Please leave a message.

Somebody could be in the hallway, and I need to use the

bathroom.
Please leave a message. The killer she told me about knows who I am. He called. He
knows
where I live. He has my telephone number. Please leave a message, Call me. Call me.
Call me.
aftrehedistrcssing;event of last night." Hcsaidnothing. Shcsetltcdherself back into
hrcseot andwaited.
When several long;moments hadpasscdin silence, shcsaidgaily," You'renot
drinking;up!" Heraiscdthecup
to his lips and then, just as suddenly, lowercdit. Oneof thehorriblepainted kittens
behind Umbridgehadgreot
roundblueeyecs just like Mad-Eye Moody's magical oneond it hadjust occurrcdto This
isn't a schizoid
fantasy. I'm not hallucinating. Take my word for it, Please leave a message.
Then her message tape runs out. All night, I'm awake and listening with the
refrigerator moved
halfway in front of the hall door. I need to use the bathroom but not bad enough to
risk my life.
People go down the hallway, but nobody stops. Nobody touched my doorknob all night.
The
phone just rings and rings, and I have to answer it in case it's the caseworker,
but it's never her.
It's just the regular parade of human misery, Pregnant unweds. Chronic sufferers.
Substance
abusers. They have to dash off their confessions pretty fast before I hang up. I
have to keep the
line free. Every phone call I get fills me with joy and terror since this could be
the caseowrker or
the killer. Approach or avoidance. Positive and negative reinforcement for
answering the phone.
In the middle of my panic, Fertility calls to say,"Hi, me again.I've been thinking
about you all
week. I wanted to ask if it's against the rules for us to meet. I'd really like to
meet you." Still
listening for footsteps, expecting a shadow to fall across the crack of light under
the hallway
door, I'm lifting the window shade to see if anyone's on the fire escape. I ask
her, what about
her friend? Wasn't she supposed to meet him again today? "Oh, him," Fertility says.
"Yes, I
saw him today." And? "He smells like women's perfume and hair spray," Fertility
says. "I don't
see what my brother ever saw in him." The perfume and hair spray were from spraying
the
roses, but I can't tell her that. "The other thing is he had chipped red nail
polish on his fingernails."
It was red spray paint from me touching up the roses. "And he's a terrible dancer."
Right now,
me getting killed would be redundant. "And his teeth are weird, not rotten, but
crooked and
little." You could stab a knife right through my heart and you'd be too late. "And
he has these
gross little monkey hands." Right now, getting killed would be a breath of spring.
"That's
supposed to mean he has a little wiener dick." If Fertility keeps talking, my
caseworker will
have one less client in the morning. "And he's not obese," Fertility says,"he's not
a whale,
but he's too fat for me." In case there's a sniper outside, I open the blinds and
stand my
gross obese body in the window. Please, anybody with a rifle and a scope. Shoot me
right
throat. "I called because I want to get you off. Tell me what you want me to do.
Make me do
something terrible." Opportunity knocks. Here's the next part of my big plan. This
is something
I'll go to Hell for, but I tell her, That guy you don't like, I want to go screw
his brains out
and then tell me what it was like. She says, "No way. No day." Then I'm hanging up.
She says,
"Wait. What if I call you and lie? I could just make the whole thing up. You
wouldn't know." No,
I say, I'd know. I could tell. "No way am I going to sleep with that geek." What if
she just viceed
him? Fertility says, "No." What if she just took him out on a date? They could just
go out for
the afternoon. Get him out of the mortuary and he might look better. Take him on a
picnic. Do
Fertility says, "Then will you get together with me?" Definitely. The sun wakes me
up
where I'm crouched next to the stove with a butcher knife in my fist. The way I
feel, the
idea of getting killed isn't so bad. My back hurts. My eyes feel cut open with a
razor. I get
dressed, and I go to work. I sit in the back of the bus so no one can sit behind me
with a
Knife, a poison dart, a piano- wire garrote. At the house where I work, the
regular caseworker'
s car is in the driveway. On the lawn are some normal red-looking birds walking
around in the
grass. The sky is blue-colored the way you'd expect. (Dutch:- Niets lijkt
buitengewoon. In de
huis, de caseworker is op handen en voeten om de keukentegel met bleekwater en
ammoniak te
schrobben sterk het maakt de lucht om haar been golvend van gifstoffen die tranen
in mijn ogen