The Dead Don't Speak | Open Novella Contest 2020 | ✔

Chapter 7: The Koreans

The girl next to me spoke a language I didn't know into the blue prison payphone, talking in an animated fashion to whoever she'd left behind upon being incarcerated. Despite my lingering near her, she only had eyes for her conversation, something I was grateful for. The last thing I needed was an icy glare thrown in my direction paired with an order to scram. It would've been an annoying inconvenience and rather effective at tearing the plan Liz and I had come up with during breakfast to pieces.

Well, plan... it wasn't much of a plan. Breakfast had mostly been Liz whispering to me about meeting up after our classes to check if the Koreans were in the TV room as we suspected. So I stood leaned against the payphone wall while waiting for her, the calling girl on my right side, the ghost of a jogger with a slit throat on my left, too close to me for comfort and sending shivers down my spine.

Liz was running late and it frustrated me to no end. I wasn't sure how long I could keep pretending I was waiting for my turn on the phone before an officer would come around to tell me I should move along and try again some other time. That would've meant walking away, and then Liz might miss me, and that meant losing precious time as well as getting an earful at dinner.

Anxiety consumed me and I had to jam my hands into the small pockets of my sweatpants to avoid plucking at my bandages and ruining them. The calling girl's voice became an unbearable background noise and my vision blurred with each second I spent staring straight ahead, trying to shut the world out.

What if Liz's Ouija Board theory wouldn't even get us anywhere? I'd known the dead for a long time and I knew they didn't often speak. So why would they start speaking now? For all we knew, the path we'd taken would lead to a cruel dead end.

For a brief moment, I wanted to give up on it all. I wanted to feel calm and okay and leave the counselor's ghost be and hope he would just leave me alone too if I kept my head down. And if the ghost wanted to eat my soul or shatter my body to a million tiny pieces anyway, why shouldn't I just let him? Maybe becoming a silent spirit for all eternity was better than living in constant fear with no escape in sight for eleven long months.

It would be the dirty, easy way out. I'd always loved the dirty, easy way out. Why not take it again?

The girl on the phone stopped talking. To my relief, she hung up the phone and I watched her go. I threw myself at the phone almost greedily and considered making an actual call instead of merely playing pretend. It had been weeks since I'd heard my parents' voices. Things were just so complicated. Our last conversations after I'd been arrested and imprisoned had been strained, short, difficult. I'd seen my parents' disappointment at what I'd done radiating off of them, could feel it reverberating through my bones, and the guilt ate me alive. I hated how the pained undertone in their words could get to me, so I chose to walk away from it altogether. 

I hadn't called once.

And still, in that moment, with my nerves acting up so much I saw black spots dancing before my eyes, I contemplated calling, anyway. Maybe to ask Dad if he still baked pies every Saturday, or to inquire about the capoeira classes Mom had signed herself up for on impulse, or for no particular reason other than the desire to hear a familiar voice. I stared at the numbered buttons as if the phone would start dialling my parents' number of its own accord and hesitated.

"Sorry I'm late. I ran into the doctor on my way here."

The tightness in my throat loosened, leaving only the bitter aftertaste of a mild panic attack. I startled out of my thoughts and whipped my head around in Liz' direction. My saviour. Though her voice wasn't particularly pleasant to listen to, grating, even, it still brought me some comfort.