Lucky

My plea for the Gods' favour was smiled upon. Mother rolled her eyes to the sky and mumbled words of frustration at how this Carmencita had spoilt her son for her. Gillian didn't make any particular fuss. Perhaps she liked that she got the D and her mistress didn't.

I retreated to my room, locked the door. I sat on my bed, lied down, and shut my eyes to try and rest, forget the craziness of the day. And my phone rang.

Exhaustion from putting up a mad act and fucking basically every few hours all day had set in. I wasn’t fast enough to answer the call, and just as I picked the device up off my desk where I had left it – on the other side of the room, a full three paces away (!) – it ceased. I kept it in hand and went back to the bed.

After a mere five minutes the phone vibrated in the way that signaled the arrival of a text message. After another few minutes of me just lying there not even bothering to look, another message arrived. At that I decided to check what was up.

I had a total of nine missed calls and a dozen messages. I decided I needed to investigate. Not really thinking very clearly, I ventured out of my room, went downstairs, and in plain sight of everyone who might have been down there, made myself a cup of tea (specially imported from Earth, mind you, the real thing), grabbed a few biscuits, and went back upstairs. If either of the two unhinged women in the house had turned up at that moment and asked me to fuck them I would have had no stock response other than to stare at them dumbfounded. It was as if the whole stream of events from that morning had never happened. After I arrived in my room, saw my phone light up with another message, and almost mechanically locked my door behind me, I nearly dropped my tea from the sudden realization of my recklessness.

There were two numbers I didn’t recognize among the four different people who had called me. One was a person who was already in my contacts, but who I had probably lost touch with so long ago that the memory of who they actually were was not readily accessible. The other was a completely unknown number, with four direct messages awaiting my approval. The remaining two individuals trying to reach me were none other than Carmencita Ibanez and Charlotte, a cousin of mine who lived far away. Her father had long ago fallen out with Mother, and in moving away caused regular contact to diminish almost to nothing.

There were two messages from the person whose identity I had forgotten. Apparently he was called Cedric, and he wrote me the following:

Frank, remember me? We were on a trip to visit the ruins of Polar Base on the Northern Icecap when we were kids. You got lost didn’t you? Is there a time I can call you, preferably soon?

And only two calls later, he added:

Look, it’s just that I want to know why people from the City seem to be going absolutely bonkers. It isn’t normal for people to go around fucking strangers all the time, is it? And they certainly shouldn’t look at you funny when you tell them to piss off! Come on, tell me this is some sort of weird protest movement that no one talks about. I need to know whether I’m facing political lunacy or infectious premature dementia.

Charlotte’s concerns were basically identical, only she was actually in the City herself at the time of calling. She’d left an audio message explaining herself in very volatile terms, which I deleted as soon as I got the jist of it, and a message saying only:

Fucking call me and let me know whether you’re a degenerate or not! Your mum definitely is.

Carmen’s correspondence was of equally urgent tone, though obviously on the opposite end of the conflict. She wanted my assurance that I would be present tomorrow, in advance as always, so that we could fuck each other’s brains out with impunity in whatever corridor or little abandoned room was available. I answered immediately to that one; there was no sense angering her. I promised to leave her as good as legless by the time the prof arrived for class.

The true stranger in the lot had called several times insistently every two minutes or so, for the whole time I was downstairs pretending to fuck Gillian. They’d left four bloody messages, and I couldn’t read them without accepting them, and if I did that, then the person on the other end would be notified, and probably launch another salvo. If it was in the same vein as the first two, fine. But it could always be some other crazy bitch wanting a piece of me goodness-knows-why.