This story can be found in my book of short horror stories "Book of Shadows"
End Of The Line
It was a night pretty much the same as all the others he had experienced over the last few weeks. Ever since the car accident that had left him with a leg with so many smashed bones in it, that he would not be going anywhere for the next few months. He had grown desperate for company. All of his friends would visit now and again, not staying long as they had other things to do, more important things. Of course he had his mum downstairs, if he ever got that desperate. The physiotherapist came to see him twice a week to advise him on exercises he was now to undertake to help strengthen his leg muscles and stop them wasting away. Christ, just to have a civilised conversation, he thought to himself. Just to chat about the world outside, what’s going on in the news, anything. Suddenly his phone started to ring and he reached over to pick it up. As he placed the reciever to his ear he thought he could hear someone crying.“Hello”, he said softly.The sound of the crying,no it was more like sobbing, continued. He thought it might be one of his mates messing around, as they did, and he was going to shout down the phone but something stopped him. The crying sounded so pitiful that he believed it to be real and not a hoax. Then he heard a voice, so soft and low that at first he thought he had imagined it, then the voice spoke again, louder this time.“I am sorry to trouble you, but i think i have the wrong number”, the girls voice said.“Don’t worry about it”, he told her, “Are you ok? You sound upset”.There was a brief pause and then she said, “I’m just feeling low at the moment, that’s all”.“Do you want to talk about it? I am a good listener”.Again the silence hung on the phone line. He thought that she was going to hang up on him, but she started to cry again and in between sobs she began to tell him that she got like this quite alot. Something bad had happened to her, not that she elaborated on this, and whenever she thought about it, she felt really bad about herself and life. This time was the worst that she had ever felt and explained to him that she thought the reality of life was slipping away from her and that no matter how much she had tried to pull herself back into the real world, it seemed no longer within her grasp and there was only one way to end the pain she felt.As he listened to her talk and sob gently, the hairs on his neck rose and tears filled his eyes at the desperation that this poor girl felt and the pain she had trapped within her. Surely, she was not so alone in this world that she could tell a complete stranger all this. He asked her is she had family and she told him she lived with her mother. From what she had told him about her mother, she crowded her daughter, continuously asking about her life. The girl felt, even though her mother loved her deeply and wanted her to be happy, she could not talk to her about what she felt, she would not understand.He listened to her as she told him of ending her pain forever.“No”, he cried down the phone, “Please things can’t be that bad”.Silence was all that was heard once more and when he glanced at the clock on the night stand he realised they had been talking for two hours.“You don’t understand how things are for me”, the girl told him.“Believe me i do”, he replied.He began to tell her about the car crash and the damage to his leg which would probably mean that he would walk with a limp for the rest of his life. How the hospital staff had told him that if he had not been wearing his seat belt he would have certainly died.The depression that had clouded his life after this, whenever he had thought about playing football, walking, running, all these things seemed unreachable goals for him ever again.He had turned into a cripple. She listened to him silently, then when he was finished she asked him how he had got rid of the depression he had felt, how he had rid himself of all the bad things in his head.“They are still there. Sometimes they return with a vengance and i feel really bad about what will happen to me in life”, he told her,” But i try to tell myself that i am alive and will make the most out of life that i can”.He could hear her breathing softly on the other end of the phone.“Goodbye and thank you for being a friend”. And then she was gone.He suddenly had a bad feeling about the situation with her. He replaced the reciever then picked it up again and dialled 1471 to see if a number was available for her. He breathed a sigh of relief when it gave him a number to be able to contact her again. When prompted he pressed 3 to connect to the number. He suddenly thought to himself, he did not have the girl’s name to be able to asked for her direct.The phone was picked up at the other end.“Hi, i was just speaking to a young girl from this number and she seemed very upset, we got cut off and i wanted to make sure she was ok”.The person at the other end was quiet for a moment and he asked if everything was ok.“What did she say?” the voice of the woman asked.The question came suddenly and he told her everything. The woman began to sob at the other end of the line.“Thank you for being so nice to her”, the woman told him,”You were speaking to my daughter, Petra. There is something i think you should know. She killed herself a year ago today on her birthday, she would have been eighteen. She was a very quiet and loving child but something changed her as she got older and to this day i don’t know what that reason was and why she took her life because of it. Even though i knew there was something wrong, i begged her several times to tell me what was upsetting her, she would not. I believed we were close enough that she could tell me everything, but i was wrong and she kept it to herself, tortured herself until she could take no more.She has done this before, contacted people on the phone. In each case it is always people who have needed to talk. Whether it is because they are lonely, suicidal or mentally tortured by something bad in their life. It is like she wants to make them realise that there pain is not that bad.They said their goodbyes and tears slid silently down his face. He had been too late to save her but at least he had been her friend for a short while and had listened to her and she had helped him also.He hoped, that wherever she was now, that their conversation had been of some comfort to her.
Copyright-Diane Carsey 2009
