Run
downstairs and get a knife from the kitchen? Call the police? Why
didn't they have a gun?
Deciding on the second option, she reached for the phone. The
number. What was the phone number? Drunk and scared, she
struggled to remember the something-something-one number in her
head, but no rhyme came. Instead, Jean-Pierre's phone jingle
bleep-bleeped over and over in her mind.
The scraping sound again, much closer. As close as the edge of
the concrete terrace wall.
The dial tone questioned loudly. She pressed the zero button and
waited a moment before realizing her error. She remembered the
number: 411. She smashed her thumb down on the disconnect button
and redialed.
A large form settled heavily on the platform just beyond the
door, a human form silhouetted against the curtain.
A voice from the handset: "What city please?"
Greta gasped and swallowed a dry lump in her throat as she
realized her second error. Dear God, she had dialed wrong again.
No, she had remembered wrong. Not 411!
"What city please?" the voice repeated.
Nine! 911! Yes! That was it, ask her to connect you -
But before she could speak the line click-clicked, disconnected.
"Wait!" she hissed, straining to be both heard and quiet at once.
Dial tone.
A soft knock on the French doors.
She punched the correct sequence into the phone.
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