"Yell-o?" Robbie greeted lamely after he picked up his ringing phone.
He stood there with the phone close to his ear for a few seconds, hearing only silence from the other end. For a moment Robbie thought he couldn't hear because of his headset so he took it off and sat it down on his desk with a clutter. He put the phone back to his ear.
"Hellooo?" Robbie said more drawn out this time in annoyance, biting his lip and shifting from foot to foot. He was ready to hang up when he heard someone breathing on the other end. Robbie smirked ruefully to himself and shook his head in disbelief. "I can hear you breathing."
Silence for a moment then...
"How are the children?" A voice asks from the other end.
Robbie furrows his eyebrows stunned by the question's absurdity.
"Um, I think you have the wrong number, dude."
"Do I?" The man inquires almost mockingly as if he doesn't fully believe the boy's words.
"Yeah, you do. There's no kids here, man," Robbie confirms as he walks over to his window to pulls his blinds aside, looking out into the night.
The voice on the other end chuckles deeply and darkly.
"Is there anything else you wanted?"
"Yes."
"Well, what is it?"
Robbie is reaching the end of his patience and perhaps he's a little curious. He has nothing better to do anyway.
"I want your blood all over my body."
Robbie's unfazed.
"We really need to work on your dirty talk," Robbie snorts dryly.
"Don't mock me!" The voice orders firmly but it's weak at best. "I will strangle you until I feel the life leave you."
"Mmm, you make it sound soooo tempting," Robbie sighs over dramatically.
Robbie closes his blinds and plops down on his bed, sighing with irritation and a dash if boredom. He's met with heavy silence once again and he takes this moment to pull his cell phone away from his ear and check the caller id. It's restricted, of course. Typical. Robbie stares at the screen a second longer and grins widely as the situation starts to dawn on him before placing the phone back to the side of his face.
"Ooohhh. I know what's really going on," Robbie says, beginning his barrage of questions and assumptions. "This is Trevor, isn't it? Don't tell me... Kirby put you up to this, didn't she? Is this the part where you ask me what my favorite scary movie is and I retort back with some witty comment that appeals to the teenage demographic?"
Silence.
"What? No comeback? No threat to disembowel me and hang my intestines from a tree?" Robbie asks sarcastically, laughing heartily into the receiver of his cell phone. "Are you finally at a loss for words?"
"Who is this?" The stranger on the other end finally asks.
"Heh! Who's this?" Robbie retorts with an exasperated huff, finding this all so hilarious. "You called me, buddy. It's standard phone call etiquette. Either you tell me your name or I'm hangin' up."
Robbie is ready to just finally hang up on this weirdo and go back to what he was doing. Maybe edit some footage he took earlier at school, maybe surf the web, maybe look up porn and masturbate and then go to bed. That would pretty much sum up his night if it wasn't for the sudden...
"Wait!"
The urgency of the stranger's outburst shook Robbie out if his reverie. Robbie figured he could spare another minute or two, at least hear out what else this guy had to say. This was suddenly getting playfully interesting for the movie geek and he wished he could've been recording this somehow.
"This is the Johnson's residence, isn't it?"
"No, man, Mercer," Robbie corrects, lying back on his bed and tracing his fingertips in circles over his chest.
"And you're not babysitting?"
"Not unless you count virginity," Robbie huffs dryly, his humor being questionable as ever.
"Shit..." The man on the other end swears lowly. "I do have the wrong number..."
"What's your deal anyway?" Robbie asks curiously, picking at a thread on his shirt. "I mean, what's with the whole bathing-in-blood thing? And what's your fixation towards babysitters?"
"Well..." The voice trails off, genuinely at a loss for words. "It's sorta my thing, ya know?"
"What? Scaring and hacking up some dumb blonde with fake boobs?"
The stranger feels awkward now that he has messed up the plan to murder a teenage girl trying to earn a few bucks, but has instead stumbled upon some wisecracking smart ass boy who doesn't even take a serial killer seriously. What the hell was he going to do if he couldn't scare some virgin?
"Dude, I don't know how to tell you this but... I think you might be in the wrong story right now," Robbie informs the man bluntly, uncaring if this is real or not. Because, honestly, Robbie's not sure what to make of this situation.
"What do you mean?"
"Dude, where have you been for the past ten years?" Robbie asks exasperated, sitting up at the magnitude of naivety of this would-be psycho killer. "Woodsboro already has a serial killer. You're a little tardy to the party. Sure, you got the whole babysitter theme going for you but that eventually gets boring after awhile, don't you think?"
The stranger can't believe what he's hearing right now.
"Are- Are you sure?" The man inquires nervously.
"As sure as I'm a virgin," Robbie admits for the billionth time. "They made movies and everything. You know the first two were pretty good but after that they sorta went downhill. They didn't even focus on the facts anymore but, rather, made up their own stories. Which were awful! It's like they were running out of ideas. By the final one it wasn't very hard to pick out the killer."
"You seem very opinionated on the subject," the stranger observes almost as if he's interested in this chatterbox's opinions of today's rendering of horror cinema.
"Like hell I am! I happen to be the Vice President of the Cinema Club at Woodsboro High. Not to mention the star of my very own vlog."
"What the hell is a... vlog?"
"It's basically a video diary of things that go on in my everyday life. I go around and ask people questions, mostly just assholes and douchebags..." Robbie confesses with a mumble.
"It gets easier," the killer assures the teen with a hint of understanding.
There is silence once more from both sides of the conversation and neither man knows what to say or do. It's been a weird discussion and experience that Robbie nor the stranger wants to relive. Robbie's not sure if he should be scared because it all still seems like a joke or a prank and the stranger doesn't know whether to murder this kid or not. To be fair, the kid is quite oblivious. He'll let this one go. Besides, that would tarnish the stranger's MO.
Robbie can hear the faint cracking of knuckles on the other end and he can feel himself start to fidget as well. They both know the conversation is over and that this is the part where they hang up and part ways. Robbie just feels like there needs to be a proper goodbye, but there really isn't an easy way if going about it. So Robbie does what he's here for. Comic relief.
"Good luck with the whole killing babysitters and bathing in their blood gig."
"Yeah. Good luck with your... vlog thingy," the stranger replies as equally awkward.
Just as they're both about to hang up Robbie feels the need to ask one final question:
"What's your favorite scary movie?"
