Welcome to Gaia! ::

It had been a mistake coming to the hospital, he thought. Austin had only gone along with it as the realization dawned that Bill Murray's summer home not only most likely wasn't in Canada, but also that he was pretty sure George had been taken down in the early days of the infection, was long dead and forgotten by most. He certainly hadn't been living in the university district for the past month.

And he hadn't been wearing a jersey.

So the promise of skinny dipping with Victoria's Secret models was gone, as was even the simple hope of a full stomach and a soft bed to sleep in, for just one night. A fresh change of clothes, ones without holes and thin spots, maybe a washing machine --

But the hospital was, in a word, creepy. These buildings weren't exactly appealing in the most auspicious of times, and now that they were empty, it was something straight out of a horror movie.

When the phones started ringing, Austin became even more aware of that fact. In fact, he thought that he might even have seen this horror movie. So at first, he refused to answer: closing his eyes and meandering his way carefully through empty rooms, crowbar at hand just in case something came out from around a corner, prepared to take a chunk out of him. He entered nowhere backwards, kept his mouth shut and his footfalls soft, shoulders tight against the inevitable jumpscare that happened in these kinds of situations.

But they kept ringing, the sound going form a distant jangling to something closer and more angry, a rough scream in his ear every time one of the receivers rattled on its base. In the reception room, he picked the thing up to just to quiet it, a faint voice following as he retreated into the office. There he sat in the battered and bloodstained chair, staring at the machine as it rattled and blared, demanding his attention. It left his head aching, a rising panic creeping up through him, and the urge to smash another phone was damned near overwhelming.

Instead, all at once he answered, and for a moment, he heard nothing but silence: a clicking, statick-y nothing on the other end. Then, a clear and cultured voice, familiar enough to put goosebumps on his arm, came through.

"Austin, is that you?" Maybe Harvard sounded just a bit frantic. "You have to come back! That monster is --"

It cut out and he stumbled up to stand, sudden and frantic, drawing in a slow breath between his teeth. One step out of the room, and the next one started up instead, a scream that went through his head. Again, he resisted, moving from room to room, unwilling to pick up now. The sound rising to a fury that beat at his eardrums and caused a dull ache behind his eyes, until it was so loud he could think of nothing else and could resist no longer.

He gave up. He answered, phone after phone, voice after voice filling his ears, machines rattling wildly. Liam, Corey, Cecil, even Hitsu, weeping and pleading with him. Five calls turned to ten, left him a little numb, a little lost, staring vacantly into space, and when the eleventh called, he sank slowly down to sit and simply gave up.

Apparently, that was all he needed to do: succumb to some helplessness, shuddery and unhappy, head in his hands. This time, when he stared at the phone, he would slowly come to realize several things.

It wasn't actually rattling in its cradle, not really.
None of the lights were on.
It wasn't even plugged in.

And like that, at last, the ringing stopped, like a switch triggered, and Austin was left alone, shaking, in the silence.

(+10 infection)