I Should Have Listened

Am I losing my mind?

A flash of lightning split the sky.

For an instant, the street appeared again.

And something was standing at the far end of it.

I blinked.

Darkness swallowed everything.

Another flash.

The figure was closer.

My breath caught.

It hadn’t moved.

It couldn’t have.

There hadn’t been enough time.

Thunder rolled overhead.

I took a step backward.

The rain hammered against the pavement so hard it looked like the street was dissolving around me.

Then I noticed something that made my stomach twist.

The houses.

Every single one of them was dark.

Not just the lights.

The windows.

The porches.

The cars in the driveways.

It was as if nobody had ever lived there.

As if the entire neighborhood had been abandoned years ago.

Another flash.

The figure was gone.

Relief surged through me.

Then a voice spoke directly behind my ear.

“Don’t turn around.”

I screamed and spun anyway.

Nothing.

Only rain.

Only darkness.

My heart pounded so hard it hurt.

The voice came again.

Not from behind me this time.

From my pocket.

I looked down.

My phone.

The phone I had dropped inside the apartment.

The screen glowed through the rain.

11:14 PM.

Unknown Caller.

My hands shook as I answered.

Static hissed through the speaker.

Then my voice whispered,

“You shouldn’t have left.”

“What?”

A long silence.

When the voice spoke again, it sounded weaker.

Farther away.

“Look at the journal.”

“I don’t have the journal.”

Another pause.

Then:

“Yes, you do.”

Cold spread through my chest.

Slowly, I lowered my gaze.

Something black was tucked beneath my arm.

The leather notebook.

The same journal I had left on the kitchen table.

Rainwater dripped from its cover.

My fingers trembled as I opened it.

The pages flipped violently.

Stopping on a fresh entry.

One that hadn’t been there before.

The ink looked wet.

As if it had been written seconds ago.

At the top of the page, in my handwriting, were six words:

She’s not following you anymore.

My stomach tightened.

Beneath it, another sentence slowly appeared across the page.

Letter by letter.

As though an invisible hand was writing it.

Turn around. She’s behind you now.

I didn’t turn around this time.

I ran.

Rain lashed against my face as I sprinted toward my apartment building. My feet pounded against the pavement, each step echoing through the empty street. Or maybe that sound wasn’t my footsteps.

Maybe it was my heart.

The harder I ran, the more panic clawed its way into my chest.

Because the apartment complex wasn’t getting any closer.

It remained exactly where it was.

The same distance.

The same dark silhouette at the end of the road.

No matter how fast I ran.

“What?” I gasped.

I pushed harder.

Faster.

Still nothing.

The building never moved.

Finally, my lungs burned so badly I was forced to stop.

Bent over and trembling, I struggled to catch my breath.

Then I looked down.

My stomach dropped.

I hadn’t moved at all.

I was standing in the exact same spot.

The same cracked section of pavement.

The same abandoned street.

The same dead streetlight looming overhead.

Rain poured from the sky, stinging my face and soaking through my clothes.

“What is happening?” I whispered.

The journal was still clutched tightly in my hand.

With shaking fingers, I looked down at the open pages.

The paper was blank.

For a moment.

Then words slowly bled across the page.

IT’S TOO LATE.

My breath caught.

“What do you mean, too late?”

The ink shifted.

The letters twisted and rearranged themselves.

I stared in horror.

The journal was answering me.

Desperation finally overwhelmed my fear.

I looked up at the empty street and screamed into the darkness.

“Who are you?!”

Thunder cracked overhead.

“What do you want from me?!”

The journal trembled in my hands.

New words appeared.

I AM YOU.

I felt the blood drain from my face.

More writing crawled across the paper.

I wanted you to listen.

I tried to warn you.

My hands began to shake uncontrollably.

“No…”

The next sentence appeared slower than the others.

As if whoever was writing it didn’t want to.

Every time, it ends the same way.

Confusion and terror slammed into me like a physical blow.

Every time?

My eyes darted across the page.

“What does that mean?”

For several seconds, nothing happened.

Then a final line appeared.

One letter at a time.

Because this isn’t the first time you’ve been here.

The rain seemed to stop.

The world went silent.

My throat tightened.

A horrible thought wormed its way into my mind.

One I didn’t want to say out loud.

But I couldn’t stop myself.

“Am I dead?”