I know I've been teasing this new story for a while, due to be published in an anthology on Halloween. Since I'm such a tease, I'll let you guys in on a little sneak peek of "Hotline Bling." If you like it, buy the book when it comes out, for the rest of this story and a lot more by a few other great authors!
“I just…I don’t know what to do anymore,” the man on the other end of the phone said. The tears no doubt pouring down his face did a great job of making him damn near incoherent. “There’s no reason for me to keep going, is there?”
“There’s always a reason to keep going, Frank,” Alex said into his receiver, bored. He stirred his spaghetti, careful not to burn it this time. He checked on the chili cooking on the next burner over. It was as close to actual cooking as he’d go. Threeway for one. He grinned in excitement.
“You say that,” Frank cried. “You say that because you don’t know. How could you? You don’t know anything about what I’ve been through!”
Alex resisted the sigh ready to come out. He closed his eyes tight and pursed his lips. If all you’re going to do is argue with me, why the fuck did you call me in the first place, you stupid twat, he thought. When he first volunteered to help out with the suicide prevention hotline, he thought he’d be doing some good. He had a cell phone dedicated to nothing but answering the second it rang. The calls were forwarded to him from the main office. He liked it at first. That emotional “thank you so much” he often received at the end of each call made it so worthwhile.
But he’d grown tired. There was something to be said about a lot of the people that called him--they didn’t want to kill themselves. They were just being dramatic. It was the equivalent to parents of newborns holding their child in the air, telling them they were going to drop them. They did for a split second before quickly catching them, and they shared a great laugh. Those were the callers Alex often received. They said they were going to kill themselves, they swore they were going to do it, but more often than not, the threat was nothing more than a ploy. Only instead of the entertainment the newborns received, the caller only got the attention they wanted in the first place.
It occurred to him Frank was still talking. He stifled a yawn and stirred his spaghetti. It was nearly finished.
“Buddy, I know I don’t know your situation. But no matter how dire, ending your life isn’t the answer. Think of your family, your friends, all the people you’ll be leaving behind. It’s almost selfish to-”
“Selfish? Selfish?!” And the man went on for a while about how little his family cared about him. His mother shunned him in favor of his brother and sister, both of whom were loads more successful than himself. His father didn’t care to have a relationship with him after he’d divorced his mother. He supposed his half-brothers were much more interesting than him, thus absorbing all of their shared father’s attention. Girls rejected his advances often, and the few friends he had were only there for him when convenient for them.
Alex listened to all of this with a smile, if only because the spaghetti was finished. He slurped a piece of pasta from the end of the forked spatula. Perfect, he thought, turning the burner off. He held the phone between his ear and his shoulder, carefully grabbing the pot’s handles and carrying it toward the strainer in the sink.
“God!” Frank screamed on the other end of the line. It’d come from nowhere. He was merely mumbling about how much his family hated him one second, screaming into the phone the next. It was so sudden, however, that Alex’s arms jerked forward reflexively. Boiled water and hot spaghetti flew over the edge of the pot. He tilted it back to save his dinner, causing a bit of the water to pour down his front, burning his stomach and falling at his feet.
“Fuck!” Alex screamed back. He dropped the pot in the sink and set his phone on the counter. He tore his shirt off and wiped at his stomach with a wad of paper towels, doing the same to his feet. The spots the water had touched were quickly turning bright red. That was going to hurt for a few days.
The guy was still screaming through the receiver. He was partly bitching at Alex for scaring him and using such horrible language, partly still whining about how little his family liked him. Alex took a deep breath and picked the phone back up.
“All right, I’m back,” he said calmly. “Sorry about that. Now listen-”
“I’m going to do it!” he screamed again. Alex wondered where the man lived that he would so blatantly and carelessly scream his intentions of suicide. “I’m going to fucking do it! You don’t care, my family doesn’t care, nobody cares!”
“Okay,” Alex said. “Do it.”
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