Jimmy

Chapter 1

It'd been a week since Marie had left [name] in charge of the cottage, and every day, they woke up to fields of endless green and red, with only the occasional grasshopper or snail crawling at the windows. It was peaceful, gorgeous, and lonely.

[name] had already perused every magazine and label in the house, and as this was only Marie's summer home — which came as a shock to many of her friends upon the discovery that people had homes for different seasons — she hadn't left it laden with books or other reading material, aside from daily newspapers delivered to the cobbled doorstep.

Another minor issue with the cottage was the lack of accessibility to the town, as it was a little ways away from Barfleur, north of the historic Utah landing beach from D-Day, when most of the war had settled (with the exclusions of Japan and the United States, obviously). Naturally, boredom struck [name] most days, but it wasn't simple. Instead, it was suffocating.

So, their daily routine consisted of a fifty-two minute walk to Barfleur to entertain themselves, atempt to find some sort of friendship, an often failed task, and get groceries, although that was a once-a-week activity. Then, they'd come home, walk around, eat dinner, lay across the couch and scroll on their phone — because rich people have excellent WiFi, even when in the middle of nowhere, thank you, Marie — as they waited to become tired. Then, wait for the landline to go off. Answer. Listen. Go to bed.

It was all painfully dull. [name] missed talking to someone other than themselves, and they almost missed the loudness of the city.

The absence of noise pollution, though, was appreciated in the day, as the sounds of waves or wind were often accompanied by the molten gold of sunlight or the cerulean sky... but at night, it stretched along into a stifling sepulchral silence, and the landline often rang until it fell off its hook, the phone convulsing on the floor as though possessed. When [name] went to answer it, they'd instead be met with the sounds of heavy breathing or the ocean, as though they'd held up a seashell to their ear instead of the phone.

It was one of those nights when the silence wrapped around the area in a way that felt more like a mausoleum than a home, and like clockwork, the phone rang. [name], clutching their mobile phone like a lifeline, leapt from their perch beside the end table the landline sat on top of, immediately answering and pressing their ear to the speaker, eyes squeezed shut as they tried to isolate the sound of the person on the other line.

The sound of crackling static and soft breaths against the other side's speaker was all that was audible, but it sounded less threatening, instead resembling a person's curiosity, as though they didn't realise that they were on a call with somebody. A little jolt of static electricity shot through their arm, and when [name] dropped the phone, the line went silent, like the other person had realised they weren't alone. Yet again, the line cut, and the most interesting part of [name]'s day was over. They trudged over to their room, which was just Marie and her husband's room, but with a change in bedding and a lot of extra blankets, flopping onto the bed.

Their night consisted of tossing and turning, feeling like something was deeply wrong, like the cottage's very bones were formed incorrectly and filled with something spectral as opposed to marrow. They were being observed. They knew it in their very soul — if souls even existed. The idea of it made [name] feel a noxious sense of revulsion spreading through their very body. If they slept, they knew the space behind their eyelids would be filled with nightmares and horrifying pictures.

When they next blinked, they were blinking the bleariness of rest from their eyes, apparently having fallen into a shallow, restless sleep sometime between their panic and now. That reassuring, golden warmth that they had grown used to illuminated the room, pushing the darkness into the corners where nobody would look, pushing the anxiety into the corners of [name]'s mind.

But that wasn't all that the sun brought forth. It also exposed nearly imperceptible fingerprints pressed against the glass, like someone had been peering in and watching them sleep (and panic over a phone, had their mysterious watcher in the night stayed there for longer than their period of rest). Standing up and grabbing one of Marie's fancy knives from the kitchen on their way out, they patrolled the perimeter like a military guardsman expecting an attack.

But nobody was there, so they wiped the fingerprints away, ran back inside, and locked the door, attempting to scrub the image from their mind under the spray of scalding water. [name] shrieked as the water turned from a temperature akin to the depths of hell to a dip in the arctic, like a spiteful roommate had turned on all of the hot taps in the house, leaving [name] with a freezing shower. But there was no roommate, and there was nobody there to use all the hot water. It was just them, alone, in a foreign country.

Trying to make the most of what was left of the shower, they scrubbed themselves clean, wrapping themselves up in a clean t-shirt and shorts. When they exited the bathroom, their feet padding across carpets and hardwood as opposed to mosaic tiling, they were met with another eerie sight. All of the appliances switched on, the throw pillows reorganised, and the drawers opened, ransacked, yet nothing was missing.

Peeking around every corner, clutching that same fancy knife they had grown a close, very one-sided relationship with in their paranoia, [name] tried to tidy up the house, although they were far too on edge to make any real effort in the moment.

They didn't rest later that evening, once again forced into their perch beside the landline, waiting for the nightly call of the static stranger, the house still a complete mess. Like an owl clinging to a branch, [name] gripped the arm of the sofa, nails digging uncomfortably into the upholstery. Their pupils contracted into pinpricks as their eyes locked onto the phone like it was the reincarnation of the devil.

But this ritual was a nightly torment they always partook in.

When the phone rang, [name] answered. It was a relationship that was unfortunately the demise of their sanity, as they were now constantly on edge, waiting for their stranger to call or press their hands up against the windows.

The landline finally rang, the noise sounding otherworldly, like one of the classic landlines from before they became digitised. Snatching it up once more, [name] pressed their ear against the speaker, trying to make out the words that were finally being spoken. Then, the static cleared, and the voice finally spoke.

"Pardon me for the ameche, and I'm terribly sorry for the mess I've made of your home." A man spoke on the other end, his voice a sound from another era, sounding closer to a detective from an old noir film as opposed to a man of modern life, forgetting to enunciate his 'r's or dropping them completely. He wasn't from 2026, that was for sure.

"My name is Michael, but most people just call me Mikey. Apologies again. Have an excellent evening."

A/N: Again, give me feedback. I like listening to people's ideas. I live for the people. I liked this chapter. If there's any spelling or grammar mistakes no there isn't shush.