When she woke up, there were 17 voicemails from a stranger.

A groan tore from her throat, a raw sound in the dead quiet of the apartment. Her head hammered. She peeled her cheek off the rough upholstery of the couch, the imprint of the fabric a grid of little dents in her skin. The room was dim, the blinds still drawn against a morning she had no intention of facing. It smelled of stale air and the cheap whiskey she’d finished last night.

Her eyes focused on the coffee table. An empty bottle lay on its side. A stained glass. And next to them, a single, crisp envelope from the bank. It sat there clean and white in the middle of the mess. She didn’t have to open it. She already knew what it said.

She fumbled for her phone, the need for a distraction a desperate itch. The screen flared, a stab of pain behind her eyes. She squinted, expecting nothing. Maybe a worried text from her mom she’d have to lie about.

But the screen was wrong. At the top, a small red icon with a number that made her breath catch.

Seventeen.

Seventeen New Voicemails.

Her stomach clenched. Not even her mother left more than two. Her friends texted. No one called anymore. Seventeen wasn’t a normal number. It was aggressive. Impossible. A glitch in the system.

She stared at the notification, the number glowing in the dark room. A cold dread, separate from her anxiety about the bank, began to prickle at her skin. It was the wrongness of it all. It felt deliberate. She didn’t know who the calls were from.

But she knew, with a bone-deep certainty, that they were connected to what she did last night.


The number 17 pulled a memory up from the dregs of the night. A jagged, ugly thing. Her father’s voice on the phone, stretched thin over the line. The word “foreclosure” hitting her like a slap. Then, the silence after he hung up, a hollow space where his pride used to be.

Her memory supplied the rest. The angry hunt for the box in her closet. Finding her great-grandmother’s little book, its leather cover cracked and dry. It was a joke. A scream into the void.

But she’d done it anyway.

The clumsy circle she drew on the floor with table salt from the kitchen. The book called for blood, a price paid in pain. She’d used cheap merlot instead, splashing a bit from the bottle she was draining. It was the best she could do. She remembered the words feeling bitter in her mouth, the syllables foreign and stupid. She’d felt like a complete fool, chanting to the stains on her ceiling.


Her gaze dropped from the phone to the hardwood floor.

It wasn’t a dream.

In the weak morning light, she could see it. A smeared circle of salt, gritty against the dark wood. Near the center, a reddish-brown stain that wasn’t there yesterday. The proof. Solid and damning.

The sick feeling in her gut turned to ice. This was an answer.

She took a shaky breath, her thumb hovering over the first voicemail. The choice to listen felt like stepping off a cliff. Her thumb trembled, then pressed down hard.

The first voicemail played. No static. Just a voice.

It was smooth. Impossibly smooth, and calm. “Chloe. This is Xylo. Regarding the service request you filed at 2:13 a.m.” He paused, as if for effect. “I’m calling to confirm the terms.”

He sounded like a bored consultant. The sheer banality of it sent a shiver down her spine. She pressed the button for the next message, her thumb slick with sweat. His voice filled her ear again, the same even tone. He named her bank. He named the loan officer, Mr. Davies. He recited the exact, humiliating amount she’d been denied.

Then, on the fifth message, he said, “And I have to say, that gray t-shirt you’re wearing, the one with the small hole near the collar, really doesn’t project confidence.”

Her blood went cold.

She looked down. The faded gray cotton. Her hand flew to her collar, fingers finding the tiny frayed hole she’d forgotten was there. She scrambled off the couch, her back hitting the wall. Her eyes darted around the room, to the locked deadbolt, the drawn blinds. Empty. She was alone.

Around the tenth message, the voice changed. The detached, business-like tone was gone. It dropped to a low murmur, intimate and rough at the edges, like he was standing right behind her. He wasn’t just observing her anymore. He was seeing her.

“You think you want money,” the voice whispered, the sound crawling over her skin. “But you miss the feel of charcoal on your fingers. You miss the way the world disappears when you draw.”

The fear was still there, a frantic drum against her ribs. But something else coiled in her stomach. A dark, shameful warmth. He saw her. The real her, buried under bills and failure.

The sixteenth message was an order. “The black dress in your closet. The one you never wear. Put it on.”

A beat of silence. Then the seventeenth voicemail began.

“I’m coming to get your signature. Ten tonight.”

It was a dark chuckle that vibrated through the phone and into her bones.

The line went dead. Chloe stood frozen in the salt circle, phone clutched in a white-knuckled grip. Her terrified gaze drifted past the dirty dishes, past the bank letter, to the closed closet door.