trace

You wake up in your bed holding a phone that isn’t yours… and it’s ringing.

You realize that this is not the first time in recent memory that this has happened. The other day, a stranger referring to himself as the Mailman delivered an equally unfamiliar phone to your front door and directed that you press the dial button on the device.

Moments later, the phone was picked up, and you heard nothing on the other line.

“Hello? Hello?” you said. “There’s nothing. Is the device working?”

“It’s working perfectly,” said the Mailman. “I’ll be taking it back now. The message has been delivered.”

And then he was gone.

The phone you hold now bears no resemblance to the phone delivered to you last week. It is older, heavier, with rounded edges and a keyboard stationed below a small screen bathed in an olive green backlight and printed with the word “Lover” in Serpentine lettering.

You do not recognize this “Lover.” Perhaps you have one, but you certainly have never been so bold as to register them on your phone as such. You set the vibrating phone by your pillow and swing your body over the mattress.

Your feet feel unsettled the moment they plant themselves. You realize that the tileset of your bedroom has been changed to a mosaic of placid, egg white plates. They are stiff, frigid to the touch, and their pallid tone mirrors the pigment of the walls, which you notice are adorned with almost nothing, no doors, no lights, the latter of which seems impossible–for the room, blank as a canvas save for you and your bed, is breathable and drenched in an omnipotent gloss that is neither blinding nor dim. It simply is.

The final piece: the reason why the walls “are adorned with almost nothing” is because there is a window bolted to the interior.

You were not misled. You did not register the window’s anatomy because it is painted with a color several hexes removed from the cream white hue of the rest of the room; its ivory shadow hides in plain sight like an unintended blotch of paint. The glass window stares straight into the wall as if to say, “There is no need to look. There is nothing outside.”

Amidst your dazed observations, the phone stops ringing. Like the end of an uncomfortable call, you undergo brief elation. You tell yourself that you’ve passed the test, whatever that test may be. Any moment now, the architecture of the room will collapse beneath the silence and you will return to your bedroom. Or you will wake up from your dream. Or you will outlive the death of the universe and be birthed from this spatial cocoon into an unfamiliar utopia, a promised land, a field of plenty, an endless expanse of nameless flowers unfettered by the height and width of low ceiling bedrooms.

This is a naive, short-lived expectation.

The phone rings anew. “Lover,” it repeats. This time you answer.

You hold your breath and wait.

You anticipate that there will be no one on the other line.

You are wrong.

Muffled sobs come through. Someone sneezes into either a soggy tissue or wet napkin. You cannot tell the difference. You are unsure at first if the sobs and sneezing even belong to the same person.

“Hello?” you say. “Hello? Can you hear me?”

“Hello?” comes a distressed answer. The audio pops as if the phone’s been fumbled. “Is it you? Finally! Why haven’t you been picking up my calls? He almost asked me to return it to him.”

“I’m sorry? Calls? Him?”

“I’ve been calling you all night.”

You look at the screen. There is no digital clock. You realize you have no idea how to navigate to the menu and check your history for missing calls. There is no widget to drag down and inspect your notifications. You wonder if perhaps it is possible that the Lover has been calling you while you slept.

“I’m sorry, I must have been asleep,” you apologize. “But you have to understand–”

“Asleep?” the Lover asks. “Are you serious? You’ve been asleep this whole time?”

“Well–”

“Are you sleeping with them right now?”

“Them?” you ask. “Look, sorry, there’s been a misunderstanding–”

“A misunderstanding?”

“Yes!” you cut in before it gets worse. “This isn’t my phone. I woke up in this–in this strange room, and this phone, it isn’t mine you see, it just started ringing.”

“Strange room? Were you drinking last night or something?”

“I don’t think so,” you guess.

“You don’t think so?” the Lover asks.

“I don’t remember last night.”

“So you were drinking…”

“That’s not important!” you say. “What’s important is that, I don’t know you, because this isn’t my phone.”

“Why did you pick up then?”

“I don’t know. Who doesn’t pick up a ringing phone?”

“Look,” the Lover sighs. “It’s not that I don’t believe you, but I’d like to set a few things straight. Is there anyone else in this room of yours?”

“No. There’s no one.”

“Right. And where is your own phone?”

You look around.

“I don’t know,” you say. “I must have lost it, or it’s been switched with this phone. Please, we’ve never spoken before, you have to understand.”

“I hope you can see things from my perspective,” says the Lover. “You left me last night after promising that you would leave them, take us away to a new country where we’ll live with new identities and raise children and grow old and die together. Now you claim to not even know me. I hope you can see. This sounds like you’re abandoning me, doesn’t it? It sounds like you’ve gotten cold feet, and you’re now trying to run away.”

“No, that’s just it!” you laugh. “I couldn’t run away even if I wanted to. There’s no door in this room. There’s just this window that’s facing the wall opposite the bed. I can’t leave. I doubt anyone could even enter if they tried.”

“If no one can enter, then why do you have this phone? Where is your supposed real phone?”

“Umm…”

“See? This is what you always do,” the Lover cries. “You just pretend I don’t exist whenever I’m an inconvenience. You shy away from ever saying anything real. I just need you to answer me truthfully and honestly. What am I to you, really? Do you even love me anymore?”

“Please. I’m sorry,” you say. “But presently you are nothing to me because this is not my phone and you are not my Lover and I don't even know you. No. I do not love you.”

The phone crackles and dies. You feel regret at having been so blunt. You didn’t mean to rebuff them so cruelly, but they left you no choice. How could they have acted so desperate with someone they didn’t even know?

You leave the matter of the Lover aside and return to the problem at hand: you are boxed in by white walls and a perplexing, ill-fitted window. You realize that your situation is not so different from a locked-room mystery. In fact, the makeup of the room and even the narratological introduction of its scarce artifacts resembles the setup of cozy, winter mysteries that you listened to as a child.

This gives you a moment’s respite, for the artifice of the room’s purpose has revealed itself. It’s an escape room, a mystery, and mysteries serve to be solved, and you love mysteries, for it is so easy to throw out solutions that are structurally inconceivable.

You don’t love mysteries? No, you do.

You rule yourself out as a suspect. Despite the room’s preternatural configuration, the supernatural must also be ruled out as a matter of course.

The solution to the escape room must come from an already introduced object, such as the bed, the pillow, maybe the floor or, most obviously, the window that stares into the wall.

The perpetrator must also be a recently introduced character and cannot be their twin or body double. This narrows the list of all possible suspects in the known universe to two people, the Lover and the Mailman.

But wait. What crime could they have committed?

Kidnapping and extortion!

What else?

You are, after all, lying in your bed in a foreign room. Perhaps you were drugged, dragged away while breathing out of a rag threaded with chloroform. Did either the Mailman or the Lover possess the strength to carry both you and your bed into a windowless room? You are unsure. After all, you were not inspecting the Mailman’s build when he handed you the first mysterious phone. If you assume that the Mailman was of average height and strength, then it could be reasoned that your kidnapping required a second party, an accomplice in order to move the bed, in which case the Lover fits the perfect mold.

Why do they fit the mold? They have a motive, of course! They believe you to be their lover who is running away from the timeless responsibility of loving someone for the exclusive reason that they are not somebody else.

This is all just a big misunderstanding; you laugh. The Mailman and Lover could be, right now, standing on the other side of the window, which may soon reveal itself to be one-way glass.

You pick up the phone to call the Lover and explain the situation, but a new number and name appears on the shaking screen.

“Detective,” it reads.

You pause.

Were you not the detective? Or are there two detectives now? Are you the assistant?

Unlike the Lover, however, there is an authority associated with the title of “Detective” and so you finger the receiver and answer the call.

“Hello?” you say.

You can hear chewing on the other line, like someone is gnawing on crumbled printing paper. You hear a deep breath, then an exhale. You imagine smoke rising from their lips.

“Hello,” the Detective says. “Do you have time to talk?”

“I… think I do. What is it, detective?”

You relent in part because you believe that the mystery this detective is calling about is yours. Perhaps this is a story told from the perspective of the victim. You wonder, however, given the circumstances, about the probability of duplicity. Is this Detective really a detective? Does your mystery require a detective? What about detective stories without detectives?

“I’m calling you because we’ve found a body,” the Detective says. “Reported by a local postal worker. The number they last dialed. It was yours. Do you know anything?”

Your blood runs cold. A body? The Lover’s?

“Did they,” you ask, “...did they end things?”

“End things?” the Detective replies. “No, what are you talking about? They were shot. A bullet in the head. Their body’s propped up over this Buick in the garage. Sounds like you’re saying you don’t know anything.”

“No,” you shake your head (why, they can’t see you), “I don’t know anything.”

“You sure?” the Detective is unconvinced. “They just called you. You two talk about anything in particular?”

“They were angry with me,” you reply. “I told them I didn’t love them. They hung up.”

“Brutal,” the Detective sighs. “You tell them they’re not loved, and they get shot in the head right after. Last thing they think is that no one is going to miss them when they’re gone.”

“That’s not my fault.”

“Nobody said it was,” the Detective says, “but in any case, I gotta come to you. Or you come to me. You got an address? Where can we meet? Are you close by, by any chance?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know if you’re close by?”

“No,” you shake your head (again, why?). “I mean, I don’t know where I am.”

“Look, if you think being close by makes you a suspect, that’s not how I do things–”

“No, detective, you have to listen to me,” you say. “I don’t know where I am. Really. I’m stuck in this room with only walls and this one window that doesn’t even look outside. This phone isn’t mine. I have no relation to the person who was just shot.”

“... what’s a window that doesn’t look outside?”

“Can you just trace this call, detective? Find out where I am?”

“Look,” says the Detective. “I know you’re in shock. Someone’s just been shot, but I hope you know we’re all in the same boat. We’re all stuck in rooms with walls, and windows, no matter how gray or dampened by fog, they look outside. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be windows.”

“My window only looks at the wall.”

“Then the wall is outside,” the Detective says, “or you’re outside looking in at the wall. Look, I can help you, but first you have to tell me where you are.”

“I don’t know where I am!” you shout. “You’re not listening to me! I’m stuck! I’m stuck inside this fucking room! Trace my call! Trace it, and you’ll know that I’m probably in the middle of nowhere, maybe in some shack at the edge of a desert at the outskirts of the city or in a submarine at the bottom of the sea. I’ve been captured here, probably by the Mailman. Can’t you just trace my call, detective?”

“The mailman? What does he have to do with anything?”

It’s your turn to hang up. The Detective. They don’t understand. The phone rings again.

“Detective,” the phone reads.

You don’t pick up. You’re done with them. It’s time to take matters into your own hands.

You inspect the bed. It is in fact your bed, and not a carefully curated facsimile of it, with your sheets and a pillow that smells of overnight drool, which makes it all the more important that you find traces that someone else, the Mailman for example, has touched it.

Or maybe your earlier suspicion that the Detective was the perpetrator rings salient, and the sheets may be littered with specks of ash from the tips of the cigar that they were chewing while on the phone with you. You make it a point to inspect the belly of the bed, the wooden legs, the frames, the mattress, but you are disappointed when you find no evidence that someone else has touched your furniture.

You check the phone. It is the only object sitting on the bed that does not belong to you (whether your body belongs to you is a metaphysical question outside the scope of this experiment). But indeed, the phone is alien in both appearance and content. Any attempt to call emergency services or random numbers results in a disconnect. A perusal of the settings reveals no name that the device belongs to. The contact list is empty, despite the fact that both “Lover” and “Detective” had been clearly plastered on the screen when they had called you.

You deduce that any and all interrogation of the bed and its immediate surroundings will bring you no closer to the truth. It all simply is.

You rise from your bed and walk to the window facing the wall.

A part of you expects that the window will become more like a window as you approach, that your prior observations were convenient optical illusions.

But once again, you were not misled. The window dressed in its own shadowed hue of white is bolted to a wall that, when you knock, responds with a deadened pitch. The window itself is operable. There are unlockable hinges. You can roll the glass screen up and down. You reach for the wall behind the window and discover, predictably, that it is as firm as everywhere else. The window appears, like other oddities, to be an investigative dead end.

You refuse to accept this.

You throw a fist at the glass screen. The window shatters. You realize that pain is real and it adopts the color red. You crumble to the floor, holding your bleeding hand and the glass fragments that are washed over your palm. The blood that drips is yours; even with your bed standing behind you, you realize that the red drops that dot the floor like the opening splashes of a painting are the only things that can right now be authentically yours.

The phone rings. Again.

You ignore it for several seconds. You are in pain. You figure it is the Detective that is trying again after a few minutes of contemplating defeat. You then consider that perhaps the detective has agreed to your proposal to trace your call, so you walk back to the bed. You wrap your hand in pillow sheets before picking up the phone.

It is not the Detective.

“Father,” it reads.

Your mind goes blank.

What is your relationship with your father? You are not sure. There are thoughts that occur to you, vague social norms, for instance, but no memories.

“Lover.” “Detective.” It is unsurprising that these terms mean nothing to you. The notion of “Father,” however, should conjure something that is otherwise indestructible, a mark that grips you with its terrifying claws or tugs at you in an embrace. You are stunned that you do not feel any of this, so much so that your bloody fingers slip and answer the phone.

“Hello? Hello?” the Father says. “Are you there, child?”

You do not reply.

“Hello? Is this even working?” the Father says. “It’s working? Are you sure? Okay. Hello? Are you there? Child? Why don’t you answer me?”

“... Hello,” you finally say. “Who is this?”

“Child!” the Father gasps. “It’s me. Your father.”

“I’m sorry,” you reply. “I think you’ve gotten the wrong number.”

“That’s not possible,” the Father says. “The man–”

“I’m sorry,” you cut him off. “But this marks the third call today where I’ve received messages from people who have no relationship with me. Frankly, I’m tired of this. None of you know me, and I don’t know any of you.”

“My child,” the Father says. “No. You have to stop this. Right now.”

“Stop? Stop what?” you say. “There’s nothing to start! I’m starting to feel like I’m going insane from repeating myself, but I’m stuck. I’m stuck inside a room that is not my own. It’s surrounded by walls and a window that doesn’t even look outside.”

“How is that possible, child?”

“It’s not possible. It shouldn’t be possible,” you say, “and yet it is. Who put me here? Who gave me a phone that is not mine? Who is the accomplice of the Mailman, who I am now sure lurks in the corner of every sentence of this story. But where? Where? Where are they? Where can they be?”

“The mailman? Are you accusing him now?” the Father asks. “Look, child. You need to confess and turn yourself in.”

“Are you not listening to me?”

“I’m listening,” the Father whispers patiently. “But a mailman came by, you see. They told me that you had gotten yourself involved in something troublesome, fell in with the wrong folks, maybe even killed someone. A detective was looking into your case, and then, just moments ago, someone shot him!”

“A mailman? A detective? Shot?”

“I don’t know where you are,” the Father says. “But wherever you are, wherever in this room of yours, child, you should turn yourself in. Tell everyone the truth.”

“I’ve been telling you the truth this whole time!”

“Child,” the Father sighs. “All of us are trapped in rooms surrounded by walls. You aren’t the only one. It’s not special.”

“How can you suspect me of anything without even knowing me? And you call yourself a father?”

You shut off the phone. You curl it in your hands and fling it at the broken window. It’s an old phone. That means it’s sturdy. It smashes through remnants of glass and ricochets off the wall. The thick frame chips but the beryl green screen persists.

A large shard snaps off the window frame and falls to the floor. Unlike the other pieces, it does not fracture when it makes contact with the ground. It, like the resilience of the phone, holds its edged shape and braces against the empty wall.

You approach it, hoping to shatter it beneath your feet.

Cumulus clouds float beyond the window, skirting along the edges of the broken shard until they vanish like vapor trails. You reach out your hand and cut yourself again. A single blotch of blood merges with the sky that curves along the fractured pane and becomes a sun that glows behind the visage of wraiths. It glows, brighter in the shadow than the nebulous luminescence that consumes your room and in the clash of opposing gleams, the shattered window piece becomes a mirror that allows you to finally see.

It’s You.

It’s always been You, the trace of you that doubles.

It’s been the You that can only be detected when You are no longer hiding at the beginning of sentences, masked like a shimmering doppelganger, fooling us in the red herrings of traced calls and broken windows and the cardinal rules of Golden Age detective fiction and you, who we treated as a singular person.

It was You who shot dead the Lover the moment they hung up the call because they were no longer needed. It was You who propped up their body against an American car and left them to be discovered by the Detective, who themselves were disposed of when their primary purpose had been fulfilled. And, should the modus operandi stay consistent, You must have ended the Father’s life the moment you thrust the phone away at the window.

The Detective was right about something, that you have all been separated into rooms of varying size and shape, that to You, the Detective’s smoky private investigator’s office muffled by the sound of rain is no more real than a white, claustrophobic space stationed with an implausible window, and even the Mailman, supposedly free to roam about to hand you phones of questionable origin, is no more free than a pencil strapped to a piece of paper, navigating the confines of an inescapable maze.

The ground begins to shake, and you lose your balance. You almost don’t feel it, but it’s there, like an unsettled grudge, like a stomach growling, like the table that seesaws when you bob your knees up and down and level your elbows on its surface.

Then you hear a loud bang.

You smell the musk of smoke. You catch a whiff of gunpowder trailing from the barrel of a revolver, the sight of more blood than ever before, but you tell yourself you couldn’t have been shot because you’ve just awakened to the sound of ringing.

You blink and gaze at the base of a wall. There’s a window there, but you can’t quite see what’s outside, because your eyes are fixed on a phone lying on the floor.

You know that this is not the first time that this has happened.