Title: Phoning Faust

Author: Sophie Mutiara Nova

Publisher: NineStar Press

Release Date: 06/02/2026

Heat Level: 1 – No Sex

Pairing: F/NB

Length: 208

Genre: Paranormal, Genre/lit, paranormal, urban fantasy, lesbian, demisexual, bisexual, genderfluid, trans, devil, pandemic

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Description

Queer mixed Indonesian college student Dian Faust attempts to call the suicide hotline only to dial the wrong number, her finger slipping and typing in six three times (the mark of the Devil). The mysterious voice on the other end of the line is revealed to be a charming scam caller named Memphis with a penchant for chattiness, trapped in a dingy bus stop bathroom, wanting to learn a concerning amount about the lonely Dian’s life.

But this scam caller is more than just a Mr. Robot hacker wannabe—a sinister presence lurks in the pixels on Dian’s laptop screen in the shadows of her apartment. The Devil themself has come to collect Dian’s soul, and “Memphis” is actually Mephistopheles—Hell’s foremost golden-tongued agent and notorious liar.

In this loose retelling of Goethe’s Faust, will Dian save her soul before time runs out—or will she fall prey to the renowned storytelling deception of the infamous Mephistopheles?

Excerpt

Phoning Faust
Sophie Mutiara Nova © 2026
All Rights Reserved

This is not a cry for help.

This is a scream.

Please, please, please.

I don’t want to die alone.

The suicide hotline is taking too long. Another shining example of the American medical system as I stare, dissociating, at my black-polish-chipped nails surrounding the dimly lit version of my nighttime phone screen. The string of unfamiliar text blinks blankly back at me. Not judging. Not caring. On my empty gold-whorl desk, a laptop. The web browser which has “I WANT TO DIE” in a Google search next to a second tab that screams: “HELP ME.”

I don’t want to.

I don’t want to.

I don’t…alone…

I sigh as the ringtone keeps going, going, going, gone. It’s a little comforting, the faded buzz like a lukewarm high in my brain as I shiver while encased in sweat. It feels cold tonight even as my body runs hot. I’m always cold even in the heat of summer, like the vampire in Nosferatu, shadow tendrils trailing along white walls. I’m also all cried out at this point, empty as the bottom of a Styrofoam cup. Monologuing to my own reflection in the mirror like Gen Z Hamlet (to be or not to be) so at least someone listens.

I stare at the empty cardboard box across from me with a smiley face note on it. My roommate, singular, had long packed up after we got the pandemic alert. All our courses cancelled as the oh-so-lucky graduating class of 2020, sending us off to an uncertain one-week vacation while they rebooted school for Zoom classes.

My roommate, Talia, and I had gotten along decently for the past three years, time flying by in a whirl of late-night fast-food adventures and giggling over TV show reruns. Though she’d taken to more emotional distance as my senioritis turned to ennui turned to something much worse. Something that probably required a clinical diagnosis—but hell if I was going to haul ass to the campus medical ward with COVID on the rise. They had bigger problems than my mental health right now to deal with.

Talia returned home to parents who are worried about her, relatives who rely on her college knowledge to make the world a better place. Time and visas and the pandemic are all extra unkind to her as an international student, even if she is from Canada. We’d bonded fast over both being Southeast Asian—I was part Indonesian, and she was Filipina, and we’d often joke over the word selamat meaning “hello” in Indonesian but “thank you” in Tagalog. Switching dinner responsibilities and struggling through half-remembered family recipes when we were homesick. I always begged her to bring extra hopia from her trips visiting aunties, and whenever I fried kerupuk I’d find a few missing after I got home. It was a symbiotic relationship.

But I miss Talia—the void she left behind—as I stare at her smiley-face note, the spare coffee maker she left even if I don’t have any of those special tinfoil cups to put in it. I barely have enough energy to eat microwave oatmeal and mi goreng lately.

Which leads to me here, stuck in lockdown, surrounded by crappy dorm room furniture and microwave, nonperishable meals. A vacant room where Talia used to be. I’d insisted on staying out the rest of my lease even if campus was nonoperational. My parents are maybe an eight-hour drive from here, but I told them I wanted to quarantine a bit before going home to see them. My mom’s immunocompromised, and I don’t want to risk giving her anything. Plus, home has always been a bit tense since I was outed a while ago as queer when my aunt saw me in the college pamphlets during Pride Week—Pride flags smeared across my grinning cheeks in vibrant, technicolor paint. I’d rather let that conversation go to voicemail, metaphorically and in what remained of my reality.

I reframe my time alone here as a martyr’s sacrifice, a saintly retreat, like all those macabre stories I learned from Sunday school. Like Joan of Arc burning in her armor, cursing out the enemies of Satan and giving up her life for all of France. Or maybe she was crazy like I’m crazy. Maybe I’m just as bad as her, continuing a cycle of women who thought they had to die rather than live and be “too much.”

The number you have dialed is not responding, please hang up and try—

I hang up.

I don’t want to try again.

I stare at the bottle of aspirin. Our generation’s version of ambrosia or perhaps snake oil, a cure-all that could vanquish your average colds, flus, fevers, and everything but the mysterious virus devastating America. The plague is upon us and all I have are crumpled masks from our school health office in the corner and vitamin C packets—like that will keep me safe. Global warming is getting worse, world events are shitty, but I’m alive. A lot of people don’t have that luxury.

God, I’m a shithead.

I don’t deserve to…to…

I stare at my open laptop screen. The morbid searches. I don’t deserve to do this. People in the world are really suffering. Afraid and huddled together for warmth against a cruel, unforgiving backdrop of hellish global torment. I don’t deserve to cry about this. Cry about what? Being lonely? Being “big sad”?

Why do I feel so empty inside?

I shake my head as though that’ll clear it, brushing away the flyaway bangs at the corners of my newly pierced eyebrows. I’d DIYed a haircut I’d grabbed off social media, wanting to look more rocker chick but instead, just looking like a little kid with craft scissors. That was okay. It would grow out soon. My mom’s hair always grew out thicker. My dad was bald. He said I had good hair—shame I kept dyeing it and chopping it and dyeing it again in my quest to find myself in queer person’s second puberty. Change helped me feel better…

…for a little while at least.

I take in a deep breath. Suck it up, bitch. And I type in the number of the emergency hotline again. But my fingers type too fast, vision a bit hazy, and I accidentally press too many 6s. Three of them, in fact. My blood runs cold.

My mom would call it the devil’s number.

Not knowing what possesses me, I press enter. The number rings…

…and rings…

And finally, someone picks up. A few breaths into the receiver and I’m blushing already, unsure how to handle speaking to another person. I haven’t seen anyone since Talia left in a flurry of quick tears and hasty care packages. “H-hello?” I stammer.

“Hello.” The voice that purrs back is silky, soft. Full of sensuality like the sex kittens in all those movies from the 1960s, lounging on a lace canopy bed as big bad Mr. Super Spy comes back from one of his missions. Dressed in nothing but a diaphanous nightgown. But there’s something else to her voice, a vocal fry undertone, like a punk rock babe singing about crimson and clover. “To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”

Jesus. It seems I have accidentally called an escort. My thumb hovers over the End Call button as I stare, my cheeks fully on fire now at the traitorous phone. “S-sorry. It seems I’ve called the wrong number.”

“Or the right one, baby. We could go at this all night.” Then, an ungodly hacking sound, like a black cat with its hackles raised in an arch, coughing up a hairball. “Sonuvabitch, sorry. That voice is really hard to keep up.”

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NineStar Press | Books2Read

Meet the Author

Queer Midwest emo turned Scream-Queen-Lover (in real life and onscreen) Sophie Mutiara Nova/Whittemore is a half-Indonesian, SLE-diagnosed Writer-Director. They are the Writing Fellow of the ACEX TV Initiative and Finalist of the Emmy’s TV Academy Foundation Directing Program. Their TV series have been selected at the PAGE International Screenwriting Awards, ScreenCraft and more. They’ve screened in festivals internationally and across the US and won the Los Angeles Asian Film Awards. Their monster book CATCH LILI TOO was spotlighted by GCLS (known for honoring Allison Bechdel). Originally from Chicago, Sophie’s now based in Los Angeles ( Dartmouth College BFA & MFA Film Directing CalArts). When not writing or rocking out, they perform Indonesian traditional dance with Burat Wangi.

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