She Keeps Calling Me From the Room Where She Died

And I answer, because love never learned how to stop

By Anees Ul Ameen

The phone only rings at night.

Never during the day. Never when other people are around. Always after midnight, when the world is quiet enough for guilt to speak clearly.

The caller ID doesn’t show a number.

It shows her name.

Mariam died three years ago in the apartment we once shared. The official report said natural causes. Heart failure, sudden and cruel. I told myself that if I had been there, I could have saved her.

But I wasn’t.

I was at work, ignoring her messages, telling myself I’d call back later.

Later never came.

The first call happened a month after the funeral.

I stared at the screen until it stopped ringing. I unplugged the phone, shaking. Grief does strange things to the mind. Hallucinations. Wishes pretending to be memories.

That’s what I told myself.

Then it rang again the next night.

And the night after that.

Always at 12:13 a.m.

The fourth night, I answered.

There was breathing on the other end.

Slow. Uneven.

“Mariam?” I whispered.

“Yes,” she said. Her voice sounded exactly the way it used to when she was tired. “You finally picked up.”

My knees gave out.

“I… you’re gone,” I said.

She was quiet for a moment. Then softly, “So are you.”

She never talks about dying.

She talks about small things instead. The crack in the ceiling. The neighbor who played loud music. The way I used to leave dishes in the sink.

“You always said you’d clean them later,” she said once, amused.

“I did,” I replied.

“No,” she corrected gently. “You left.”

I stopped sleeping.

I stopped seeing people.

Every night, I waited for the call.

I needed to hear her voice, even if it was breaking me.

One night, she said, “Come back.”

“I can’t,” I whispered. “That place… it hurts.”

“It hurts because I’m still there,” she said.

I went to the apartment the next day.

The building looked the same. The hallway smelled the same. The door to our old place still had the scratch near the handle from when we moved in furniture together.

I unlocked it.

The air inside was cold, stale—untouched.

Her phone was on the table.

Ringing.

That night, the call didn’t come from my phone.

It came from the bedroom.

“Mariam?” I said, standing in the doorway.

She was sitting on the

Not a ghost. Not a corpse.

Just her.

But her eyes were too dark. Too deep.

“You promised you wouldn’t leave me alone,” she said.

“I didn’t know,” I cried. “I was scared.”

She nodded. “I know. That’s why I waited.”

The room grew heavy, like the walls were leaning inward.

“You can stay now,” she said softly. “No more missing calls. No more later.”

I took a step back.

“I can’t,” I said. “I’m still alive.”

She smiled sadly. “So was I. Until I wasn’t.”

The phone rang one last time.

I answered it automatically.

Her voice came from everywhere.

“Answering isn’t enough,” she whispered. “You have to stay.”

The door closed behind xnmcvhxnmv

The light went out.

They found my body three days later.

Sitting on the bed.

Phone in my hand.

The screen showed a missed call—from my own number.

Time: 12:13 a.m.vvgfdfdag

Sometimes, late at night, my phone rings.

When I answer, I heagggggsgsr breathing.

Slow. Uneven.

Waiting.

— Written by Anees Ul Ameen

Author’s Note

This story was written with the assistance of AI and carefully edited, revised, and finalized by Anees Ul Ameen.