Tuesday, October 30, 2007

the execution of all things

At 4:00am last night I woke up to the phone ringing. I'm not sure why but waking up to that sound really scares me.
It was a wrong number, unsurprisingly. The woman, who spoke no English, seemed put out by the little mix up (shouldn't it have been the other way around?) I hung up the phone, went back to bed and felt my heart pounding in my chest as I tried to go back to sleep. Ten sleepless minutes passed by. My heart rate was finally slowing down when the phone rang again. I didn't get up to answer it. My reasoning was the woman would hear the answering service, realize she had the wrong number and that would be that. Meanwhile, my heart pounded harder with every ring.
Fifteen minutes later the phones rang again. Part of me didn't believe it was actually happening. Why now? Why me? By the time I picked up the phone there was nothing but a dial tone.
I checked the caller history and discovered that a new person had been calling after the initial phone caller. What are the chances of that happening in the 4:00am hour? Both numbers were from Toronto and I called the second in hope of preventing a third call.
The first time I tried there was a sudden hang up. I tried again and I could hear a woman's voice when the line was answered but she doesn't hear me and she's also making no sense. I hung up, put the phone on my night table and waited for the next call in bed.
Some time shortly after 5 Am it happens.
"Please stop calling here, you have the wrong number."
There is a slight pause and woman, maybe high, says "what, what?"
"You've been calling here for almost an hour and it's the wrong number." I don't know why I don't say it as angrily as feel. Maybe it’s because I could have avoided this if I had just answered the phone the second time it rang. It's not really bad luck that's caused this, just a bad decision.
"Oh sorry," she says.
I lay awake in bed until my alarm went off less than an hour later.

Tomorrow is Halloween. I have no subtle costume ideas and no one to notice (or not) even if I did.

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