I Got a New Phone Number. The Last Owner Still Uses It.

When I switched phone plans, I was assigned a new number. Nothing unusual.

Until the texts began.

At first, it was small stuff.

“Where are you?”

“Please come home.”

“You promised you'd pick up.”

I thought it was a wrong number. Some heartbroken girlfriend texting her ex.

So I replied.

“Sorry, wrong person. New number now.”

They responded immediately.

“You’re lying.”

Then silence.

I thought that was the end of it. But the next day, more messages came through.

This time with photos.

Black and white. Blurry.

One of them showed a man with half his face burned, standing outside my apartment building.

Another was taken from behind a closet door, showing my legs on the couch.

I dropped my phone. It buzzed again.

“You shouldn’t have moved in.”

I ran to the police. They shrugged it off.

“Probably a hacker prank. Happens all the time.”

They told me to change my number.

So I did.

But I kept getting the texts.

Same number. Same messages.

The carrier told me my SIM had no outgoing record of the texts — only incoming.

I was texting nobody.

One night I called the number that kept texting me.

It rang once.

Then someone picked up. But no voice.

Just breathing.

Deep. Wet. Like someone struggling to inhale through broken lungs.

Then… I heard my own voice, recorded from a call I never made.

“Help me… they won’t let me leave.”

Then the line went dead.

I smashed the phone.

Bought a new one.

New SIM. New provider.

New city.

But on the first night in my new apartment, I got a text:

“Nice try.”

“We’re already here.”

Attached was a photo taken from under my bed.

I haven’t slept in 3 days.

I don’t answer unknown calls.

I never turn off the lights.

And I’ve started hearing a ringtone at 3:33 a.m. — from a phone I don’t own.

I don’t know what they want.

But I know this much:

This number…

used to belong to someone who didn’t escape.

And now?

It belongs to me.

By Huzaifa Khan