When she woke up, there were 17 voicemails from a stranger. She stared at the glowing screen, the number beside the voicemail icon blinking almost cruelly. Seventeen. Not one. Not two. Seventeen. The morning light bled into her room reluctantly, as if it too wanted to leave her in the dark. Her throat still tasted of last night’s silence — the silence of a house emptied of her mother, a silence made final by the funeral. She hadn’t expected to sleep at all, but exhaustion had devoured her. Now the phone, with its heavy notification, demanded to be answered. Her hand trembled as she reached for it. The first message began almost immediately. 


Voicemail 1: 


A woman’s voice, low and careful. “You don’t know me, but you need to listen. What I’m going to tell you… it matters. Please, don’t delete these.” The voice was calm, too calm. Acia frowned, heart beating harder than it should for something so ordinary. A stranger reaching out wasn’t unusual; wrong numbers happened every day. But there was an intimacy to the tone that unsettled her, as if the caller had been waiting for her to wake up. She saved the message and moved to the next. 


Voicemail 2: 


“I remember the smell of your mother’s kitchen, the way she used to hum without realizing it. She thought no one noticed, but I did. You did too, didn’t you? She hummed when she wanted to keep from crying. She wanted to sound busy, but really… she was hiding.” Acia’s blood ran cold. That detail — the humming — was private, small, something she had carried silently. No one else knew, not even her closest friend. Her thumb hovered over the delete button, then drew back. The third message clicked alive. 


Voicemail 3: 


“I know yesterday was her funeral. I know what you wore — black dress, sleeves too long, like you were trying to vanish inside it. You stood by the second pew, not the first, because you didn’t want people staring at you. You told yourself you’d stay strong, but when the casket closed you couldn’t breathe. And you hate yourself for not crying harder, don’t you?” Acia’s stomach tightened. The phone slipped slightly in her hand. How could a stranger have seen her? The service was small, family only. She sat on the edge of her bed, staring at the floorboards. One message after another waited, and she was both terrified and compelled to hear them. The fourth came in softer, nearly a whisper. 


Voicemail 4: 


“You dream of her sometimes, don’t you? Dreams where she’s alive, still scolding you gently, still reaching for your cheek with hands that smelled of flour. You wake and the grief slams you like a wave. You think you’re drowning. But grief is only the beginning. You’ll understand soon.” Something deep in her chest began to ache. Whoever this was, they weren’t mocking her. They were peeling her open. By the seventh message, fear and fascination blurred. 


Voicemail 7: 


“Do you remember the night of the storm, when the lights went out? You sat with her by the window, lightning cutting the sky, and she told you stories she swore were true. She said we inherit more than blood — we inherit choices. Mistakes. You laughed then, because you thought she was being dramatic. You were wrong. You’ll see.” Acia pressed pause, her pulse racing. That memory was hers alone. The storm had knocked out power across town. Her mother had lit candles, weaving stories with a voice both playful and serious. They had laughed, but Acia remembered her mother’s eyes then — darker, as if holding back something unsaid. She hadn’t thought of that night in years. Who could possibly know? She stood, pacing the room. Outside, the street was already alive with weekday sounds: a barking dog, a neighbor’s car engine. The ordinariness of it clashed violently with the voice in her ear. She should call the police. She should block the number. Yet something in her resisted. The voicemails weren’t threats — not exactly. They were confessions. Invitations. By the tenth, her hands shook as she listened. 


Voicemail 10:  


“Your mother carried secrets she never gave you. I did too. The difference is, I’m finally telling you. Because secrets rot, Acia. They eat at the walls inside until there’s nothing left to hold them. Don’t you feel it already? That hollow where love should be? That sharp edge of guilt, though you can’t name what you’ve done? It’s coming for you. It’s always been coming.” The sound of her own name spoken in the message froze her. She replayed it, again and again. The stranger had said her name. Not in passing, not like they had stumbled across it, but as though it belonged on their tongue. Her chest tightened with a fear she couldn’t explain. By the time she reached the twelfth message, tears blurred her vision. 


Voicemail 12: 


“I used to think if I just buried it deep enough, it would vanish. That I could grow around it, like a tree around rusted wire. But it doesn’t vanish, does it? It shapes you. It pulls at you. It makes you smaller than you should have been. Your mother knew. She tried to protect you. And I… I let her down.” Acia paused, pressing her palm against her forehead. Every message felt heavier, like a hand pushing her closer to something inevitable. Her mother had always seemed to carry shadows — moments where her gaze would drift, where words would catch in her throat. But she had never explained. Now, through these voicemails, pieces of something unknown scraped to the surface. The fifteenth voicemail broke her. 


Voicemail 15:  


“She forgave you. She always forgave you. Even when you didn’t know what you’d done. That’s what makes it worse, doesn’t it? The way she looked at you — not with anger, not with blame. Only sorrow. Only love. Do you understand how unbearable that is? To be forgiven for something unforgivable?” Acia sobbed, phone clutched against her ear. Her throat felt raw. Forgiven? For what? Her mother’s face rose in her memory — tired but gentle, lined with years of working, sacrificing, loving. Her forgiveness had been constant, unspoken, woven into every gesture. But this caller spoke as though Acia carried a crime. And somehow, in the trembling spaces of her grief, she almost believed it. The sixteenth voicemail was the hardest to hear. 


Voicemail 16: 


“I can’t keep speaking in riddles. I owe you truth. The night it happened, I thought I was protecting you. I thought if I stayed silent, we could both survive it. But silence isn’t safety — it’s a prison. Every year it’s grown heavier. Every day. I can’t carry it much longer. I know you feel it too, even if you don’t name it. That crack inside you. That guilt you think is grief alone. It isn’t.” The message cut abruptly, as though the caller had hesitated before finishing. Acia sat perfectly still. Her breath came shallow, her skin prickled. The seventeenth message waited. But she couldn’t press play. Not yet. The weight of the first sixteen already pressed her chest flat. She felt trapped between a need to know and the terror of what would be revealed. Her room was too small, too quiet. The walls seemed to lean closer. She stumbled to the window, letting the morning air chill her lungs. Seventeen voicemails. Seventeen openings into something she didn’t understand. She glanced back at the phone, glowing patiently on her bed. The last one waited like a sealed letter. She sat down, fingers trembling, and pressed play. 


Voicemail 17: 


At first there was only silence, the faint sound of someone breathing on the other end. Then the voice came — slower now, rougher, weighted with something like surrender. “If you’re still listening, Acia… thank you. I wasn’t sure you’d make it this far. Most people would have stopped. Deleted me. Pretended it was just some madwoman rambling. But you didn’t. You never could turn away from pain, could you? You’ve always carried it like it belonged to you.” A pause. Then: “I owe you truth, no more circling. It’s time you hear what you already feel deep down. Time you stop pretending you don’t recognize me.” Acia’s heart slammed against her ribs. The room seemed to tilt. “I’m not a stranger, Acia. I’m you. I’m what you become.” The words landed like ice water poured through her veins. She shook her head violently, whispering to herself, No, no, no. But the voice pressed on, unrelenting. “Older. Tired. Carrying more years, more weight, than you can imagine right now. I found a way to speak back, to leave these messages. Don’t ask me how — it doesn’t matter. What matters is this: I’ve lived with something you don’t yet fully face. A truth so sharp it cut everything that came after. And I can’t bear it anymore.” Acia’s breath caught. It was her own voice, older, worn, but undeniably hers. “We killed her, didn’t we?” the voice whispered. Acia froze, every muscle locking. “Not with a knife, not with poison. But with neglect. With silence. With the cruelty of words we can never take back. The night she begged for help and we looked away. The morning she asked us to stay and we slammed the door instead. The thousand little deaths we gave her before the last one. That’s what haunts me. That’s what’s eaten me alive all these years. That’s what made me call.” Tears streaked down Acia’s face. She shook her head, but fragments of memory surged forward — arguments, slammed doors, unanswered phone calls. Her mother’s eyes, red-rimmed and tired, watching her leave. The weight of things unsaid pressing between them. The voice — her voice — broke as it went on. “We thought we were the victim, didn’t we? We thought she didn’t understand, that she suffocated us, that she was the one tearing us down. But she wasn’t. She was breaking, and we let her. We pushed her. And when she was gone, we wrapped ourselves in grief to hide the truth. But grief isn’t the whole of it. Guilt is what wakes us at night. Guilt is what has written every line on my face.” Acia clutched her chest, the air shallow in her lungs.“ I can’t carry it anymore. I can’t pretend. I need you to know, even if you’re not ready. Because one day, you’ll grow into me, and the weight will crush you. Unless you face it now. Unless you stop running.” The silence stretched. Acia thought it was over, but then the final words came, steady despite the cracks in the voice. “I can’t carry the guilt of what I did to our mum anymore. I’m turning us in.” The message ended. The phone fell onto her sheets with a dull thud. The quiet of the room roared in her ears. Her own voice, older, confessing. Her own voice calling her murderer. She rocked forward, pressing her forehead against her knees, trying to hold herself together as her body shook. But the words wouldn’t stop replaying. We killed her, didn’t we? It was madness. It had to be. But deep in her bones, some part of her recognized the truth of it. The anger she had hurled at her mother, the nights she left her alone in silence, the way she had turned her back when her mother needed her most. Each memory flickered like a blade. The grief she’d been drowning in twisted, sharpened. It wasn’t only loss. It was responsibility. And now, impossibly, it had been spoken aloud by the only person she could never escape — herself. Outside, the world carried on: neighbors watering their lawns, children shouting as they played, the sun climbing higher. Ordinary life moving forward, indifferent. But inside Acia’s room, time fractured. The seventeen voicemails lay heavy in her phone, impossible to erase. She knew, even if she tried, the words had already carved themselves into her. She picked up the phone again with trembling fingers, staring at the list of messages. Sixteen leading her here. One ending everything she thought she knew about herself. Her throat ached with sobs she couldn’t release. I’m turning us in. The phrase lingered like a promise, like a warning.  Acia didn’t know what it meant yet — whether her future self had already gone to the police, whether her life was already unraveling beyond this moment. All she knew was that the guilt she thought was grief alone now had a name. And that name was hers.