amespointer

[amespointer]

[amespointer]

Looking for Mother

[amespointer]

A Clock App Halloween

by Ames Pointer

“Are you really gonna stay home and sit on your phone all night instead of coming with us for Halloween?”

I didn’t look up from my phone.

“Yes,” I mutter, swiping past a cat video I've already seen.

“What are you even watching?” Otto perches on the arm of the recliner I’m sitting on and peers into my screen. I yank it to my chest to hide the screen, even though there's nothing scandalous to keep from him. “You better not be stalking him, Della. He’s garbage. Let him go.”

Otto is such a good big brother. But Jasper was MY garbage. I still can’t believe he broke up with me this morning. By text. Just: “It’s over.” And then an awkward day at school, where he avoided me at every turn.

“I don’t get it,” I sigh, looking up at Otto. “I just don’t get it.”

He shrugs. It’s not a big deal to Otto, it seems. Just a first boyfriend and now we will move on to the next, is what he said at dinner.

“You should come with us to Nans. You can hand out candy if you don’t want to walk with Aunt Sally and the kids.”

I shake my head no. I’m set in my decision. I’m staying home, alone.

Mom comes sweeping into the room. She’s dressed in a black leotard, with scarves tied to a belt that sits around her waist, each one a different color, flowing behind her.

Otto and I look at each other, both perplexed.

“What are you supposed to be?” Otto asks before I can form a full thought. Mom looks stupefied, as if it’s obvious.

“Well, what else would I be?” she asks, spinning, like she’d answered the question, but we still don’t understand, so her shoulders slump and she says: “a witch. Duh.”

Otto groans and rolls off the arm of the chair dramatically, yanking on Mom's scarves as he passes her.

“Mom, this could be better. Seems a little low effort. You don't even have a hat.”

She is perplexed.

“How is this low effort?”

“It's just scarves,” Otto explains, walking back towards me from the kitchen carrying a large bowl of candy. He pushes it towards me, waiting for me to take it.

“What’s this?” I ask, annoyed but taking a Reese cup.

“In case we get any trick or treaters,” he says sweetly. I laugh.

“We have never gotten a trick or treater out here,” I say, looking out the window that’s behind me at the empty corn fields that surround our us, and at the dead-end road that stops in front of our house. We live fifteen minutes from town, and ten from the next nearest human. If we don’t know them, they ain’t coming. And the kids we do know are all going to meet at Nans because she lives in the city.

“I still can’t believe you’re staying out here alone on Halloween,” Mom tisks as she puts giant hoops in her ears.

“Dad will be home shortly,” I shrug.

“Dads working a double,” Mom corrects. “He won’t be home till 4:30 in the morning. But we will be back by, what? 10:30 for sure.”

I look at the clock. It’s 5:30.

“You’ll be fine,” she waves her hand at me. Otto looks distressed. He is the worrier of the family.

“I think you should come with us.”

“It’s fine, Otto, I'm fifteen years old, I can handle a night alone.”

He sighs. We take in moms’ full outfit now, unimpressed.

Otto grabs her shoulders, guides her towards the front door, and snatches a Snickers on the way out.

“Behave,” he says, pointing a finger at me, like I’m going to do anything more than look at my phone.

“I will,” I assure him.

It's an hour and a half later, and I've watched almost an entire comedy show on the clock app along with some funny animal videos, but I'm still in a terrible mood, and I’d had zero trick or treaters. As expected.

I’m getting a little bored. I shift in my seat because my hips are starting to hurt, and my legs are growing numb. I look up from my phone long enough to check the time and just as my finger grazes over the search bar to plug in Jaspers name, I see a 'People You May Know' box pop up that has no profile picture, but the name catches my attention, cause it’s mine. Or, at least it’s close to mine.

DELLASaw, and I’m Della Sawyer.

That’s weird.

I click it. Surely someone didn’t make a burner account with my name to bully me. I keep to myself and there’s not a single person I can think of who would do that to me.

There aren’t any videos. No followers. No following. No likes.

It has to be a coincidence, maybe because of the similar name to me, that’s why it popped up. I shrug it off and go look at Jaspers page.

He’s LIVE. If I click it, he will know I'm looking. That would come across as pathetic, spending my Halloween stalking an ex-boyfriend, even though that's exactly what I'm doing.

If I ignore it, it’ll eat me alive wondering what he’s doing that is so important he’d be LIVE. I’m truly torn on what to do and I decide to let it go.

I’m getting hungry so I go to the kitchen. I decide on pizza rolls. I throw them in the oven while it preheats and stand and look out over the corn fields into the night. It would be beautiful if it wasn’t so creepy. Just empty fields of churned up dirt with tiny, mutilated stalks rising from the mounds of earth like they are reaching for the moon to save them. Corn Zombies, wanting to rise from their graves.

The moon isn’t helping. She’s big and bloated and barely keeping herself afloat in the sky by the looks of it. I should write a poem about this. I can channel my upset over Jasper into words, that could be a good outlet.

The doorbell rings. I jump out of my skin, as they say. In the immediate aftermath of being spooked, I forget it’s Halloween. It snaps into my head, and I run for the candy bowl, but as I’m opening the door, it dawns on me that I had been looking out over the only way into our driveway, and being the last house on the road, the (trick or) treater would have had to have driven up that way while I was lost in thought.

Only, I didn’t see anyone.

And I don’t see anyone when I open the door. I look through the glass outside, not unlocking the storm door. There’s no one to be seen.

That’s enough for me to shut the big door and lock it, and as I turn to go get my phone and to call mom, I hear the sliding glass door that leads into the kitchen from the back yard slide open.

I freeze.

Wtf.

Omg.

I’m standing by the front door, frozen, holding the candy bowl. I’m about to get murdered. I’m all fright, no flight, no fight.

What the heck do I do?

Panicking, I snatch my phone off the chair and run back into my bedroom, holding the candy bowl the entire time. I fling it onto the bed with my phone.

I grab my door, lock it, snatch my desk chair, roll it in front of it to block it, but I'm an idiot, because it's on wheels and isn't going to be very effective. I roll it to the other side of the room, reach over, and with strength powered by fear, drag my desk across the floor and place it in front of the entrance.

I spin, grab the curtains, yank them shut, reach through, check that the window is locked. I jump onto the bed, grab my phone, roll off the other side, and go into my closet.

Like a child playing a game of hide and seek, I wiggle into a corner, pulling my old toy bin in front of myself, yanking down clothes to cover me.

I'm in a sweating, heaving pile underneath it all, trying to control my breath so that I won't be so easily found. I hold my phone up, arrange things so I can see the screen and as I swipe it open to call my mom, or 911, or, I don't know WHAT TO DO, there's a notification.

I've been tagged in a video.

By DELLASaw.

Wtf?

With a shaking hand, I open it.

In bold print, it's a black screen with the words: "Della Saw What?"

The video cuts. It's my living room. It's me. I'm in the chair. I'm watching my phone, scrolling, oblivious to the fact that I'm being videotaped through the window over the sink.

The window I was just looking through.

WTF?

My phone dings. I yank down the button on the side to silence it. It's another tag. I click it.

It's me. Looking out through the window. Someone's under the window, filming up at me. I can see straight up my nostrils.

Omg.

Another ding. Another tag.

I'm looking out the front door, holding the candy bucket while being filmed from the side. They were RIGHT THERE when I looked out, filming me.

Ding!

I'm with Otto. He's sitting on the chair. They're filming from the window on the other side of the living room, just before Mom and Otto leave.

How many people are doing this?

I ignore another ding, and I try to call mom.

No answer.

Ding.

I pull up Otto, call him. Voicemail.

It's them, it has to be them, messing with me, but Otto calls right back.

"Della, what's up?" he says, and I hear a commotion in the background, the kids trick or treating.

"Otto," I whisper, I'm sobbing, snot running down my face.

"Della?"

"Otto, there's someone in the house."

"Wait, what? Della, are you messing with me?"

"No, Otto, is Mom with you? Maybe she's pranking me." I'm crying like a little kid.

"Mom!" Otto shouts on his end of the phone. "Mom! Someone's in the house!"

I hear Mom over the line.

"In the what?" Mom sounds intoxicated.

"In the house! We gotta go!"

Otto is panicking, and Mom thinks he's messing with her.

BANG-BANG-BANG

It's the bedroom door.

BANG-BANG-BANG

It's the bedroom window.

OMG

I scream and cry into the phone.

"Della, I'm calling 911!"

Otto hangs up on me.

I'm shaking and alone on my closet floor, apparently more than one person trying to beat their way into my bedroom.

Ding.

I look down at the phone.

I click the tagged video.

Someone is slowly walking through our house, filming as they go, running the very sharp edge of a knife along all the surfaces on their journey from the kitchen to my door. The video stops with a gloved hand jiggling my doorknob.

Another video, filming my bedroom through my window as I yank on the curtains.

I notice there's another tag on this one. They tagged more than one person. It's Jasper. I go to his page. He's still LIVE. I click on it, but it's just darkness. No sound.

Is this him? Is he screwing with me?

I type into the live chat: "Are you doing this to me?"

Nothing.

Ding.

A video, dark like Jaspers LIVE, only it begins to illuminate, and I see what looks to be fingers start to appear. Dark fingers, bloody fingers. Fingers that look funny. As the camera pulls back, I see its Jasper. He's slumped over his steering wheel, not moving. He's been in an accident, I think, or someone has hurt him. Lights, blinking.

I scream again, I'm sure he's dead.

This can't be happening.

The banging stops. I sit still, holding my breath so as not to make a single sound, but I feel like I'm suffocating and instead my breath gets louder and louder.

I wait. I try to adjust, because my neck is hurting and my arm is tingling like it's falling asleep. Where is Otto? Why hasn't he called me back?

Ding.

I click on the video.

I see my ceiling, unmistakable. The dark blue and gold galaxy poster that hangs over my bed stares at me through my phone, the light flickering on my screen as the fan runs full speed, just as I had left it, and then, the camera focuses on the closet before cutting off.

I can't breathe. My arm is throbbing, my fingers can barely move. My chest feels heavy, I squirm. There's something wrong with me, I'm about to die.

Della's funeral was an odd affair.

No parents.

No brother.

No Jasper.

Her parents were still in jail. Her brother in juvenile detention. Her boyfriend, well, his parents bailed him out, but he was on house arrest following the prank gone horribly wrong.

They just wanted to prove to her that she had become addicted to her phone. They thought they could scare her straight, get her to see that there's more to life than cat videos and endless scrolling, and they thought she'd find it funny, eventually.

Her parents, brother, and boyfriend all worked together to plan to perfect, multilevel prank. Her mother on one side of the house, her father on the other. Otto used audio to make it sound like they were at a gathering when really they were just outside. They'd parked down the road, and walked back to the house with her Dad and Jasper.

No one knew Della had a heart condition. If they had, they'd have never done it. And they admitted they'd taken it a bit too far, but still, they maintained, they had good intentions. It was the phone that was the problem. The apps. The screens.

And yet, the thing that killed her were the people.