Cresting the tip of the hill, the brilliant red of the phone booth sits in stark contrast to the navy of growing dusk. The town below seem solemn and ready to drift into its sleepy goodnight. Somehow the booth is lit of its own accord, not lines wiring back to the town more than a mile away and a few hundred feet down.

It’s been 9 months since moving out here into the middle of the desert, leaving behind small town suburbs of a far off land nothing lik this place. It’s been 9 months since I lost my friends, and acquired the diatribe of “you live in a time of connectivity. You can call and video call your friends whenever you want.” It’s been 9 months since I made to be alone.

Leaning against the phone booth, I look down at the town. I hate it. Not because it’s particularly bad but because it’s not home. There are a million old people. And not old like older than me, old like a gerentological case study. I am the youngest person in the whole of the town by more than two generations, and it burns against every action I take, or want to take but can’t because there’s nothing within 50 miles.

I’m alone here. Both at this booth and in this town. I have nothing. I have no one but a mom who doesn’t seem to understand that this is not a place conducive to my growth. That her aspirations and suffocating me, and have kicked the chair from beneath my feet leaving me dangling in the wind.

I’m alone here. With this phone booth. That is somehow lit in the middle of nothing surrounded by no one. My hand runs over the smooth well pointed wood grain. The glass is old and settling at the bottom of the panes, evident by the disturbance in how the carved names look when viewed. I pull open the door and hinges whine into the night and echo about the growing night.

Sprawled within are countless names. Confessions of love and promise of forever. The handle of the old black rotary even has initial carved into it “TTFN”. My fingers feel the raised plastic, no lingered jagged but rounded and smooth after all this time.

The silence is broken by the vibrance of a brass bell being battered as the phone rings. I feel my eyes go wide, my breath caught in my chest, and all the while it rings.

Minutes pass. And it rings.

Finally, the sound too grating to tolerate any longer, I pick up the receiver and press it to my ear.

“Don’t.” The voice on the other side rumbles into my ear like a thunderstorm descending into the town.

“What?” My voice seems childish by comparison.

“Don’t. Climb back down. Get into bed. And see the dawn.” The voice pauses. “Don’t.” I pause, again breathless. Before I can soeak again, the voice chimes in again. “Now that you won’t, find me tomorrow. Ta ta for now.” The phone does dead.

I hang it up and stare incredulously. What the hell was that? I pick up the phone. Nothing. What in the hell is happening? Ta ta for now? Who says that?

I trapse down the trail back to town just in time for the light of the witching out to shine and the lights to blink off. I sneak back into the back patio door of the house and tip toe into my room. I lay down staring at the ceiling, bewildered. Tomorrow I find out who on gods green earth sounds like a thunderstorm and says “Ta ta for now.”