Random Number Hotline

By Joshua Stoll

There are places, individuals and objects in this world which should never see the light of day.

Secrets which should never be uncovered.

Creatures that should not exist.

People who should not not be allowed to live.

RANDOM NUMBER HOTLINE contains ten twisted short stories about them and the horrific consequences of their discoveries.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joshua Stoll
• Release date: Apr 11, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463204559

Joshua Stoll

Joshua Stoll is the author of several short stories, and is currently working on a new novel. He lives in New South Wales, Australia, and drinks a concerning amount of coffee on a daily basis.

Book preview

Random

Number

Hotline

JOSHUA STOLL

In memory of Jody

Copyright © Joshua Stoll 2015-2018

All rights reserved.

Cover design by Joshua Stoll

www.joshuastoll.wordpress.com

Contents

Acknowledgements

Break

Harvester

Shed

Contraband

Farmers

Anomaly

Stowaways

Mind Games

Rehabilitation

Random Number Hotline

Acknowledgements

Thanks to my friends and family for your kind feedback and words of encouragement during the writing of these stories, despite the grim subject matter. You are the reason I kept at it for all these months. These are for you.

Break

I never dreamed I would break an object as beautiful or valuable as my parents' bird sculpture. Glowing rivulets of opals, rubies and other precious stones followed its curves. It was only about the size of my closed fist. The craftsmanship involved in its creation was beyond anything I could have imagined. The thing must have taken someone years to make, at least.

The bird sat alone in my parents' house, dusty and forgotten, much like the house itself. Until the day I stumbled upon the damned thing. After I found it, events transpired which I couldn't hope to ever explain. Now, as I lay in a hospital bed on the brink of death, I tried to piece together the memories which remained. Everything began when I arrived at my parents' house to collect the last of their furniture. Since their disappearance several months ago, they left me everything in their will. I ended up selling most of their possessions to pay the bills. Their souvenirs were the first to go. Tiny bottles of liquor from Mexico, a Japanese logic puzzle, a tribal mask from South Africa, and many other oddities. Although it hurt to get rid of them, I had no choice. The memories they held were too painful. And the money helped too.

Their furniture went next, to clean out the house for resale. I removed it all by myself, room by room, and returned another day when I worked up the nerve to set foot into the house again. It took weeks, but during my last visit to the old place, I headed upstairs to my parents' bedroom, the last room which needed clearing. The hinges creaked as I pushed the door open and flicked on the light switch. It looked like someone had already emptied the room out at some point. Little remained inside, no beds, no seats, nothing. Confused, I stepped inside. Even when my parents were still around, I never went into their room. To stand here for the first time felt surreal, like I just trespassed on sacred ground. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something strange.

A lone cabinet, about my height, built from dark oak and covered with dust sat in the far corner. A lone wooden guardian in the dimly lit room. I moved over for a closer look. When I opened it, I saw the cabinet held nothing apart from a single object sitting alone on the middle shelf. A tiny ceramic bird, coated in a thin layer of dust, much like the shelf itself. The lines of jewels embedded in its form seemed to glow even through the grime and lack of light. Its eyes were two of the most beautiful rubies I had ever seen, shimmering like red water. Intrigued, I plucked the bird from the shelf and wiped it clean. Why wasn't this with the rest of their souvenirs? My parents never showed me this one. They must have bought it on a more recent trip, perhaps before they disappeared. But that didn't explain why it got its own shelf in their empty bedroom. I inspected the bird, turning it over in my hands and gazed at the jewels. The rubies, diamonds and the rest of the jewels were all real, one hundred percent. I could only imagine how much this must have cost my parents, and how much I could resell it for. This thing alone had to be worth more than my car.

On further examination, I noticed the bottom of the sculpture seemed scratched up. Random lines of ceramic were carved out by a sharp, thin tool. I realized the scratches formed a single word, crude, but legible. At first I thought it may have been the signature of its creator, maybe a country of origin. But when I read the word it only served to confuse me further.

BREAK

What is that supposed to mean? I had scarcely finished the thought before I lifted the bird high above my head with both hands and threw it to the floor as hard as I could.

The sculpture disintegrated before my eyes, shattered into nothing. Its ruby eyes bounced away across the floorboards, the light in them fading to black. Even the other jewels in the bird seemed to lose their luminance the moment the bird exploded. I didn't even realize what had happened until after I threw it. What the hell have I done? I stood there, dumbfounded. It wasn't like me to just destroy property, especially something as beautiful as this.

I heard a strange rustling sound in my ears, like leaves on a sidewalk, but I shook my head and the sound disappeared. Among the powder and fragments lay a small slip of paper, rolled tight. I dropped to my knees, brushed the ceramic dust off and picked it up. The paper looked ancient, like it would fall apart in my hands at the slightest touch. But it held together as I unrolled it with care and found another message, written in neat and methodical handwriting.

GARDEN

Were these directions? They must have been, because before I knew it I stood outside before my parents' old flower bed, filled with foliage of every color I could imagine. I dropped to the grass and scooped out handful after handful of dirt and tossed it away. I stared through the mud and continued my task. Another odd sound invaded my thoughts, but I waved a hand around my head and it stopped. Must have been a bee or something. I plunged my hand up to the elbow into the garden and rummaged around until I pulled up a small metal box. It was about the size of a Rubik's Cube. The box had been blue in a previous life, now brown with the old paint peeling off in strips. I moved fast with little input from my brain, flung open the box and extracted its contents. Yet another rolled slip of paper and a pencil, sharpened to a fine point. Now more than a little frightened, I unrolled the paper and read its contents.

GO TO THE STREET

This time, I thought about my actions before my body chose to carry them out on their own, as they seemed to earlier. Something was inside my head, an unwelcome guest, altering my thoughts. So I threw the note back into the box. No, I'm not going to do this anymore. This isn't right. As soon as the defiant thought crossed my mind, the intruder knew my intentions and decided to fight back. The pencil in my other hand lashed out, stabbing my other arm twice in the blink of an eye. I screamed and dropped the bloody pencil. The two holes it left leaked blood through my fingers despite my efforts to stem the flow. But the intruder wasn't finished. It forced my hand to the ground, away from my injury, and picked up the pencil again. My other hand reached back into the box and scooped the paper back out. I watched in shock as I wrote a message to myself on the blank side of the paper, with no way to stop myself. When the pencil dropped to the ground again, I read the new message and whimpered.

YOU ARE MINE. GO TO THE STREET NOW

My mind said no, but the other voice ignored my pleas. It forced me to my feet and along the lawn towards the road running alongside the house. My wounds left a trail of red droplets behind me as I ran. I continued over the gutter and out into the middle of the street, coming to a stop on the center line. My new master gave me another message, this time whispering a horrible static syllable right into my ear. I sobbed when I heard the order.

DIG

I stretched out my fingers and started to scratch away at the surface of the road, the same way I had with the flower bed. Except this time the pain was unimaginable. Little progress was made through the bitumen as I scraped the skin off my fingers, right down to the bone. Soon enough, my hands were gone, worn away. I screamed the entire time, but nobody would hear me, no matter how loud I cried. My parents' house stood alone on this street, with no neighbors to speak of, in an isolated part of town. I continued to claw at the road, becoming weaker and weaker with every passing second. A single, final thought crossed my mind before I passed out, the insistent static scream filling my senses.

KEEP DIGGING

I woke up in hospital hours later, on heavy painkillers with my arms wrapped up in thick layers of gauze.