Don’t answer the phone
I pressed the phone to my ear.
For a moment, all I heard was static.
A low hiss.
The sound of rain.
Then breathing.
My blood turned to ice.
Because it sounded exactly like mine.
I couldn’t speak.
Couldn’t move.
The darkness around me felt suddenly enormous, as if the walls of my apartment had been pushed miles away.
Then a voice crackled through the speaker.
A voice I recognized instantly.
My own.
“Listen carefully,” it said.
The words came out strained and exhausted, like whoever was speaking hadn’t slept in days.
“You have less time than I did.”
Every hair on my body stood up.
I glanced toward the journal lying open on the kitchen table.
The pages were turning by themselves.
Slowly.
One after another.
As if an invisible hand were searching for something.
My grip tightened around the phone.
“What is this?” I whispered. “Who are you?”
The voice laughed.
Not because it was amused.
Because it was terrified.
“I’m you.”
Lightning flashed outside.
For a split second, the apartment lit up.
And standing at the end of the hallway was a woman wearing my face.
The darkness returned before I could scream.
The voice on the phone inhaled sharply.
“Oh God.”
A pause.
Then three words that made my stomach drop.
“She found you.”
I froze, staring into my own face.
It was me.
But not quite.
The woman standing at the end of the hallway looked older somehow. More worn down. Dark circles hollowed out her eyes, and her expression carried the kind of exhaustion that comes from surviving something terrible.
For a moment, I forgot I was even holding the phone.
Then a sharp voice exploded through the speaker.
“Run!”
The word snapped me out of my paralysis.
Adrenaline surged through my body.
I turned and bolted for the front door, my phone slipping from my hand and clattering to the floor behind me. I didn’t stop to pick it up.
I ran.
Down the hallway.
Through the lobby.
Out into the storm.
The cold air hit me like a wall.
I stumbled onto the sidewalk and spun around, expecting to see someone chasing me.
But there was nothing.
No footsteps.
No shadow.
No figure wearing my face.
In fact, there was no one at all.
The street was swallowed by darkness.
The streetlights were dead.
No headlights cut through the rain.
No houses glowed from behind their windows.
No distant sounds of traffic.
Nothing.
The entire neighborhood looked abandoned.
I stood there trembling, struggling to catch my breath.
Rain poured down around me as a single thought echoed through my mind.
Am I losing my mind?