Free Prey by Carlos King

are you?”
    “No,” Jade responded, “I need to check something out. I need to make sure I’m not going crazy.”
    “Okay, Jade. If you need me, call me, alright?”
    “Alright,” Jade told Shana before hanging up. Jade drops the phone on the couch and jogs to her bedroom. She heads to the nightstand and picks up her cell phone. She goes through the call log. There’s no record of any incoming calls from last night. Jade is bewildered. She knows she received a call last night and she was a hundred percent sure it was Shana’s voice she heard.
    But why would Shana deny calling? What purpose would it serve her to lie?
    Jade is positive she got a call last night, but if it wasn’t from Shana, then who?
    What does all this mean? Jade pondered. What it means is it’s no longer a coincidence that Jade was attacked by those hoodlums last night. It means that whoever called Jade was setting her up. Whoever called her had no plans of her making it off that desolate strip of road alive.
    Jade lies back on her bed and mulls over the disturbing occurrences of the past twenty-four hours. Before she knows it, the entire day passes her by. Wrapped in a critical train of thought, the sun has already set and Jade has barely even noticed that she’s been lying in the shady room for hours now. If not for the illumination of the street lights shining through her open window, the bedroom would’ve been completely dark.
    Jade is only broken out of her vegetative state when the buzzer to her apartment sounds. She snaps out of her daze and heads toward the front door, cutting several lights on along the way. Jade presses the ‘Talk’ button.
    “Who is it?” she asked. She presses the ‘Listen’ button and waits for a response.
    A woman’s voice replies, “It’s me, Marie. Let me in.”
    “How do I know this is you?” questioned Jade.
    “What? Are you okay in there? Could you let me in please? I have to tell you about this crazy date I just had.”
    Jade instantly recognizes this as something similar to what Marie would say. Whenever Marie has a horrible date the first person she vents to is Jade. On many occasions, the dates would be so bad that it would lead to Marie making an impromptu visit in order to vent in person.
    Jade presses the button to unlock the main gate. At the same time she’s doing this, the house phone rings. Jade walks away from the intercom and heads over to where she left the phone. She picks the phone up and answers.
    “Hello?”
    “Jade, you wouldn’t believe the date I just had,” a familiar voice blurted out.
    Jade furrows her eyebrows. “Marie?”
    “Yeah, it’s me. What, you don’t have my voice memorized yet?”
    “No, it’s not that,” Jade explained, “It’s just that I’m shocked you couldn’t wait a full minute to tell me what happened. It must’ve really been a bad date.”
    “What’re you talking about? Why would I wait a minute to tell you?”
    “I just buzzed you in, right? It’ll only take a minute for you to reach my door.”
    “Buzzed me in? How could you buzz me in? I’m in my car, heading home.”
    At that exact moment, the electricity in Jade’s apartment goes out. The cordless phone is dead. Jade convinces her frightened body to move toward the bedroom so she can recover her cell phone. She’s walking through the hallway when she hears someone knocking on the glass door of the balcony.
    Startled by the knocking, she accidently drops the house phone, not that it would’ve done her much good anyway. In the halfway point of the hallway, Jade could has to decide on either pushing forward and getting to her cell phone or going back and see who’s at her balcony door.
    This is a third-floor apartment. How could anyone be on the balcony? Jade thought to herself, her heart beating fast.
    Although her instincts are urging her to do otherwise, her curiosity gets the best of her. She turns around and timidly walks back toward the living room, stopping when she