A Text From Your Own Number

Three a.m. Your phone buzzes in your coat pocket. A text. You check the sender, and it isn't a name, or a number you don't know. It's yours.

You just got home. The glass door of the lobby has swung shut behind you with that soft thud you hear every night without listening. The lobby is dark. You feel for the timer switch, that square of plastic with its tiny red light, always in the same place, at shoulder height. Click. The tube flickers, then catches.

The message is three words long.

Don't turn around.

A prank. A carrier glitch. Somebody spoofing your number, it happens, you read about it once. You do what anyone would do: you check when it was sent, just to calm yourself down.

3:01 a.m.

It's three o'clock exactly.

Behind you, the lobby door closes. Slowly. You hear the hinge sigh, the latch click. You already closed it. You're sure, because you fought with the handle, like you do every night.

You don't turn around. You climb.

· · ·

The stairwell smells of wet concrete. Your footsteps echo a little too much, as if there were others just below, keeping time with yours. First floor. Second. And the timer cuts out halfway across the landing, like it always does, like it means to.

In the dark, your screen lights up on its own.

Don't run. It likes it when you run.

So you walk. You count the steps you know by heart. You look only at your feet, then your door, then the lock, your keys shaking a little, the deadbolt finally turning. You're home. You lean back against the door. You breathe.

· · ·

That's when you open the thread. To understand. To have a screenshot to show someone tomorrow, laughing.

The messages are there. Except they're not on the left, where the ones you receive go. They're on the right. Sent. From your phone, at 3:01, at 3:04.

You look down at your hand.

Your thumb is already typing.

It isn't someone else texting you. It's the part of you that, tonight, in the lobby, turned around.

Good. Now… close your eyes.