by John Moralee
“I just thought I’d tell you, since we’re probably going to die in here. Suffocate or something. Anyway, I’m glad I told you. You don’t know what it’s like to love someone you know is not interested. Why do you think I chose the same course as yours? I guess I was hoping I could somehow convert you off boys.” Hailey looked away. Her shoulders trembled. Alison could see her reflection was crying. She still could not believe it.
“But you went out with Tom and Mike and Gareth?”
“For my parents,” Hailey said. “I was really seeing Jenny.”
Blonde, blue-eyed Jenny? Jenny with the big boobs all guys found mesmerising? She was a lesbian as well? This new layer to Alison’s best friend’s secret life was a revelation almost dwarfing their predicament. To be trapped in a living phone box with a lesbian. Twilight Zone time. Suddenly the distance between them was uncomfortable. “Look, I admire your honesty.” She gently put her hands on Hailey’s shoulders. “I have no problems with you being a lesbian, and I hope we can stay friends after this is over, but right now we have to figure out a way to get the hell out of here while we are still breathing. So you’ve got to hold up.”
“Right. S’okay.” Hailey sniffled tears. “God, just promise me you won’t tell my parents about me, will you?”
“I promise. If we survive this everything that happened today should be forgotten.”
“BUT IT’S GOING TO KILL US!”
“Hailey, you have to calm down. If we panic this creature will win even faster because we’ll use the air up quicker.”
“Air quicker ...”
“Have you anything in your handbag we could use to make a hole in this thing?”
“My cigarette lighter.”
Hailey flicked on her lighter and pressed the flame against the door. The glass started blackening. Alison urged it to burn the creature, force it to open its mouth. The orange and blue jet licked the glass. It was accompanied by the smell of burning bacon. A vibration passed through the box.
It was feeling pain.
Yes, feel pain you evil SOB.
And the glass buckled outwards, stretching like cling film. Hailey chased it - but the glass formed an elongated tunnel to get away from the flame. Soon Hailey’s arm was fully stretched beyond the original limit of the box. Alison hoped the lighter would burn a hole and the creature’s skin would burst like a balloon. Hailey’s face was set with grim determination, a wildness born of fear and hate.
“Nearly got the evil -”
Away from the flame, the glass was moving towards Hailey’s arm.
“Pull your hand back -”
“What?”
Alison grabbed Hailey’s clothes and yanked her backwards - just as the glass closed on her arm. “Hey! Hey! It’s got me!”
The transparent flesh had Hailey’s arm in its vice-like grip. Without oxygen the lighter died in her hand. Now it had Hailey where it wanted. Alison pulled her friend, trying to loosen the hold. She could see the creature applying pressure to Hailey’s arm, hear the bones cracking and juices bursting out. Hailey screamed and thrashed about, while the phone box crushed her arm at its leisure. Now her arm looked like a strawberry swizzle-stick, a tube of blood, all too visible in the glassy substance.
“No! Please! Nonononononononon ...”
A wet thunk separated her arm from her shoulder. Arterial spray showered up and down and sideways as she collapsed into Alison’s arms, warm blood soaked her clothes. Hailey was in shock in seconds, unconscious. The square of ground was awash in her blood. Alison removed her own jacket and tied the sleeve around the injury in her best attempt at a tourniquet - but in a couple of minutes Hailey died. When someone was dead, Alison realised, it didn’t matter what their sexuality was, they were dead. Alison curled up beside her, afraid to move. Hailey’s eyes were open, staring sightlessly.
The phone box sounded as if it was swallowing her arm. Alison could see the red mulch spreading out, the thin crimson lines like a spider’s web. The web expanded from the main source of pulped tissue until all sides of the box had fed, then the web faded as Hailey’s arm became part of the thing. The glass popped back into shape. The phone box was a phone box again. The bloody lighter fell at Alison’s feet, rejected by the digestive process.
After seeing the creature’s morphing skill at work, she had little doubt that it could have killed them both within seconds of the trap closing, but for some reason it had chosen to keep them waiting. Only Hailey’s attack had provoked it into acting.
“What’s the reason?” she muttered. “Don’t you like to eat in daylight?”
That could be it. If it started eating in daylight its camouflage could not conceal its activities for long. It was a nocturnal eater. Maybe that was just part of the explanation. Perhaps it liked to eat its victims slowly? Maybe it could not eat a whole person in one go? If its normal diet consisted of smaller creatures - squirrels, mice, cats - a human would be a week’s worth, a binge. And now it had two of them, it probably did not know what to do. It was obviously not very intelligent, and she hoped that would give her breathing space to devise an escape route. Even here, in the middle of a suburban ghost town, someone would come along eventually. She prayed. Right now the creature was probably wondering if it should kill her as well as Hailey.
Alison did not want to provoke it into action, but she picked up the lighter. There was still some fluid inside. It could come in use later, if there was a later. She felt in Hailey’s pocket for her cigarettes. Alison wasn’t much of a smoker, a strictly social smoker, but now seemed a good time to change her habits. The nicotine would calm her down, help her calm down. She smoked a cigarette, then pressed the butt against the phone box, hearing a satisfying sizzle.
“How does that feel?”
The phone box stayed silent.
An hour passed. No one walked down Theaston Avenue. The box was as hot as hell, and Hailey’s body began to smell. The air was foetid. Just when she thought no one even lived on the street, she saw an old man. He was walking a little terrier.
She banged her fists on the glass, shouted and waved. The old man looked at her, shook his head and walked straight past as if nothing had happened.
Light bled from the sky.
At six o’clock it was dark. The real phone box was lit from the inside, but the fake box stayed in darkness. Alison could hear it shifting in the shadows, but could not see what it was doing. There was hardly any oxygen left in the air, and she was feeling sleepy. Then a car’s headlights illuminated the box for a moment and she went crazy trying to attract the driver’s attention. Fumbling the lighter, Alison set fire to her friend. But the flame died, starved of oxygen. She saw the thing absorbing Hailey, coating her in a slime. The car swept by and disappeared, leaving Alison alone again with the phone box. The box was losing its shape, becoming something rounder and ill-defined. The roof lowered inexorably. The walls closed in. Suddenly the phone cord snaked around her neck, lifting her bodily off the ground. The receiver closed over her mouth, wet and cloying, like the kiss of an old relative.
Eeeeeeeeee.
In the morning, there were three phone boxes in a line.
AFTERWORD
Dear Kindle Reader,
I hope you enjoyed this book.
Thank you.
John Moralee © 2012
