A few days ago, I got a letter in the mail. My name and address were scrawled on the envelope in large, shaky, capital letters. There was no return address. I brought it into my house with the rest of my mail and opened it. Inside, there was a small piece of paper, about the size of a credit card, that simply said, “HELLO.” It was written with those same shaky, capital letters that adorned the envelope. I turned the paper over and found nothing written on the back. The envelope was empty too. This random piece of paper with one word was all that was there and I had no idea who sent it or why.
I shrugged it off, chalking it up to being one of those handwritten church letters I’d sometimes get, and just left it on my counter with the rest of the junk mail I was too lazy to throw out. I then sat on my couch and watched TV for a while before going to bed, the letter completely forgotten at this point.
After a decent night’s sleep, I clumsily felt around my end table, trying to grab my phone and check the time. Instead, my hand brushed against a piece of paper. I didn’t remember having any papers there, so out of curiosity I grabbed it, figuring it’d be a random receipt or something.
It was not a receipt. It was a credit card sized piece of paper with the word “HELLO” written on it in shaky, capital letters. I was confused. I could’ve sworn I left that on the counter last night. Clutching the paper, I went to my pile of junk mail. I found the envelope there, but not the paper.
Alright, so this is the same piece of paper, but I still had no idea how it got into my room. As I was trying to figure that out, my cat, Craig, rubbed up against my leg and meowed. I took a quick glance at his food bowl, and saw that, as I expected, the bottom was visible. Craig is never this affectionate unless he was hungry.
“Alright, I’ll feed you,” I said, petting Craig’s head. As I poured some food in Craig’s bowl, I figured that maybe Craig knocked the paper down and the AC or something blew it into my room. At the moment, that made the most sense, so I went with that explanation. As Craig chowed down, I turned the piece of paper over in my hand. It was just a small piece of paper with one word on it. What was the point of it? And who sent it?
After considering these questions for a moment, I crumpled up the piece of paper and threw it out. Honestly, I didn’t care that much, and I had better things to do with my time than unravel this mystery. As if on cue, my phone reminded me of one of those better things: a date I had tonight with my boyfriend, George. We hadn’t been going out for too long, but I really liked him and was excited to see him again. We were going to have dinner together at an upscale restaurant tonight, and I still needed to get everything ready.
I got my car washed and cleaned inside and out, picked up some flowers, and then got myself ready. I met George at the restaurant. I gave him the flowers (which made him blush) and then we had a very nice, if expensive, dinner.
After dinner, we got into my car and started making out. Soft, quick kisses soon turned long, passionate, and intense. George started pushing me against the driver side door while kissing me. As he was adjusting himself, he accidentally put his hand into one of my car’s cupholders. I heard a slight crinkling of paper.
What the hell? I know I cleaned out my car and I know for a fact there were no random wrappers, receipts, or napkins in this car. George seemed to sense my confusion and stopped.
“Everything ok?” he asked between heavy breaths.
“Yeah,” I said. “I just don’t know how there’s a piece of paper in here. I swear, I cleaned this out before we met up tonight.”
George chuckled. “It’s fine, babe,” he said, picking it up. “You probably just missed something. It happened. It’s probably just…some…receipt…”
George’s voice trailed off as he read it.
“What is it?” I asked.
“You tell me,” he answered, giving me the paper. Written on the small, credit card sized paper was a phone number with the name “DYLAN” written in handwriting I was all too familiar with. I stared at it blankly. Did this Hello guy break into my car just to put this here? There was no sign of a break-in. Did George do this? Is this some joke? What the hell was going on?
“So,” he said, his arms crossed. “Who’s Dylan?”
“I…I have no idea,” I stammered.
“Then how come you have his number?”
George looked genuinely upset. I don’t think he was behind this.
“Ok,” I said, trying to figure out how to explain this. “So, uh…”
George gave me a look that said, “Come on, get to it already.”
“Alright, so I got this letter in the mail from someone I do not know and it had a piece of paper that only said ‘HELLO’ and then the paper somehow got into my room and then I thought Craig moved it there somehow and threw it out and now the person behind that piece of paper somehow put this one in my car because it has the same writing style,” I said in a rush.
George took a second to take it all in. “That’s…certainly an explanation,” he said.
“It’s the truth, I swear,” I said.
“Alright.”
“You believe me?”
George shrugged. “It’s an insane explanation, but I’m willing to go with it for now.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you,” I said.
We both sat silently for a moment before I asked, “So…wanna pick up where we left off?”
George shook his head. “Not really in the mood anymore, sorry. I should probably get home, actually.”
George gave me a quick peck goodbye, and then went back to his car. Meanwhile, I sat in my car staring at the piece of paper. I racked my brains, trying to figure out if I knew anyone named Dylan. I think I had a friend in elementary school named Dylan. Or was it Declan? Considering he used to put crayons up his nose, I doubt he was clever enough to pull off something like this.
I really didn’t want to look into this further. I wanted to move on with my life and focus on other things. But this…whatever this is seems to want my attention. And they did give me a way to contact them.
I dialed the number from the paper into my phone. It rang a couple of times, and then someone picked up.
“Hello?” I said.
“He-llo.” The voice at the other end sounded artificial, like one of those text-to-speech programs. It stressed each syllable like they were separate words.
“Who is this?” I asked.
“He-llo,” the voice repeated.
“How do you know me?”
“He-llo.”
And with that, the call dropped. I tried calling again but got a “This number is no longer in service” message. Annoyed, I decided to Google the number and the name Dylan. It led me to someone named Dylan Rogers. A little more Googling led me to discover that Dylan was recently found dead in his home. No one knows who did it and the case is still ongoing.
The only lead cops have is that Dylan was found holding a credit card sized piece of paper in his hand, but it was too covered in blood to make out anything on it.
This information rattled around in my head as I drove home. I had no idea what to do with it. Do I call the cops?
“Hello, 911? Yes, I keep getting pieces of paper that say ‘Hello’ on them except for one that had a name and a phone number that belonged to a dead guy. Why, no, I haven’t had anything to drink? Why do you ask?”
Yeah, that’d go great.
A part of me wanted to call George and tell him about this, but I decided against it. It’d just look like me trying to add onto an already ridiculous excuse. I wasn’t sure who to tell about this. My friends were all busy and my family disowned me after I came out. I was basically on my own.
I decided I’d investigate this more when I got home, maybe even submit my situation as a tip in the Dylan Rogers case. I just knew I had to do something.
After a very stressful drive, I finally got home. As soon as I walked inside, I noticed something felt…off. I turned on the lights.
“Hello?” I called out. “Anyone there?”
Nothing. Dead quiet. I slowly made my way from my living room into my kitchen. I could see Craig’s silhouette lying on the floor of the kitchen, probably sleeping. As I stepped into the kitchen, my foot slipped on something. I grabbed a counter for balance. What the hell did I slip on? I know my floors were clean when I left.
I turned on the kitchen lights and discovered two things.
First, Craig wasn’t sleeping. He was dead. His throat had been brutally sliced open. His eyes were still open, stuck in abject terror.
Second, I know what I slipped in.
Craig’s blood.
The blood itself wasn’t splattered randomly on the floor. No, it was used to write out a message on the floor. It was a simple message, only being one word, written in large, shaky, capital letters:
“HELLO”