“I’m so sorry, pardon me,” Lorraine whisper-hushed a frenzied apology to scowling, shadow-cast faces while wriggling her way out of the premiere.

“You’ll have to excuse me, I need to get through,” her voice, matted thick with exaustion, was scarcely heard over the silence-slicing clang of her phone’s ringetone. It shot up into the air like a noxious gas and lingered, trailing behind her in nasuseating, trumpeting, waves of booming nasal brass as Lorraine squirmed out of the matchbox theatre. The rotting smell of popcorn and sour fountain drinks clogged her nose, the flashing lights slicked her with a sheen of delirious sweat. With a choked little gasp, Lorraine pushed open the exit doors and dialed. A tumor-like tremor was gnawing and nibbling Lorraine’s insides; she could only feel the chilly prickle of the hazy sunset fog creeping upon her shoulders.

“What happened? Are you hurt, are you okay?” Lorraine spilled out a slew of concerns.

“Lor, What are you talking about? I thought you told me not to call you?” The phone answered, frowning in obvious confusion.

“Matt, you called me. Did you butt-dial me or something?” Lorraine dug her feet into the gravel and exhaled a sigh. The sunset’s glare reflected not a shred of beauty onto the pools of exaust and dingy groundwater. Sunsets in Rookstown were always plain gray.

“Hello? Lor?” The voice squeaked out a tad frantically.

“Oh, i’m sorry, I got lost in thought.” Lorraine’s

reply melted warmly onto the gravel, her words cascading in a sonorous chime.

“Yeah, sounds like you, haha.” The voice croaked like a stuttering pelican.

Lorraine dug around in her jacket-pocket for a ciarette like a hungry badger. It was tattered and thin, the white sleeves stained a light brown from a mishap at a first-date long ago. She had not been the clumsy, absentminded one to spill a forty-eight dollar plate of filet mignon on a beautiful young lady’s fresh, arctic-white jacket.

Lorraine still adored the jacket, regardless of the spill. It was the most elegant thing she would ever own, so naturally she wore it every day. The color reminded her of his eyes.

“Oh, I thought you would’ve said the opposite,” Lorraine knitted her brows in confusion, tugging ever-so-slightly at the sleeve of her jacket.

“Hm. Guess we’re both out of it today.” The voice rang back, hacking out a gob of phlegm before responding smooth as varnish. (the waxy, toxic kind)

“I guess so. Anyways, I guess I’d better head in if this wasn’t anything,” Lorraine flared up her lighter and took a puff on a cigarette she had managed to scour from the bedraggled depths of her belly-button lint-smelling jacket pocket.

A static-swilled pause filled the air.

“I’m so proud of you!” The voice wavered uneasily, it seemed to be shuffling it’s feet in a nervousness that whorled up through the phone and breezed Lorraine’s face.

“Em, What do you mean?”

“Well, uh, it’s the premiere of your movie? Are you that much of a perfectionist, Lor?” The voice sagged with thick, viscous insecurity,

“Lor? Lorraine?” The voice trembled and shook, shivering and pitter-pattering like a frightened heartbeat.

Lorraine bent down and snubbed out her

cigarette on the gravel. She pulled the folds of her jacket to her chest and rocked back and forth slowly, sucking in a slow gasp of air. Cradling her arms close, sprawled and sunken on the gravel, Lorraine’s response tiptoed out in a mouse’s voice: “What’s the secret nickname you had for me when we were kids?”

“Haha! How am I supposed to remember that!” A firecracker of wild, hyena-like shrieks erupted from the chuckling phone screen.

Lorraine could feel the sun skulking lower into the sky, the icy dimness of night setting like coarse powder upon her face. The uncomfortable realization stirred within Lorraine that she had never heard him laugh like that.

“ Because you and I have them tatooed?” Lorraine spun a lie quickly.

“ I was obviously joking, Lor” The voice snarled, as if it was being spit from a mouth gaurded with harpoon-sharp teeth.

An eerie quietness fell upon the line for a brief moment, except for the frantic scuffle-shuffling of feet that darted with such a frantic searching quickness that Lorraine almost believed he was trying to find something. The voice returned after a brief intermission, however, it was not properly armed with an answer to Lorraine’s question.

So, I should probably leave you to get back to your movie,”

“It’s not my movie. It’s Cyndia Crawford’s movie. From our middle school. We joked about it yesterday.” Lorraine spat at the phone, kicking her heels into the gravel.

“How’s old Cyndia doing!” The voice rang out with an unusually cheery edge.

“She died last month.”

“Oh yeah, I remember hearing that. Tragedy.” It slunk back to the slug-like stupor of trembling grimness—yet the subtle accent of snarling viciousness was still lightly detectable.

“ I was kidding.” Lorraine was fed up. She picked up the butt of her cigarette from the dingy gravel and tossed it into the road.

That’s so morbid, Lor!”

Lorraine glanced at the jacket as a car’s headlights whirred by on the road. The sleeve was skunk-striped with an ashy clump of cigarette dust. She exhaled a sigh.

“Who are you?” Lorraine dazedly spoke into the phone.

“Your roomate and best friend Matthias Runk, of course?” The supposed voice of Matthias Runk replied back, in a snippy tone that frothed with snarling viciousness.

Lorraine exploded as the sun slipped into the night’s clamping hands.

“I’m NOT a perfectionist, I didn’t even know you until three years ago, i’m a journalist for christ sakes, WHO ARE YOU! What kind of joke is this!”

The line crackled to a stop, and all Lorraine recieved in response was the soft beep-beep-beep of the call’s severed ending.