Faultline & Dream prompt story

Dead Line

I must have been dreaming. Surely?

ChatGPT

When the telephone rang at midnight waking me, I once again questioned why I hadn’t got rid of my landline. At night I always put my mobile on aeroplane mode, but the only thing I can do with a home phone is pull it from the wall. And that feels a bit drastic!

Of course curiosity eventually took over when the ringing didn’t stop — in case it was important.

I picked up the receiver, letting out a small, “hello… May here”.

“Hello May here,” said the voice at the other end of the phone, pitched just at the same level as my own.

I was a bit confused with their answer. Was she joking and using ‘here’ as a surname? “What? I am May? That's me,” feeling tired and already impatient.

“What? That’s me, May.” The voice kind of echoed.

“Is this a Joke”? I was a little scared now. Who were they? Was there some kind of fault on the line?

“A joke,” … came the reply.

It was then I realised that the other person sounded exactly like ME!

Shocked, I held the receiver away from my ear and shouted, “Who are you? Just leave me alone.” Not quite sure what I was after.

The answer returned with the same manic tone, “You, leave me.”

Then I realised. They were almost an echo. Yet not repeating my words exactly, or using one I hadn’t. They didn’t add extra either.

We had a few more rounds of this. Never getting anywhere. Eventually I fell onto my bed exhausted and slept.

When I awoke, the sun streamed through the window and for a moment I forgot all about the midnight call. But as I walked to the bathroom I saw the handset still laying on the carpet where I’d dropped it, and briefly thought how weird that had been. The woman on the phone sounding just like me. Echoing back some of my own words, but arranging them to change the meaning.

I must have been dreaming. Surely?

I picked up the earpiece and listened. Silence.

Tentatively I asked, “Are you there?” All was quiet so as I replaced the handset I said to myself out loud, “dead line.”

Suddenly the bell rang followed by a bang of the brass knocker. Slowly, I walked over to the front door. Expectant. I checked the peephole to see my doppelgänger. Same straight dark hair, turned up nose, high eyebrows.

The other woman stared ahead as if she could see me through the tiny lens, and lifting a finger she pointed between my eyes and said, “you there, are dead.”

I had a dream a while ago about answering the phone and finding that the person calling was me! That was scary enough, and I don’t remember what else happened. So I wrote this little horror. I liked the idea of a kind of echo only using some of the words spoken but arranging them so they had a totally different meaning.

Written for the fault line prompt on Microcosm — although I originally started the story for the doppelgänger prompt while completing my 100k word challenge earlier in the year. However, I didn’t finish this tale in time.

[embed]The Tension Before the Rupture Microcosm — A flash fiction writing prompt — Fault Linemedium.com

Also for the Tantalizing Tales’ Dream prompt