number five last night a friend rushed me out of the house to catch the opening act at a local bars music night after a few drinks I realized my phone wasn't in my pocket I checked the table we were sitting at at the bar the bathrooms and after no luck I used my friends phone to call mine after two rings someone answered gave out a low raspy giggle and hung up they didn't answer again I eventually gave it up as a lost cause and headed home I found my phone laying on my nightstand right where I left it number four when I was a kid I was always the last kid to get picked up by the bus driver to go to school one day I was waiting for the bus by myself and a bus with no kids pulled up the bus driver smiled and told me to hop on I just had a bad feeling I said where are the other kids he said we will go get them now just get on he got more and more pushy but didn't do anything crazy I just kept saying no when he shrugged and left the real bus pulled up a few minutes later I went to school and my parents didn't know one so I mentioned it that night looking back they were pretty worried I remember them scrambling to make a few phone calls number three a few years back I rented an apartment from a friend of mine he had recently bought it and had it completely renovated he put it up for sale but couldn't find a buyer so I offered to rented in the meantime after moving in I realized there was something wrong with the lady next door she was about 45 but looked much older she would sit up all night listening to Christian radio shows and talking loudly to someone it got to the point where I couldn't sleep so I went over to her place and asked her to keep it down she opened the door and I got a quick peek her walls all had crosses painted on them in different colors and words like Jesus and angels scribbled everywhere the windows were painted black letting no light in at all it was damp yellow stained fifty-year-old carpets dog [ __ ] and cockroaches everywhere no dog though I asked her to please keep it down she just looked at me and shut the door then she turned up the radio even louder the next night I had my girlfriend staying over I wake up in the middle of the night and see a shadow of a person next to the bed looking at us sleeping I think I'm hallucinating as I usually do in the dark when I'm sleepy but then the shadow starts talking it's my neighbor and she's holding something in her hand she broke in during the night and who knows how long she stood there you should lock your doors at night she says and walks out the next morning I hear someone making strange noises below my bedroom window it's my neighbor talking to herself in tongue she has a plastic bag in her hand with her rotting dead dog inside it's hot as hell outside and I can smell death from that bag at this point I'm scared shitless she's obviously very insane I go upstairs and knock on another person door and asked him what the hell's going on the guy's as scared as me apparently she broke into his apartment one evening as well while he was watching TV with his kids he got up from the couch to get a snack only to find her behind the couch staring at him holding a power drill come to think about it now I know what was in her hand at this stage I'm basically [ __ ] myself I called the cops and they know all about her apparently she's a violent schizophrenic and she hasn't taken her meds but they can't force her or enter her apartment without her permission because she owns it the only thing that can do is get her when she goes outside I sit up for the next two days waiting for her to run out of cigarettes when I hear her leave at 2:00 a. m. to go across the road to the 7-eleven I call the cops they have three cars in a special van over in less than two minutes they restrain her and throw her in the van and drive off to some institution and in less than a minute it's like she was never there I never see her again still have nightmares about her looking at me in my sleep number two I was about 15 minutes from finishing the night shift at work when there was a massive crash on one of the windows in the office so I get up and go check it out someone has thrown quite a sizable rock through one of the windows on the front of the building this is made especially weird because I'm working in the industrial district at 11:30 at night with none of the other businesses open I go back to my desk put a quick call through to security to let them know and decide to head home as I'm leaving the building I'm freaking myself out about it more and more and end up running to my car getting in and taking off I'm almost home and I've started to calm down a bit when I realized that I didn't unlock my car when I got in it had been unlocked the whole time I do a quick check with my hand in the back seat for any possible murderers that might be hanging around there but there's nothing there fast forward about 30 minutes I've called a friend of mine who says he's out drinking so I decide I'm going to join him I jump on my bicycle and started riding over I'm doodling along the road on my bike it's a nice night and I'm in no big rush just enjoying the moonlight when I hear someone riding behind me I straighten up and stick to one side of the road he passes me really slowly and when he's right beside me he shoots me a smile and I can describe it as purely in scene I kind of flinch and I'm taken aback as he rides on that's when I realize he's riding my mom's bike needless to say I sprint the hell home when I get there sure enough her bike is missing and one of my car's doors is open the back left one I was driving and had no need to open that door number one I worked at a campground on night shift 12 a.
m. to 8:00 a. m.
every night it wasn't bad I would bring in my ps2 and game a good portion of the night only having to deal with one or two people on busy nights it was just me in this little 8 foot by 8 foot shack with nothing around but dark all night my first week there the other third shift guy who was quitting told me about this pay phone a few feet from the shack where I worked he said it rang every night at 4:17 a. m. just once it was probably just an automated test call he guessed he's never answered it himself I go for a few months with the job it was the middle of the summer so most nights I had the windows closed so I couldn't hear the pay phone go off mid August I started leaving the windows open during the night sure enough that 4:17 a.
m.
