A Lost Connection by Jan Darrow

One night while on his way to see his daughter in Nebraska Alfred Meager got lost. He had booked a room near Chicago for the night. 

Turn right Siri had said, one hundred feet and make a left onto Center. But that street came and went, and Alfred kept on going until the sky and street went dark. And then all at once, in front of him was a hole the size of Pigeon Forge and it split his tire wide open. He came to a stop in the middle of the road. 

It was late and Alfred was tired.

He opened the door and noticed a large floodlight overhead on a tall pole. A metal fence of some kind ran underneath into a distance he couldn’t see. He reached up and pressed his emergency button and called for a tow truck.

Then stepping out of the car he lit a cigarette and took in his surroundings. He walked to the fence and looked beyond to see a scrap yard overgrown with weeds and filled with empty phone booths. Hundreds of them huddled together. Forgotten. All squinting under the white light. Bleeding out technology and names scratched into the rusting metal.

Alfred was feeling his age as he looked at the booths and remembered the quiet privacy he had when making a call with the door closed. He also remembered how when least expected there would be one in front of a closed store or gas station along a lonely stretch of road - lit up in the dark. 

The image lingered.

Those were the days, he thought, and for a moment he longed to be that young again.     

He checked the time. Tow truck should be coming. 

Silence.

And that’s when he heard a telephone ring from somewhere in the middle of the huddled past.  The phone booths.

He thought there was some mistake. But the phone rang again – an essence of history. A bell so loud and clear it might wake the dead. 

Alfred ran back to his car - and waited.

Jan Darrow is a Michigan author and poet and has recently been published by Poppy Road Review and Black Poppy Review. She has forthcoming work appearing in New Feathers and A Thin Slice of Anxiety.  Her two collections of poetry and collection of flash fiction are available on Amazon.  You can find her at https://jandarrow.blogspot.com.