New Phone Who Dis

It wriggled across the sidewalk in front of her. She'd been stopped for a couple minutes now, waiting. Kate wasn't sure if it was covered in legs or hairs, but it didn't look like walking. It was wriggling, not inching. Maybe inching sideways, she considered.

Whatever it was, it was pus white, bulging at the seams, and probably wriggling. Kate silently cheered as it passed the halfway point on the concrete slab. She'd become invested in the little guy. Had anyone else come by, they might have crushed the poor bug, popped it like a zit. Kate liked to think she had an affinity for all of nature, which is why she found herself on her usual twilight stroll.

She'd never seen a creature like this. Maybe she had. Maybe it was a maggot, but it looked too big to be. Kate reached into her bag for her phone, she could come back to this thought later if she had a picture. She reconsidered the possibility it was a caterpillar as she brushed her sunscreen and chapsticks aside and dug deeper. It could be a sick caterpillar. She could lift it to a branch and ensure it becomes a beautiful, pus white butterfly one day.

There it was, her phone. She tugged it with the very tips of her fingertips. It shot up from her bag faster than she expected. The phone was spinning through the air. Kate couldn't crack another screen, she was an adult. She had to stop cracking her screen. She calmly reached through the air toward her spinning phone, but it was spinning so rapidly that it smacked her hand away.

Time was moving slower, or the rotation of the phone was somehow keeping it in place in the still twilight air, much unlike a brick. She had a second chance to save her brand new screen, shimmering as it spun, a tiny UFO tormenting her. As she reached out again, the phone was rapidly pulled to Earth. Instead of the heart wrenching crack Kate was so used to hearing, she heard a splat.

Gently, she lifted the six-point-seven inch one-thousand-five-hundred dollar hunk of tech from the concrete. She knew what had happened, the bug was no where in sight. Kate's stomach turned as the pus filled innards, plastered to the sidewalk, stretched as she tugged at her phone. It wasn't letting go.

Afraid to fully rip the screen off, Kate eased the phone back down to the gooey smudge cementing it to the ground. She looked around at her immediate surroundings, hoping for something she could use to scrape her phone off the ground. A flat rock would do, or a fallen branch. Nothing stood out.

She wasn't going to just leave her phone here. She gently tugged a few more times, and then harder a few more. The mushed remains wouldn't give and inch. Kate took a deep breath, conflicted about her next move. She slowly shuffled her shoe into the small gap she'd made from tugging. Nauseously, she nudged the goo string with the tip of her shoe, harder and harder.

The goo began to give way, the phone stretched another inch off the ground. Kate couldn't stop now, this was her only chance to get her phone back. She couldn't even call someone to help, not without her phone. She kicked the goo as hard as she could and it snapped. She fell backwards onto the sidewalk phone in hand.

Kate laid there for what felt like minutes. The gray clouds moving the through the grayer sky reminded her she didn't have much light left. She sat up and rubbed the back of her head. It was sore, but her hand came back clean. She wasn't bleeding.

As her vision cleared, she saw someone approaching from the sidewalk toward her. They were passing under some trees, so she couldn't make out if it was a man or a woman, but she could tell they were decently tall. Kate realized how insane she was going to look if she was still sitting here when they arrived.

She put her left foot down in an effort to stand up. When she tried to position her right foot she heard it, that smooshing sound. She'd sacrificed her shoe for her phone. She really liked these shoes, they were comfortable, great for her twilight walks. It was still a good trade to get her phone back, she thought.

She reached forward and pulled the lace of her shoe to untie the knot. The bow of the knot was gone, but the knot was still there. She always did this. It was never an easy thing for her to untie her shoes, she was great a tying them, however.

She began to wedge her long navy blue nail into the knot. The only issue with these shoes were the thin laces, which was made worse by how often she messed up untying. She rotated her finger, trying to catch or loosen any part of the knot.

It was then that she remembered the person walking toward her. Maybe they could help. She looked up and saw what was definitively a man getting closer, but as her eyes closed in on his face, something was clearly off. His face looked blurry. The hair was fine, well kept, combed back, but that face. It was swirl, as if all of a man's regular facial features were thrown into a blender, and then poured back out onto the head.

She could make out the nose sticking out of the side of his head where an ear should be. She kept counting and recounting, and Kate was sure there were at least six eyes, maybe seven. She wanted to reach out for her lace again, or even pull off her shoe entirely, but she was paralyzed with fear. Then she noticed his feet.

He wasn't stepping forward, but he was absolutely moving. His bare feet were a familiar puss white. Kate clearly missed the memo to not wear shoes today, she'd be a mile away if she could have moved at all.

Even if they wouldn't get here in time, Kate realized that maybe even the threat of the police might save her. She slowly pulled up her phone to her face. As the screen blinked to life, her heart sank. Through the smudge of goo she could see, her brand new phone was cracked: her worst nightmare.

She looked up to see the distorted man standing over her patiently, all six or seven eyes staring back at her.

"Hello Kate," he gurgled, mouth no where to be found.

"I left one of my toes around here, did you happen to see it wriggling?"