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December Calls.

December was here, finally. That meant Christmas, New Years Eve, and all the family gatherings and parties the year saves up for and then exhausts in one week. Call me cliché but that was my idea of a good time, at least it was every other year. No one can be miserable in December. It holds all the cards, all the possibilities, all the celebrations we’ve been waiting for.

The 1st of December always felt like the last energy renewal to endure the four weeks of chaos leading up to the New Year, and that made me hopeful for good things if nothing else. God knows I was lacking enthusiasm lately.

I brush my teeth, mind wandering to Christmas gift shopping. My list of people to buy for was considerably smaller than last year, but I still didn’t want to leave it to the last minute. I couldn’t think of anything worse than ending up rushing about in town on Christmas Eve. Sardined together with the desperate husbands dragging toddlers around and hectic mothers that forgot their eldest’s new girlfriend was also coming round on the big day.

Placing my toothbrush back in its holder, I snap my head to the left, to the open bathroom door. I could’ve sworn the hallway light flickered. By all accounts everyone else was already in bed. I smiled to myself, wryly shaking my head. I bet I just blinked aggressively.

I walked back across the hall to my bedroom door, glancing down the long corridor. It looked as though the office door was ajar in the shadows that shrouded the end of the passage. I frowned and blinked hard as tiredness clouded my eyes. The door looked closed now. I must be really tired.

Flicking the hall light switch off, and entering my own bedroom, I closed the door and locked it behind me. I’d spooked myself unnecessarily and now I felt like a big baby trying to keep the monsters out. I didn’t love being the last one awake; it just made weird occurrences harder to write off as a justifiable noise from downstairs or someone else walking around at 1am.

Settling down into my bed I turned toward the window, comforted briefly by the moonlight casting patterns on my curtains. I closed my eyes and drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

//

I woke up with a start and sat up straight.

It felt as if an alarming clock had been ringing, but I didn’t own an alarm clock and I didn’t turn anything off when I sat up. Did I? I didn’t remember having woken up from a bad dream, but the mind is fickle. That’s probably exactly what it was.

Early morning light streamed in from the curtains. I squinted and averted my eyes over to the wall of photos I had pinned up to escape the blinding brightness. A few of the photos were missing. Quite a few actually. I looked to the floor under the display but couldn’t visibly see them there. I went to move the sheets off me to check behind the dresser, but a buzzing began. I assume it’s my phone. I run my hand through the rumpled sheets, under the pillows, I try to follow the sound but I can’t really make it out. I look down off my bed and see my phone there, vibrating, face down.

I pick it up turning it over and a scramble of numbers greets me. No caller ID. I hesitate to answer it, it’s early and I clearly don’t know the person.

Fuck it. ‘Hello?’ I answer.

‘Hi…’ The voice is timid and trails off. I don’t think I recognise it.

‘Hi?’ I question again, it’s definitely too early for nonsense.

‘It’s Alison…’ Alison? Why was my best friend’s number not coming up? She didn’t sound like her, but then again my brain was suddenly struggling to remember the last time I actually heard her voice.

‘Ali!’ I brightened up a little. ‘Your number was coming through as unknown; don’t know what’s up with that, probably my phone messing around. You okay?’ My words come out fast, and my voice sounded a little foreign to me. Tired morning voice was striking obviously. I cleared my throat.

‘How are you…feeling?’ She asked. Again her voice was small, measured, and nervous?

‘I’m fine…what’s up? It’s too early to be acting this weird.’ I half joked, face contorting into a frown.

‘I’ll come over a little later? I’ll let you sort yourself out.’

‘Okay? Sure everything’s okay?’

‘I’ll see you later.’ She responded, promptly hanging up.

I moved the phone from my ear and stared bemusedly at the screen. What on earth was that about?

I was about to click off the recent call page, when I noticed that all my last calls were random numbers too, which couldn’t be right. I scrolled through to see if any names were still attached to numbers but gave up after a brief look. No luck.

My finger was hovered over the lock switch, when I noticed the time and date. They had to be wrong. What had happened to my phone overnight? Not showing up Ali’s number, or any number actually, and now the settings seemed messed up. I sighed and turned it off to restart it. This was all I needed, Christmas approaching and my phone deciding to play up wasn’t the perfect combination, I hardly had the money to get it sorted out.

I threw off the covers, grabbing a jumper from the floor and pulling it over my head. It was chillier than it had been when I’d gone to bed. Had I actually chosen this t-shirt and shorts combination to sleep in? I must’ve been really tired. I wandered downstairs, holding my phone tightly. Hopefully someone in my house would be awake that could help me sort it out if it turned back on and was still glitching.

Padding down the wood panel stairs, I perused the photo frames hanging, as I usually did on my way down to the kitchen. The photos in the frames had changed. I wonder why my mum did that. She hadn’t replaced them in years and then she woke up this morning and decided it was time for a change? I’d ask her about it when I saw her. I was in distinctly less of them, I noted.

Actually she must have been very busy this morning, I thought as I strolled past the dining room, some of our furniture had changed. Most noticeably our large dining table; once an old oak rectangular fixture it was now white coated and circular in design. I’d wanted it changed for ages but I lost every battle about it, so I’d given up mentioning it. This alteration was definitely out of character for her. Maybe she was losing her mind with the run up to Christmas beginning and our house playing host to the whole extended family this year.

I turned into the open plan kitchen and there stood the woman I doubted the sanity of, her back to me, leaning over the sink.

‘Hey mum’ I chirped, taking a seat on a stool located round the kitchen island and placing my phone in front of me, holding down the button to turn it back on.

She practically jumped two foot in the air and spun around to look at me, a knife clutched in her hand. I raised an eyebrow at the distress on her face.

‘Good morning to you too?’ I questioned, glancing down at the little white wheel that told me my phone was turning back on, just painfully slowly.

She began to stutter over her words, knife still firmly gripped in her left hand, knuckles white. She made a move like she was going to walk towards me and then stopped. Maybe she actually had lost the plot?

‘You okay?’ I asked, half amused, half bemused. ‘Not actually going crazy for the run up to Christmas this year are you?’

‘Lily? You’re okay?’

‘Yes…are you?’ I snorted, narrowing my eyes at the little wheel still buffering on my screen. ‘Actually you’re the second person to ask me that. Alison called me acting weird this morning. Something in the air?’

‘What did she say?’

‘Who? Ali?’ I was confused. She nodded sharply, eyes darting around the room, then back to me.

‘Said she’d come over later…what the fuck are you doing?’ I asked completely baffled, and actually laughing now. I would have been concerned, but she was acting so clinically insane it was more comical than not.

In a flurry of movements, she haphazardly tossed the knife into the sink, pushed herself off the counter and threw her arms around me. Was she crying?

I awkwardly patted the back of her arm with the hand that wasn’t pinned to my side. My mum and I never hugged.

‘Jesus, what’s happened?’ I asked, trying to gently push her off me so I could check the status of my phone.

She withdrew her arms and stood staring at me with tear-pricked eyes. My eyebrows knitted together and I was about to speak when my phone lit up, telling me it was back on. Please don’t be broken, I prayed silently, as I typed my passcode in.

The home screen popped up again; no background, time and date both still wrong. Fuck.

‘Sorry to interrupt your breakdown mum, but my phone isn’t working. Everything’s malfunctioning. Look,’ I showed her the screen, scrolled through seemingly endless random numbers in recent calls and then clicked back to the home screen.

‘6:14am, 23rd January. What the hell?’ I voiced.

My mum was silent; I looked at her for a response. Viewing her face up close, I could see deep-set dark circles under her watery eyes. Since when did she look this…exhausted?

‘Mum?’ I prompted again.

‘What date do you think it is Lily?’ Her voice also sounded weird, now I heard it a second time. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, it just sounded…off? It was almost like I hadn’t heard it in a while, when realistically I’d heard it last night when she said goodnight.

I snickered, ‘Wow, seen a doctor lately mum? It’s December 2nd, and yesterday was December 1st and you know what I’m guessing tomorrow is December 3rd.’ I patted her arm patronisingly, rolling my eyes.

She was getting on my nerves; it was too early in the morning to be playing games when I was about to have to fork out hundreds for a new phone less than a month before Christmas. I was not in the mood.

Her hand covered mine gently and lowered my hand to the worktop. Her bottom lip trembled and I realised her hand was shaking too.

‘Mum?’ My own voice shook now; something was different in her demeanour. She was flushed and her eyes pained. I was taken off guard. Had someone died? Is that why she was acting so strange? Oh God, whose death could possibly affect my mother this much? I was terrified. Please not my dad. Actually, where was my dad? My mind was racing. Just say something!

‘I don’t know how to say this…’ She trailed off, looking to the ceiling, the patio doors and then back to me.

Just tell me what’s happened, I wanted to scream at her. I fidgeted in the plastic stool, thigh skin pinching. I couldn’t take the pressure, I was sweating, and my ears began to ring. A buzzing through my skull.

‘You’ve been…uh, differ-not well. I didn’t thi-well, really wh-what I mean is…your phone, it-it’s not wrong.’ Stuttering. Words tumbling. Head scrambled.



A pause.


‘It is January 23rd Lily. You’ve been gone since December.’


The ringing stopped.

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