be in danger!”
The officer nodded. “So what would you have me do, exactly? Ring every Roxy in the country? Scan our records for every Kevin who’s ever had a DVO slapped on him?”
“Well what about DVOs taken out by a Roxy against a Kevin. There can’t be that many of them!”
The officer looked at her and shook his head. “I’m sorry, ma’am. We don’t know where in the country this happened, we don’t know when, we don’t even know if this individual actually took out a DVO.”
“Fine. Whatever. Thanks for your help.” Dianne felt close to tears as she stalked out of the station with Kristy trailing uncomfortably behind her.
They sat in the car while Dianne wept in frustration. Kristy patted her on the shoulder and tried to comfort her with inanities. “You did everything you could. There’s really nothing else you can do. I’m sure this Roxy person will be fine. Just change your number and put all of this behind you.”
Dianne wiped her face with a tissue. “I’ll call the phone company tomorrow. What a pain in the neck.” She sighed and thought for a minute. “I’m going to talk to him next time he calls,” she announced suddenly. “I might be able to get some information out of him, find out who he is, or at least where he is.”
Kristy looked at her dubiously. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
Dianne snorted. “Not in the least. But there’s a woman out there who has no idea this jerk’s gunning for her. I have to find some way to warn her, if I can.”
Typically, now that she wanted Kevin to call, her phone remained silent. Dianne wandered from room to room, not sure what to do with herself. The evening passed without a call, and she finally turned out the lights and went to bed.
The phone rang, dragging her out of a deep sleep. She fumbled for the phone, desperately trying to gather her thoughts. “Hello? Kevin, I presume.”
“Hello, darlin’. You missing me? ‘Cause I’m sure missin’ you. Got a surprise for you.” Kevin snickered drunkenly. “Guess where I am.”
“I don’t know, Kevin. Why don’t you tell me?”
“I’m outside your howowse,” he sang gently. Dianne pulled the blankets around her shoulders.
“What house are you talking about? You’re not outside my house. Where exactly are you? What address?”
Kevin laughed softly. “I’m at your address, darlin’. Sitting outside, looking at your house. I’ve brought a couple of … friends… with me.” His voice suddenly changed. “Teach you a lesson, bitch. Teach you to run away from me.”
Oh God, thought Dianne. He’s going to really hurt her. Hurt Roxy. She felt viscerally terrified for the woman. Terrified and utterly helpless.
“Look out your window, Roxseeee.”
Dianne couldn’t help it. She knew it was ridiculous, but she peeked out her window anyway.
To her absolute horror, there was a man standing in her driveway. He swung a baseball bat from one hand, held a phone to his face with the other. A utility belt was strapped to his waist, tools and blades gleamed and glinted in the moonlight. She heard his breath quicken as he spied her in the window.
Something about the way he stood, the way he moved …
Their eyes met, and the years peeled away as long buried, toxic memories swamped her mind. She suddenly had difficulty breathing.
It was twenty years ago. Dianne was nearly sixteen, Kevin Connolly was twenty-four, he was her best friend’s brother and she had a painful crush on him.
Her adolescent dreams came true when he escorted her home one summer’s evening. They took a short cut through the park, and stopped somewhere in the middle. The warm evening breeze bore the scent of roses and mown grass. He turned her towards him and cupped her face in his warm hands before gently brushing his lips over her mouth. She didn’t know whether she was going to faint or be sick.
He drew back and looked at her gravely. “You don’t look like a Dianne,” he announced. “I think you look more like a … Roxanne. Roxy!” He smiled, pleased with himself. “Do you like that name?”
Dianne thought he was joking with her, and giggled nervously. “Sure, if I was a stripper or something!”
He slapped her across the face, and leaned in. “What’s your name?”
Dianne stood frozen, pressing her cold hand soothingly against her stinging cheek. Tears of shock welled in her eyes.
“What’s your NAME?” he shouted.
Dianne’s shock turned to anger. “My name is DIANNE!” she shouted back.
Kevin punched her in the stomach and watched unemotionally as she fell to the ground and squirmed in pain, coughing and gasping for air.
He knelt down beside her. “What’s your name,” he whispered.
“Roxy,” she wheezed.
Kevin nodded, then brutally stripped her of her underwear and raped her on the stony, hard ground. Her virgin blood soaked the dry earth. Afterwards, he helped her up and solicitously brushed her off. He put her bloody underwear in his jacket pocket and grinned at her. “A memento of our first time,” he said. And kissed her gently on the forehead.
She told her parents, her parents told the police, and Kevin was taken into custody. He insisted the experience was mutually consensual, Dianne insisted she was raped. But secretly wondered … was it rape? Had she somehow given consent without realising? Had she actually said no? Fought him hard enough? Really fought him at all??
Even the police and the judge must have had their doubts. Instead of rape, Kevin was charged with statutory rape of a minor, and received a seven-year sentence. He obsessively wrote to her from jail, sent her increasingly bizarre gifts. Pieces of handmade jewellery, a valentine’s card, a small box containing a mummified mouse on a bed of white petals. A man’s finger, whose owner forever remained a mystery.
Dianne and her family eventually moved away from the scandal and resettled in a town where no-one would point fingers and whisper.
Dianne began the long process of burying the memories in layers of alcohol, drugs, and promiscuity. By the time she went into rehab at twenty-five, she’d managed to forget why she’d started her spiral of substance abuse in the first place.
And now, somehow, he had found her again.
She watched as he swaggered up the driveway.
Listened over the phone to the sound of breaking glass downstairs. To his heavy footsteps coming up the stairs. To the bump bump bump of the baseball bat being dragged behind him.
Wrong Number(Hazel Dow)
The alarm dragged Dianne out of a deep sleep, and she slapped her hand on the bedside table in an attempt to turn it off. She couldn’t for the life of her think why she would set her alarm for 3am. In her disorientation, it took a little while to realise the alarm was actually her phone ringing, and a sudden fear brought her fully awake.
“Oh God, who’s died?” She muttered as she poked the answer button. “Hello?”
The male voice on the other end of the line sounded decidedly drunk. “Hi Roxy. It’s Kevin,” he slurred. “I know it’s late and I’m sorry. I just needed to hear your voice.”
Dianne squinted at the clock. “You’ve actually got the wrong number, Kevin. But thanks for waking me up,” she added brightly. She missed the old days when you could slam a phone down. Violently thumbing the End Call button just didn’t cut it.
Shock still coursed through her system, making her heart thump and keeping sleep at bay. Deep breathing and meditation eventually put her into a relaxed state, and she felt herself drifting away.
Until the phone call jolted her awake again. Un-frigging-believable!
“What the hell?” she snapped. “Thanks for waking me up again, arsehead. I told you, you’ve got the wrong number. There is no Roxy here. Don’t call again.” She hung up, turned the phone off. This time, sleep was a long time coming.
Her real alarm woke her at 7:30am, and she sat up in bed, feeling vaguely hung-over with tiredness. She rubbed her hands over her face and pretended she was awake. Damn that idiot last night.
She turned on her phone and had a shower while waiting for it to boot up.
Thirty-six missed calls! She stared at the screen while towel-drying her hair, amazed that anyone could rack up so many calls in such a short time. Thirty-six missed calls and thirty voicemail messages. She wondered if thirty was the cut-off, or if Kevin had just grown tired of his own voice.
Curiosity won over common-sense, and she dialled into her messages while she dressed.
“Hi Roxy. It’s Kevin. Come on, honey, please pick up. I just want to talk.” Silence. Expletive. Dial tone.
“Roxy, pick up the phone, pick up the phone, PICK UP THE GODDAMN PHONE. This is ridiculous. I just want to talk, for Chrissake!”
“I don’t believe this. You better not have turned off your phone, you dirty, stinking whore. How about I come around in person, huh? Is that what you want? Is that why you’re not answering?”
And it went downhill from there. Dianne listened in horror to the escalating threats and foul language, her stomach churning with fear. Kevin was obviously a very disturbed individual, no wonder this Roxy person had left him!
A bang on the door startled her into a scream, and she fearfully peeped through a gap in the curtain to see who was there. It was just her friend, Kristy, thank goodness! The girls had a carpool arrangement and, thanks to Kevin, Dianne was running late. She ran downstairs to let her friend in.
“Sorry Kristy, I’ll just be a minute. You would not believe the morning I’ve had!” Dianne filled her friend in on current events while she made herself some toast and lathered it with butter and honey. Not a great breakfast, but better than going to work hungry.
Kristy was satisfyingly horrified. “Oh my God, Dianne! You need to talk to the police, or something.”
Dianne nodded. “I deleted all the voicemail messages, but if he calls again … I dunno. It was from a blocked number. Can the police find out who was calling if they’ve blocked the number?”
Kristy shrugged. “Still wouldn’t hurt to get some advice.”
Dianne nodded again. “I’ll wait and see if he calls again. He was pretty drunk, he probably doesn’t even remember calling.”
At work, Dianne kept nervously checking her phone. There were no further calls by lunchtime, and Dianne cautiously relaxed. By mid-afternoon, she had all but forgotten about the mysterious Kevin. The whole thing seemed vaguely dreamlike.
The phone rang just before five o’clock. Dianne answered it unthinkingly, and her blood ran cold when she heard Kevin’s voice.
“Hi Roxy. I’m coming to pick you up from work. I’ll give you a lift home, and we can … chat.”
Dianne opened her mouth, but couldn’t form any words.
“Are you there? Roxy? Look. I’m not here to mess with your life or anything. I just thought … maybe we could go out, have a nice frigging dinner or something.”
Dianne finally found her voice. It was a little croaky, but at least it worked. “Look. Kevin. I told you before. My name is Dianne, I’ve never heard of Roxy. I don’t even know any Roxies! Please stop calling me, or I’m going to call the police.” There, that should make him stop and think.
Kevin laughed in her ear, a harsh, disturbingly intimate sound. “Because it worked so well last time? Stupid STUPID bitch! You just come out here now, and …”
Dianne jabbed the End Call button and cut him off, weirdly afraid that she had upset him.
The phone rang again, and she let it go straight to voicemail. Then turned her phone off.
Kristy went with her to the police station.
A bored officer listened to the torrent of abuse on Dianne’s voicemail and shrugged his shoulders. “Sorry, miss. I don’t know what you want me to do. It’s a blocked number. Also, it’s a wrong number, so he obviously doesn’t know who you are or where you live. Just ignore it, get another number.”
Dianne felt like slapping him, but figured that jail really wasn’t the way she wanted this day to end. “Okay, so what about this Roxy person? I really think she might be in danger!”
The officer nodded. “So what would you have me do, exactly? Ring every Roxy in the country? Scan our records for every Kevin who’s ever had a DVO slapped on him?”
“Well what about DVOs taken out by a Roxy against a Kevin. There can’t be that many of them!”
The officer looked at her and shook his head. “I’m sorry, ma’am. We don’t know where in the country this happened, we don’t know when, we don’t even know if this individual actually took out a DVO.”
“Fine. Whatever. Thanks for your help.” Dianne felt close to tears as she stalked out of the station with Kristy trailing uncomfortably behind her.
They sat in the car while Dianne wept in frustration. Kristy patted her on the shoulder and tried to comfort her with inanities. “You did everything you could. There’s really nothing else you can do. I’m sure this Roxy person will be fine. Just change your number and put all of this behind you.”
Dianne wiped her face with a tissue. “I’ll call the phone company tomorrow. What a pain in the neck.” She sighed and thought for a minute. “I’m going to talk to him next time he calls,” she announced suddenly. “I might be able to get some information out of him, find out who he is, or at least where he is.”
Kristy looked at her dubiously. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
Dianne snorted. “Not in the least. But there’s a woman out there who has no idea this jerk’s gunning for her. I have to find some way to warn her, if I can.”
Typically, now that she wanted Kevin to call, her phone remained silent. Dianne wandered from room to room, not sure what to do with herself. The evening passed without a call, and she finally turned out the lights and went to bed.
The phone rang, dragging her out of a deep sleep. She fumbled for the phone, desperately trying to gather her thoughts. “Hello? Kevin, I presume.”
“Hello, darlin’. You missing me? ‘Cause I’m sure missin’ you. Got a surprise for you.” Kevin snickered drunkenly. “Guess where I am.”
“I don’t know, Kevin. Why don’t you tell me?”
“I’m outside your howowse,” he sang gently. Dianne pulled the blankets around her shoulders.
“What house are you talking about? You’re not outside my house. Where exactly are you? What address?”
Kevin laughed softly. “I’m at your address, darlin’. Sitting outside, looking at your house. I’ve brought a couple of … friends… with me.” His voice suddenly changed. “Teach you a lesson, bitch. Teach you to run away from me.”
Oh God, thought Dianne. He’s going to really hurt her. Hurt Roxy. She felt viscerally terrified for the woman. Terrified and utterly helpless.
“Look out your window, Roxseeee.”
Dianne couldn’t help it. She knew it was ridiculous, but she peeked out her window anyway.
To her absolute horror, there was a man standing in her driveway. He swung a baseball bat from one hand, held a phone to his face with the other. A utility belt was strapped to his waist, tools and blades gleamed and glinted in the moonlight. She heard his breath quicken as he spied her in the window.
Something about the way he stood, the way he moved …
Their eyes met, and the years peeled away as long buried, toxic memories swamped her mind. She suddenly had difficulty breathing.
It was twenty years ago. Dianne was nearly sixteen, Kevin Connolly was twenty-four, he was her best friend’s brother and she had a painful crush on him.
Her adolescent dreams came true when he escorted her home one summer’s evening. They took a short cut through the park, and stopped somewhere in the middle. The warm evening breeze bore the scent of roses and mown grass. He turned her towards him and cupped her face in his warm hands before gently brushing his lips over her mouth. She didn’t know whether she was going to faint or be sick.
He drew back and looked at her gravely. “You don’t look like a Dianne,” he announced. “I think you look more like a … Roxanne. Roxy!” He smiled, pleased with himself. “Do you like that name?”
Dianne thought he was joking with her, and giggled nervously. “Sure, if I was a stripper or something!”
He slapped her across the face, and leaned in. “What’s your name?”
Dianne stood frozen, pressing her cold hand soothingly against her stinging cheek. Tears of shock welled in her eyes.
“What’s your NAME?” he shouted.
Dianne’s shock turned to anger. “My name is DIANNE!” she shouted back.
Kevin punched her in the stomach and watched unemotionally as she fell to the ground and squirmed in pain, coughing and gasping for air.
He knelt down beside her. “What’s your name,” he whispered.
“Roxy,” she wheezed.
Kevin nodded, then brutally stripped her of her underwear and raped her on the stony, hard ground. Her virgin blood soaked the dry earth. Afterwards, he helped her up and solicitously brushed her off. He put her bloody underwear in his jacket pocket and grinned at her. “A memento of our first time,” he said. And kissed her gently on the forehead.
She told her parents, her parents told the police, and Kevin was taken into custody. He insisted the experience was mutually consensual, Dianne insisted she was raped. But secretly wondered … was it rape? Had she somehow given consent without realising? Had she actually said no? Fought him hard enough? Really fought him at all??
Even the police and the judge must have had their doubts. Instead of rape, Kevin was charged with statutory rape of a minor, and received a seven-year sentence. He obsessively wrote to her from jail, sent her increasingly bizarre gifts. Pieces of handmade jewellery, a valentine’s card, a small box containing a mummified mouse on a bed of white petals. A man’s finger, whose owner forever remained a mystery.
Dianne and her family eventually moved away from the scandal and resettled in a town where no-one would point fingers and whisper.
Dianne began the long process of burying the memories in layers of alcohol, drugs, and promiscuity. By the time she went into rehab at twenty-five, she’d managed to forget why she’d started her spiral of substance abuse in the first place.
And now, somehow, he had found her again.
She watched as he swaggered up the driveway.
Listened over the phone to the sound of breaking glass downstairs. To his heavy footsteps coming up the stairs. To the bump bump bump of the baseball bat being dragged behind him.
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