She answered a phone call from her own number.

Jessica Miller’s phone rattled against the wooden table in her shadowed apartment, the screen’s glow slicing through the dark. She reached for it, expecting Michael’s usual goodnight text. Instead, her own name and number blinked on the display.


Jessica Miller.


A slight chill ran down her spine.


A glitch? A prank?


Her thumb hovered over “Decline”, but curiosity got the better of her and she answered the call.


“Hello?” she whispered.


Static screeched, shrill and jagged, like nails dragging across glass. Then, a voice—hers, but roughened, cracked by time—slithered through the noise.


“Jessica, skip work tomorrow. Fire’s coming. You’ll see.”


A low chuckle followed.


Then silence.


Jessica froze, the phone trembling in her hand. Her heart beat in her throat. She stared at the screen, willing it to change, to return to something ordinary. She redialled her number, but it rang into an empty void. No voicemail. No answer.


“Some idiot’s messing with me,” she muttered, a shaky laugh escaping her lips. But the voice—her voice—clung to her mind like a burr, sharp and mocking.


Sleep was a lost cause.


The next morning, Jessica called in sick. Her voice was brittle, her excuse half-baked. She paced her apartment like a caged thing, refreshing news apps, whispering to herself that it was nothing.


Then, the headline struck like a hammer:


Fire Contained at Downtown Office Complex.


Her workplace.


An anonymous tip had triggered the evacuation just in time. No deaths, though someone from HR had suffered burns trying to retrieve files. Jessica’s breath hitched. Her phone slipped from her grip and clattered to the floor.


Had she done that? Warned herself?


How?


The question burrowed into her, relentless.


Back at work the next day, Jessica unravelled like thread pulled too tight. Papers piled on her desk. Coffee spattered her blouse. Every ping from her phone made her jump.


Claire, her manager, leaned in, brows drawn. “Jess, you look like hell. Everything okay?”


“Rough night,” she murmured, her smile tight.


She couldn’t tell Claire about the call. They’d think she was losing it. Hell, maybe she was. Her phone felt like a grenade in her pocket, and she checked it obsessively, dreading the return of that cursed number.


That night, alone and jittery, Jessica plunged into the internet’s shadowed corners. Time travel threads. Quantum physics wikis. Paranormal forums filled with digital static and desperation.


One post caught her attention:

𝑰𝒇 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒐𝒘𝒏 𝒏𝒖𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓 𝒄𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒔 𝒚𝒐𝒖, 𝒅𝒐𝒏'𝒕 𝒂𝒏𝒔𝒘𝒆𝒓. 𝑰𝒕'𝒔 𝒚𝒐𝒖. 𝑭𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒘𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒃𝒓𝒐𝒌𝒆𝒏.


Her throat closed.


She snapped the laptop shut. “Bullshit,” she whispered, but the word didn’t stick.


A week passed.


Silence.


Jessica clung to the prank theory, clutched it like a child does a threadbare blanket. She even laughed about it at lunch with Michael, though her fingers shook around the fork.


Then, deep in the night, her phone buzzed.


Her own number.


She stared at it, ice spreading through her veins. Against all reason, she answered.


Static clicking. Then a whisper—her voice again, cruel and cracked:

“You can’t run from me.”


A text followed.

𝒀𝒐𝒖'𝒓𝒆 𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒂𝒍𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒏𝒐𝒘


Then another:

𝑫𝒐𝒏'𝒕 𝒕𝒓𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒉𝒊𝒎.


More texts poured in, each one a needle:

𝑯𝒆 𝒍𝒊𝒆𝒅.

𝒀𝒐𝒖'𝒍𝒍 𝒓𝒆𝒈𝒓𝒆𝒕 𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒚𝒊𝒏𝒈.

𝑳𝒐𝒐𝒌 𝒄𝒍𝒐𝒔𝒆𝒓. 𝑯𝒆'𝒔 𝒉𝒊𝒅𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈.


Jessica deleted them, her breaths shallow. “Not real,” she whispered. “Not real.” But they kept coming.


She switched off her phone, grabbed her car keys, and drove to the police station, her knuckles white around the wheel.


At the front desk, Officer Patel listened with an amused smirk. “Your own number? Could be a scam.”


She pulled her phone records. Blank. No calls. No messages.


“That’s impossible,” Jessica hissed, voice shaking. “I saw them.”


The station lights flickered, buzzing ominously.


Then—a whisper. Faint, but real.


“Jessica…”


Her own voice. Teasing. Taunting.


Jessica bolted.


She sped home, heart battering her ribs. Locked every door. Bolted every window. She paced the apartment like prey sensing the hunter.


She searched for her phone—sure she hadn't left it at the station—but it wasn’t there.


Instead, she found a note.


Scrawled in her own handwriting:


𝑯𝒆'𝒔 𝒍𝒚𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒐 𝒚𝒐𝒖. 𝑨𝒔𝒌 𝒂𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝑩𝒆𝒄𝒌𝒚.


He.


Michael?


Her fiancé.


The man who knew her better than anyone. The man she trusted with her future.


Her fingers crumpled the paper as suspicion bloomed like rot. Her thoughts spiralled—his strange absences, the odd calls he sometimes ignored, the locked drawer in his study.


She drove to his flat, tyres screeching on the curb. He opened the door, hair mussed, eyes bleary with sleep.


“Jess?” His voice was soft. “What’s wrong?”


She shoved the note at him. “What does this mean?”


His brow furrowed. “You wrote this?”


“You think I don’t recognise my own handwriting?” Her voice cracked like glass.


“I don’t get it. Jess, I swear—I haven’t done anything. Are you okay?”


His calm voice scraped at her nerves. It felt... rehearsed. Hollow.


“You’re hiding something,” she snapped, stepping back.


"Or someone... Becky right?" It sounded more like a statement than a question.


Michael's eye widened slightly in alarm. "I can explain..." he began.


“Jess...” He reached for her, but she recoiled.


“I need space.”


She turned and fled.


His voice followed her down the stairs. “Jess, wait... Please just listen"


But she was already in the car, hands trembling on the wheel.



She drove to her mother’s house.


The moment she stepped in, she felt it—a strange hollowness, like the walls themselves had been holding their breath.


Her mother looked up from the sofa. “Jessica? What’s wrong?”


Jessica dropped onto the couch, emotion catching her off guard. “Michael is cheating on me.”


Her mother’s eyes widened. “Oh my God… Are you sure?”


“I confronted him. He denied it at first, till I mentioned the name "Becky" then his eyes widened in surprise.

And that told me everything I needed to know."


Somehow, saying it didn't hurt as much she thought it would.



Footsteps pattered down the stairs.


Her cousin Tasha appeared, tying her bonnet.


“I never liked that Michael of a guy,” she muttered, flopping onto the other armchair.


Her mother reached for Jessica’s hand. “Is that all that’s bothering you?”


Jessica hesitated. Her heart thundered. “No,” she finally whispered. “There’s something else.”


They waited.


Jessica spilled it all—every strange call, the messages, the voice that sounded like hers but twisted, hateful. The fire. The warning. The note.


They stared at her, silent.


“Jessica,” her mum said slowly, “You’ve been under a lot of pressure. You need to rest.”


“She’s right,” Tasha added. “All this work stress… it’s getting to your head.”


“I’m not crazy!” Jessica snapped, standing abruptly. “I know what I heard!”


Her mum tried to calm her, but Jessica was already grabbing her car keys from the table.


“Where are you going?” Tasha asked.


“To Emily’s. At least she listens.”


She slammed the door behind her.



The silence in the car was so loud.


Then—her phone rang.


She whipped around.


It was on the passenger seat.


Glowing.


Her number.


Jessica answered, pulse pounding.


“What do you want?” she whispered.


Static.


Then—her voice. Gruff. Cruel.


“Don’t hang up.”


Jessica gripped the steering wheel. “Who are you?”


A jagged laugh.


“You. Months from now. The version who watched everything burn. I’m here to remind you—you ruin it. You ruin me.” "I was you. You will be me. You don't avoid it, you become it."


Her knuckles blanched.


“You’re lying.”


“Oh, am I?” the voice crooned. “You’re cracking already. You can feel it. The doubt. The fear. You’ll break it all.”


Jessica’s car swerved, nearly colliding with an oncoming truck. Horns blared. Screams. She gasped, jerking the wheel back.


“What do you want from me?” she cried.


“You’ll see,” the voice said, a sneer curling in every syllable.


The line went dead.


Jessica slammed the brakes, car skidding to a halt on the shoulder. Her breath came in ragged gasps.


She looked in the rear-view mirror.


The face that stared back—


It was hers.


But wrong.


The same eyes. The same jawline. But twisted. Cruel.


The smirk.


The glint of something soulless.


Jessica screamed.


And in the glass, her twisted smile remained – long after she'd looked away.