She was sitting on the edge of her seat waiting for the phone to ring. She had awoken that morning to the particular feeling that somebody was going to call. But who? She decided to sit and wait the whole day – her horoscope had said to follow her intuition no matter how foolish it seemed to be.

“What are you doing?” a voice called from across the house.

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m waiting for the phone to ring,” she replied.

“Why are you wasting your time? Can’t you think of anything better to do?”

“As a matter of a fact, I can’t.”

“So you’re just going to sit there all day?”

“I’ll do as I please.”

She sighed. Who was this voice calling out to her? As far as she knew, she was alone at home. She got up and looked down the hall. All the lights were off. No sounds of anyone breathing. No patter of feet pacing back and forth in the other room. Her room mate had deserted her months before. She had accused her of acting too weird.

“Too weird?” she asked herself aloud. “What the hell was that bitch talking about? So what if I like to lay around and do nothing all day? I think it’s my business and not hers. Fuck her. I’m all alone here now. There’s nobody to criticize me anymore. Why am I talking to myself?”

She sat back down beside the phone and decided that perhaps she should project her thoughts at the phone. Maybe she could will somebody to call her.

She laughed.

On her back now, she rolled on her stomach and began to laugh and sob into the thick shag carpet.

“Who am I fooling? Nobody’s going to call… nobody ever calls me anymore. Maybe I’m dead and I don’t know it. Maybe that’s why nobody calls, nobody visits, nobody seems to see me when I walk down the street.”

She lay a while longer pondering her lonely state into the carpet. Perhaps the mites in the fibres would understand.

“Perhaps if I never get up again – if I just lay here until I rot in a pile of my own filth. Would anyone notice me then? Or would I just be like one of those old people who dies in their homes and nobody notices for a few years… no, I’m sure somebody would complain about the stink after a while… would they though? I must have at least one friend out there. I can’t be completely alone. Nobody is ever completely alone. Maybe I should call one of those chat lines or go online to find somebody who is compatible with me. There’s got to be somebody out there for me… there must be.”

She got to her feet and brushed away the tears that were running down her face.

“Today, I’m going to do something different. I’m going to get up, get dressed and go out and see if I can find something to do, perhaps even somebody to talk to. I’m not going to just let myself die like some invalid incapable of doing anything else with my time.”

She ran down the hall to her room and switched on the light. She rooted through a pile of clothes on the floor and found herself something to wear. She put on some shoes.

She grabbed her keys and headed for the door. She could see that it was already dark outside. She opened the door carefully, in fear of some invisible force.

It was so black outside that she could see nothing at all. She stepped across the threshold of her door and there was nothing there. She fell and fell and fell.

Her voice echoed up through the void: “I guess I should have stayed in today and waited for someone to call…”

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