Dial Tone

She stirred. Her eyes shut tight against the cold, she pulled the blankets in. After surfacing briefly from the dream that woke her, she slipped back into slumber.
He felt her stir. Sleepily he rolled over to face the clock. The red numbers were a blur. It wasn't worth the effort to figure out the time, it was dark and only dawn would change that.
He stubbed his toe on the corner of the bed as he groaned and got up. Leaving the sheets in a hard pile on his bed. The wood, cheap and warped of use, was splintered, and his toe might have been bleeding. He didn't check.
The night came in through the windows of the apartment. thin streams of light from the nearby buildings that passed through the blinds, pausing over the clutter of the floor. Examining its contents without interest on its passage out through the open door. It Floated into the hallway, set on some errand unknown to the rest of a darkened sleeping world.
His hand brushed roughly against his forehead, displacing the ruffled hair that hung there as he moved through the house. The house was cold. Even the worn carpet on the floor seemed stinging nettles of ice against his bare feet. Not bothering to turn on the lights, he made his way through the mess of his small apartment. He was glad there was no one else there to see it. Rooms echoed in his head with the absence of any thing cognizant besides his own thoughts. He paused at the end of the short hallway that led from the bedroom to the living room. A table of worn pine lazily stained dark cherry that someone had left in a secondhand store leaned against the wall. Its tiring wood seeming feeble on its thin legs. Among a few books and homeless CDs covered in scratches lay the beat up phone.
Leaning against the wall, the blinking red light of the charging cordless seemed to hold him mesmerized. The paper crumpled next to it, a number excitedly scrawled on its stained white. The dark made its presence known. The air muffled him. Closing in. He wanted to retreat, his mind filled with doubt about her needs. Why should he call? why should he care? Why does he have a heart? The shoulder farthest from the wall drifted back towards the room drawn by doubt.
With the forceful energy of the desperate he shot his hand toward the phone, dialing before he even recognized a dialing tone. The rings shattered the silence of her tears, ringing in his ears, she was crying curled in a cold corner, retracting from the light that seemed to burn like the tears and the sweat that seeped into her eyes, he listened, she didn't speak, they Cried.
The time between her first awakening and the sounds were like an eternity of pain. She woke again, sweating in fear, her anxiety increasing. She groped in the darkness, pulling herself out of her bed, the thin sheets dragging behind her over the metal frame and thin mattress.
She paused as she stood, her pajamas rumpled, the shock of her sudden vulnerability scared her, she was alone, the night came in through the window, streams of light through the tightly closed blinds, hands reaching offering memories. She covered her mouth in horror. Oh, god. She whispered shutting her eyes tight. she fell to her knees, suffocating on her own tears that caught in her throat, bitter acid that burned her heart. The Knob of her bedside dresser dug into her skin as she fell against it, unable to support herself, the wood, sparkled as they were wet by her tears. she pulled her knees in tighter, the dark. Oh god the dark she whispered, Oh God, wet through the spit that hung on her lips and fell down to her hands which she hid her face in.
The Phone screamed at her from somewhere above her head. Her hand shook as she wrapped her tired fingers around the white handset. She slowly brought it to her ear, she could hear his breath, he listened, her breath caught sharply, cutting on a sob, he understood they cried.