Episode 3: The Call from Herself
1336 Words
The checkout process at the Blue Star Inn felt like it took forever. Aria stood at the front desk in the same damp clothes she’d worn the night before, hair tangled, eyes bloodshot. The clerk barely looked up from his newspaper as she slid the key across the counter. He muttered something about no refunds for early departure. She didn’t care. She just wanted out.
Outside, the morning was raw and gray. The rain had paused, but the sky hung low, threatening more. The gravel parking lot was puddled and slick. She ordered another rideshare, this one to take her back across the city to her apartment. She didn’t know where else to go. She had no family nearby, no close friends she felt ready to dump this on yet. Lena would believe her, maybe, but explaining it out loud still felt impossible.
The ride was silent. The driver glanced at her a couple times in the rearview mirror but said nothing. She stared out the window at the wet streets sliding by—storefronts with neon signs still glowing, early commuters hunched under umbrellas, traffic lights bleeding red and green across the puddles. Every reflective surface made her flinch: car windows, shop glass, the black screen of her powered-off phone.
She kept it off the whole way.
When the car pulled up outside her building, she hesitated before getting out. The old brick facade looked exactly the same—faded green awning, buzzer panel with half the names scratched out, mailboxes stuffed with flyers. It felt both familiar and foreign, like walking back into a nightmare you’d only half-woken from.
She paid the driver and stepped onto the sidewalk. The air smelled of wet concrete and exhaust. She took the stairs slowly, keys clenched in her fist.
The hallway on the third floor was quiet. Someone’s TV murmured behind a door. She unlocked 3B with shaking hands.
The apartment hit her with stale air and the faint scent of chamomile tea gone cold. Everything was exactly as she’d left it—phone and keys missing from the counter, of course, but otherwise untouched. The bathroom door stood open at the end of the hall, mirror visible from the living room like a dark eye.
She closed the front door behind her and leaned against it, breathing hard.
“Okay,” she said aloud. “You’re home. You’re safe. It was just… something. A prank. A gas leak. Something.”
She didn’t believe it.
She dropped her keys on the counter, went to the kitchen, and poured a glass of water with hands that wouldn’t stop trembling. Drank it in one go. Poured another.
Her phone was still off. She needed to charge it—dead battery meant no rideshare, no emergency calls, no contact with the outside world. She plugged it into the wall charger beside the couch.
While it powered up, she paced.
She avoided the bathroom entirely. Went to her bedroom instead, changed into dry clothes—jeans, a soft hoodie, thick socks. Normal clothes. Grounding clothes. She pulled her hair into a messy bun and splashed more water on her face at the kitchen sink, carefully not looking at the dark window above it.
The phone buzzed to life on the counter.
Notifications flooded in—missed calls from Lena, worried texts, a reminder about a client deadline she’d already blown, spam emails. One unknown number from last night, timestamped 3:17 a.m., the exact time she’d been asleep in the motel.
Her stomach dropped.
She deleted it without listening to the voicemail it had left.
She needed to do something normal. Anything. She opened her laptop, tried to work on the book cover revision. The cursor blinked. She stared at the blank artboard for ten minutes without moving.
The apartment felt too quiet.
She turned on music—low, instrumental stuff she used for focus. It helped a little.
An hour passed. Then two.
She made a sandwich she didn’t eat. Drank more water. Texted Lena a vague “I’m okay, just under the weather” lie.
By early afternoon the clouds had broken a little. Pale sunlight filtered through the blinds, striping the floor in dusty gold. It should have felt comforting. It didn’t.
She was sitting on the couch, scrolling mindlessly on her phone, when it rang.
Video call.
Incoming from her own number.
Her own contact photo stared back at her—smiling Aria from two years ago, taken on a rare good day with her mom.
The name below it: Aria Thompson (Me).
Her blood turned to ice.
She declined the call.
It rang again immediately.
Same contact.
She declined again.
Third time, her thumb hovered. Some morbid curiosity—or maybe sheer exhaustion—made her swipe accept.
The screen filled with a face.
Her face.
But the background was wrong. It was her bathroom—the one down the hall—tiled walls, flickering overhead light, mirror visible behind the figure.
The reflection—Aria’s reflection—smiled slowly.
“Hello, Aria.”
The voice was hers, but the mouth moved half a second late, like bad dubbing. The eyes were too dark, pupils swallowing the hazel.
She couldn’t speak.
“You can’t run from your own shadow,” the reflection said softly. Its head tilted in that wrong, puppet way. “I’m always right behind you.”
The call ended.
Aria dropped the phone like it burned. It clattered to the floor.
She sat frozen, breath coming in shallow bursts.
The apartment was silent again except for the low music.
She stood slowly, walked to the bedroom on legs that felt like wood. She needed proof. Needed to know she wasn’t losing her mind completely.
She opened the closet door.
Inside, hanging clothes, shoe boxes, an old suitcase.
Her phone buzzed on the floor in the living room—another notification.
She ignored it.
She was about to close the closet when something caught her eye.
On the carpeted floor of the closet, half hidden under a fallen sweater, was a small stack of printed photos.
She didn’t own a printer.
She crouched, heart pounding, and picked them up with shaking fingers.
The top one was a close-up of her sleeping in the motel bed last night—mouth slightly open, hair across the pillow, time-stamped 3:42 a.m.
The next: her sitting on the motel bed, wrapped in the towel, staring at the bathroom door.
Another: her standing at the motel sink, splashing water on her face—just minutes before she’d seen the writing.
The last one: taken from inside this very closet, aimed through the crack in the door. It showed her from behind, sitting on the living-room couch earlier today, phone in hand, back to the bedroom.
Time-stamped twenty minutes ago.
She dropped the photos like they were on fire.
Someone—or something—had been in the apartment while she was gone.
Or while she was here.
She backed out of the bedroom, eyes darting to every shadow, every corner.
The phone buzzed again on the floor.
She picked it up with numb fingers.
Gallery open. New photos—the same ones she’d just found printed.
She deleted them frantically.
They deleted.
But she knew they’d been real.
Her hands shook so badly she almost dropped the phone again.
She couldn’t stay here.
But she couldn’t leave either—not without help.
She opened the phone app with clumsy thumbs.
Dialed 911.
The operator answered calmly: “911, what is your emergency?”
“There’s someone in my apartment,” Aria said, voice cracking. “Or… something. I found photos. Someone’s been watching me. Taking pictures while I sleep. Please send someone.”
She gave the address, her name, stayed on the line until the operator said officers were on the way.
She sat on the couch clutching the phone, eyes fixed on the bedroom door.
The closet door inside it stood slightly ajar.
She hadn’t left it that way.
- Writer
