16...

“Hello?” Frank’s voice creaked and dropped out. He cleared his throat, painfully.
"Hello?” He tried again.
That low laughter continued like a transmission from some other time, so seemingly incongruous with everything else in Frank’s world that it was difficult to accept as real. The sound was held below waves of static, ghosts of other voices and conversations floated across like flashes of light on water.
Frank listened to that distant laughter and felt his balls crawl up inside his body. It made him feel rubbery. Something was not right. He was reminded of his Uncle Hutchence and the forced visits to the county asylum; the smell of industrial cleansers and piss, the hollow sound of dripping water.
An involuntary shudder passed through Frank.
“Who is this?” he managed to get out. He felt like he was going to vomit.
The static on the line took on the sounds of conspiratorial whispers. Frank could not hang up some reason, compelled despite his irrational fear. At any moment there would be the voice behind that grating laughter that would let out some gem of wisdom that would turn Frank’s life around.
Something suddenly snapped slightly in his mind and he sat frozen in concentration. He could no longer tell if it was laughter he was hearing, or crying.
And then just as suddenly he knew it was the sound of tears.
“Alexis?” he asked carefully.
The line clicked dead.