And So It Begins...

Naturally, she was a light sleeper. It didn't surprise her at all when she woke to her phone ringing. Still, as she glanced at her phone hoping it was her boyfriend calling to wake her, she couldn't distinguish which ringtone was actually going off. His was a special one that she could easily recognize at any other time. Fresh out of her sleep, however, her mind hadn't processed the particular notes, just that her phone was ringing.

The name on the screen read 'Tevin Cabbagestalk', an acquaintance she'd gone to school with for several years before attempting some kind of friendship the past year or so. The friendship hadn't gone badly, to be honest. He was a bright kid caught up with the wrong things but an entertaining friend nonetheless. Her decision to cut him from her life had nothing at all to do with him.

Rather, it had everything to do with Tevin's best friend, Quinton. The two of them were almost inseparable since the day they met and where ever there was Tevin, Quinton was sure to be right there.

She hit the ignore button and let the call go to voicemail. She hadn't changed it since getting the phone so it would still call itself "Rosie's Voicemail" rather than her own. She secretly hoped he'd take that as dialing the wrong number. Whether he had or not, she wasn't sure and her phone rang again ten minutes later with his name popping up again. Instantaneously, she hit the ignore button again.

It wasn't that she was afraid of talking to Tevin. It was the fact that she was almost positive that it wasn't Tevin at all. Tevin hardly ever called her and even when he did, the first unanswered call was enough for him to stop bothering for the rest of the week.

No, she was very confident in the true caller being Quinton himself.

Almost a month or so ago, their last conversation left her demanding he leave her alone...forever. No talking, no visiting, nothing. She blocked him off everything she possibly could and was prepared for the day she'd have to ignore calls from numbers she didn't recognize.

She seemed peaceful enough, staring at her ceiling as the sunlight washed over her messy room. A few cars drove by her house which sent images through her paranoid and over imaginative mind. Most of them involved Quinton showing up in an outrage, banging on her door and demanding to be let in while she huddled behind her locked room door dialing 911.

One even envisioned him showing up with guns...or a bomb...or some other weapon to end her life. She immediately ran over plans in her mind of what to do in case any of those things were to happen. Drop to the floor, phone in hand. 911 was only three digits away. Don't look out the window or go to the front door. Don't scream either, maybe they'd think she wasn't home.

She was usually paranoid about certain things and often times for no exact reason, but her paranoia involving Quinton wasn't based on nothing. He was known to be unstable, emotional, irrational and overflowing with stupidity. She'd heard him seriously debate killing his mother, his mother's boyfriend, and he'd even threatened to kill her and her unborn child. He was a druggie and let silly ideas creep into his head with no actual thought to the consequences like the time he'd almost tasered a twelve year old to the amusement of thirteen year olds. A grown man being influenced by little kids and not finding a problem with any of it until the cops came and gave him a ride home in their vehicle.

With a sigh, she tried to turn over and rest some more but the constant images of him trying to barge into her life with his nonsense and the thought of him trying to hurt her or her child kept her awake enough to shuffle out of bed. She thought she'd be fine after a little while, but almost three hours later and she was still nervously glancing outside every time she heard a car passing.