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 Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2025 11:27 am
Eles took the ornate brass phone with its rotary dial system off the antique end table and sat with the heavy device by his side. He semi-curled against the wall, nestled with the end table on one side and the phone on the other, as if both might protect him from being spotted by the mirrors. In truth, he knew he need only glance up and spot himself, the stranger, looking back at him from some rounded, framed looking glass.
He pulled the borrowed journal out of the front of his pants where he'd kept it safe and secret, bent back the cover and flipped through its aged pages to the doodle-turned-study of the dumpster fire outside that cafe. He could still smell the burning, rotten food wafting off the page, like he'd inadvertently drawn it into the scene.
Pulling the handset and pinning it between shoulder and ear, Eles started dialing the number as he'd written it on the dumpster. A slow, methodical, painstaking process that caused his finger to ache about halfway through, but his efforts were rewarded with a warbling ring through the still-working antique.
When the other line picked up, he cleared his throat. Tried his greeting, though it sounded unused, unpracticed, stammered.
"He-... Hello?"
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Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2025 4:07 pm
Rasheeda ringtone blaring ‘bubblegum’ on one of three surviving burner phones, (He’d bought Hayby so much Trader Joe’s orange oriental as an apology! Sometimes a phone got thrown…off of a building…a total accident, really!) and Waru was suddenly halfway up, fumbling around, tired fingers slipping over a vibrating case…
And yeah, he could’ve let it go to voicemail? Could’ve waited for the call to become a text — but after any number of days of listening while Hestia handled the optics of culti-fying his ‘art’ and Jayce kept him apprised of the socials and virals going on? He’d started answering things when he wasn’t busy. If only to listen intently while breathing into the other line…
Or talk, definitely talk.
“Hi-low—??“ groggy gruff and he was clearing his throat before trying that again. “Sorry! s**t—y’there?“ he’d heard a voice, he knew it, faint as it had been on the other end. A total stranger to him as evey person before the last had been.
More and more of the same.
Never Eion. Never anyone who’d seen him. What were his trash fires missing? Was it the accelerant? The lettering?
Didn’t matter, not until he stopped trying, and tonight would not be the night he chose to do that.
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Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2025 4:10 pm
Eles swallowed. Something about talking felt… Wrong? Like he couldn't shape the words between his teeth and tongue and lips, like they'd forgotten the dance to these phrases and each movement felt too slow and sluggish.
"I saw your fire." The words sounded garbled. Like they were fed through a machine and replicated by AI.
"It said… 'For a good time, call'. So I called."
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Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2025 4:13 pm
Am I being pranked? Is this — am I being robotdialed?! Robuttdialed?
There was no way—- still?
He put the phone on speaker for his own benefit, hoping it would make the words coming through sound…hell…more of one thing, less of another?
Squinting at the dark screen as though it’d give him answers. And when none were forthcoming from the void, aside from confirmation that there was *someone* on the other side of the line.
He flopped onto his stomach, got comfortable, purred into the speaker—
“I don’t know who you are, but? I’mma tell you, in case you need t’hear it…that you deserve waaaay better than the best time you can find on the side of a dumpster fire…†He felt sure of these facts, and if it was only a robot? That was fine too! He supposed even bots deserved better than literal flaming good times done garbage style!
And then the rest of what the roboy said clicked—
“Wait when you say ‘my fire’ d’you mean the dumpster? Or something else? Man shaped — short — black eyes — maybe fused to a grate, or wearing some killer mismatched boots?†Suddenly sounding both hopeful and awake as he rattled off details to his newest robo-friend.
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Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2025 4:14 pm
Eles snorted, then laughed — a rich sound, came from the gut in a caught-off-guard manner. Surprising even himself, he wondered briefly if he'd laughed like that before. Or at all.
He'd heard Malory laugh before. Pretty thing was usually in good spirits. But had he done it himself? Was it supposed to sound like that?
Was it supposed to sound that honest?
"No," he replied. "But… Was curious. What a dumpster offers."
His mouth felt tired, like he'd managed a full day of exercises with it. He knew, distantly, that it must have been ages since he talked. Ages since he talked this much. And this conversation was fast getting stranger —
A man with black eyes fused to a grate. A fire. Wearing a crown. The description irritated him somehow and he drew his legs up where he sat, as if shifting positions would ward off the feeling of fur rubbed the wrong way. He couldn't explain why it bothered him — couldn't even imagine the strange description that the man over the phone recited — nor could he explain why he felt moved by what sounded like an almost desperate question.
Eles couldn't bring himself to answer either way, so he simply hung up. Feeling rattled, he decided it was time to do something else for a while.
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Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2025 4:18 pm
What a pretty laugh…
Whoever was on the other end was human, he decided. Robots didn’t laugh like that, not even robot boys!
It was a bright spot on the backend of a mediocre, dreamless evening.
He licked his lips wondering, did he give the man on the other line a compliment? His gratitude to someone for trying to humor his unraveling sanity. Did he make a filthy pun about all the things a dumpster could offer when said dumpster had free time and about two hours more shut-eye?
He opened his mouth, finally, only to hear a scratchy click with some weight to it. The strange in a digital age sound followed by the dulcet, beeping tones signaling a dead line...
“Awh, no, hey! Damn…†he sighed as he let the burner phone slip back into the sheets. He wouldn’t go chasing fleeing cars with bright bumpers, ro-boys with beautiful laughs. “Well stranger…hope you get' some sleep at least…†and it felt right to wish the man a better time than could be found spray painted on the side of the road and the burning dumpsters that littered it. Before resettling himself to get back to where he started in the twilight of unconsciousness.
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