I jumped a mile and gasped despite myself, nearly dropping the bat in my panic while I spun away to retreat backwards. My lower back collided with the counters leading to the window and sink, my eyes glued to the kitchen entrance in terror. I could almost imagine a scrawl of text dropping from the ceiling to exclaim 'Game Over!'. The phone's terrible, obnoxious cries were enough to completely still me as they echoed in the air. My eyes could not tear themselves away from the door while a frightened crowd of thoughts sprinted through my mind;

This is it! I'm so dead. Any minute they're all going to rush in here. They're going to catch me and do unspeakable things to me and I'll never see my family again and..

I was riveted to the spot as I stared at the entry. Horrid thought after horrid thought raced through my head. My heart drummed a horrendous rhythm in my ears. I should've hid, I should've just ran and said fuck it, but..

I stood.

The awful thing continued to ring and ring, yet there was never an alarm raised. The uninvited guests didn't seem to care in the slightest. The boxing continued and no footsteps were to be heard in pursuit of the phone's plea to be answered. The door never opened. It stayed shut. Blinking through the shock, I glanced at the machine. It sat undisturbed, still ringing.

I let my shoulders relax. I had to pick it up. My uninvited guests clearly couldn't hear the damn thing, otherwise one of them, if not all of them, would have stormed in to silence the racket that it was making. That had to count for something. Besides, it could've been anyone, especially my parents. My heart tightened at the thought with hope. It proved to calm me, but only a little. "It's just a phone, Jennifer." I whispered to myself. Nervously I stepped forward and maneuvered Mr. Lucky to a more convenient position in my arms so I could take the device. Grabbing it up and holding it to my ear, I waited with an anticipation so sharp it could slice me in two.

There was never a hello.

I frowned, waiting. And waiting. Only silence greeted me in return.

Anxiously glancing all around the small room, I impatiently whispered; "Hello?" It was then that I was instantly met with breathing. Heavy breathing. The hope that I had in my chest started to wither away like a flower caught in the biting cold. A new fear gripped me. My mouth had turned to ash. "H-Hello?" There was no helping the stutter in my voice.

"You seem nervous."

I blinked. Thankfully the voice had ceased its creepy as shit breathing.

Out of all the things to say, that was certainly not something I had expected. To add an extra layer of unpredictability, it most definitely was not either of my parents on the other end of the line. Nor was it my siblings or Mrs. Frankie letting me know beforehand that she would be dropping my brother and sister off. No, this person was someone I had never spoken to before. For if I ever had, surely I would remember due to the fact that his voice was so incredibly specific. Whoever he was, he was quiet; Weirdly hushed for a phone conversation. In a strange pitch between deep and not deep, his voice seemed almost charming and...Condescending..

And was I nervous? Oh, I was a Hell of a lot more than that.

"Why don't you want to talk to me?" His tone became sad, pouting.

I realized I hadn't even said anything yet outside of the traditional greeting, but what the Hell do I say? 'Oh heyy! So GLAD you called! What's up with me? Ohh nothing, just the usual. Hiding out from monstrous men. Haha! How about you?' I was truly at a loss for words. I licked my lips while staring at the door, trying to counter my dry tongue.

"I..I-I'm sorry. Do I, uh, do I know you?"

"Not yet. Would you like to?"

Not yet? The fuck does that mean? My brows furrowed to look down at the phone's base, as if to demand an explanation from the machine rather than whoever I was speaking to. "Look, there's a lot of things I would like right now, but getting to know you isn't one of them," I didn't dare raise my voice. My fingers massaged and squeezed the bat's handle to fidget. "So please, do me a favor and call back some other time."

"What if there isn't another time? What if tonight, right now, is the perfect time to? The only time to?" Something about the way he said those words..Came off really, really wrong. There wasn't necessarily anything bad in what he was saying, yet there was something shady about it; A shark swimming in clear water. An unspoken threat.. "Come onn, I'm a lot of fun once you get to know me."

This is ridiculous.

I quietly scoffed; "What, tomorrow's not good enough for you? I don't doubt you are, but you've called at a really bad time." I warned, glancing apprehensively at the entrance. How much time did I have left before one of my unwanted guests came wandering back in? The fact that they could walk in and discover me at any moment was something I was adamant in trying not to think about.

"And why is that?"

"I need to call the police."

"Oh no! What's the matter? You watch one too many scary movies? Scare yourself silly?" He sniggered rather darkly.

"No, that's not-"

"Tell me which one it was." He interrupted.

"Listen, I wasn't watching a scary movie." I hissed. My patience was wearing thin. I didn't know what the Hell this guy's problem was, but I didn't care to find out. Under less fatal circumstances I would have made my way politely through the conversation, but survival wasn't polite.

"What, you don't like scary movies?" His tone copied the way I had begun one of my previous sentences, some flavor of his own personality dipping its toe in to test the waters. Just as quickly as it had appeared, the mockery left to resume his odd nonchalance; "Everyone loves scary movies. Tell me, what's your favorite?"

Working the muscle in my jaw, eyeing the door, I debated whether or not to hang up the phone. As if he could hear the process of my internal decision-making, his voice hissed back to me, not as friendly and conversational as it had been only a second ago; "Don't you dare hang up on me. I want an answer." Jesus, guy.

"If I tell you, will you be satisfied?" And leave me the fuck alone?

"Maybe." His tone simmered.

I sighed, more than ready to end this pointless and frankly uncomfortable conversation. I turned to look away from the entry, shaking my head while I tried to come up with something to get him off of the line; "I don't know... I guess...Mean Girls?"

"That's not a scary movie." The cadence of his tone spoke of humor.

I huffed in response; "Well it's the only one I can think of right now."

"You've never seen a scary movie before?"

"As a general rule of thumb, I try not to."

"Aww. How come?"

"Because they scare the shit out of me!" I whisper-snapped. The frustration of him wanting to continue the conversation when I so clearly didn't had me nipping at the inside of my bottom lip with my teeth.

"What's so bad about that?"

ARGH! I don't have time for this weird shit! Enough was enough! My eyes fell down and my hand made the end call symbol its primary target. Before I could hang up on him though, he said something else;

"You look pretty when you're scared."

My finger froze in mid-air over the end call button. All thought was ejected from my brain. Had he just said what I think he said? Or had I just imagined that? Speech failed to leave me. It took a solid moment before I could get my mouth to work and even then my voice emerged in a breathless rasp; "Wh..What?"

"I said I bet you'd look pretty when you're scared."

My heart started to beat faster. "That's…That's not what you said."

"Wasn't it?"

The hairs on the nape of my neck rose eerily. Suddenly the kitchen didn't feel as private as it had before the call. My head made broken, stuttered glances and turns to eye the room while I cautiously faced the entrance. Had the kitchen door been cracked open this whole time? Was the room this dark before? Or had it gotten darker? Oh Christ, was someone BEHIND ME?! I whirled in place with the phone still to my ear, the moment of panic making me exhale roughly. But there was no one that I could see. No one had been behind me. Only the cabinets stared back. Seeing the emptiness should have calmed me down, but it didn't. Instead a brew of paranoia bubbled like a witch's cauldron. It was more than I could take. I turned back towards the landline.

"I-I'm hanging up."

"But you haven't heard what my favorite scary movie is,"

He raced to supply me with the information before I could refuse;

"My favorite's got to be the one where a poor, helpless little teenager is left home all alone. She hears strange noises in the night and goes to investigate, only to find that she's not as alone as she thought she was."

A coldness I had never known before engulfed my entire body.

"Ring any bells?"

His laughter rippled through the receiver an octave higher to maintain his soft volume, but nevertheless the laughing fit did its job to scare the shit out of me. My fight or flight kicked in and I slammed the phone down, officially ending the call.

My body rotated away from the sight of the door and slumped over the counter, my hand gripping the edge tightly. It was only then that I realized how hard I was breathing. What the fuck. What the fuck. What the fuck was that! Of all the nights of my life, now had to be the time to get a creepy stalkery phone call? Go shitting figure! Planting a sweaty palm flat on the island counter, I tried to let my erratic breathing run its course. That didn't just happen. I imagined that. I'm crazy. No, I'm dreaming. I have to be dreaming, this can't possibly be reality anymore. I'm dreaming. I'll wake up any moment now.

This didn't feel like a dream. This…Whatever the fuck this was, not only was it a glorified nightmare, it was so ungodly real. My brain had never had the firepower to cook up something like this before, and there was absolutely no reason why it would start now. There was no fucking way that I was actually upstairs asleep, but the mounting absurdity of the night had a special kind of desperation settling in. My logic, my reasoning, my sanity: They all wanted something to grasp, to cling to, so in the haze of my fear I nodded to myself in acceptance of the lie, nearly choking to swallow. I tried my best to calm down under the weight of the falsehood.

Yeah. That's all it is. A dream! A weird dream. I just have to wake up, that's all! Just gotta wake up.

My unsettled gaze found the sight of my right arm resting on the island. Retracting it from its place, I sent it over to my other limb to pinch and poke at the flesh of my forearm. "Wake up, wake up.." I hissed quietly. Unfortunately all the prodding served to do was make tiny, flushed spots of brief pain. The same hand shot up to slap at the side of my face. Come on! "Wake up!" In my state of denial and confusion, my ears failed to hear the opening of the kitchen door and the footsteps approaching from behind me.