The Call That Never Ended

It was a quiet Thursday evening. The kind of evening where everything feels still… almost too still.
I was lying on my couch, phone in hand, scrolling aimlessly. Then — a sound that made me sit up straight.
My old landline rang.

I hadn’t touched that phone in years. I barely remembered it even worked.

Curiosity took over. I picked it up. “Hello?” I whispered.

Silence.

Then… a faint, trembling voice:
“Don’t leave the house.”

My heart skipped a beat. That voice… it sounded familiar. But familiar in a way I couldn’t place.
“Who is this?” I asked, my own voice shaking.
Nothing. Only slow, uneven breathing.
And then — click. Dead.

I laughed nervously, trying to convince myself it was just a prank. But when I glanced at the caller ID…
It showed my own number.

My chest tightened. Something was wrong. Very wrong.

Five minutes later, my cellphone rang. Unknown number.
I froze. Something told me to ignore it. But I answered anyway.

“Hello?”

The voice — the same trembling voice — said:
“Please… listen. Don’t open the door.”

Then — a loud, sharp knock at the front door.

I could barely breathe. Every nerve in my body screamed at me to run.
The knocking came again — slow… deliberate… heavy.

I whispered into the phone, “Who’s there?”

The voice replied, almost sobbing,
“I’m you. Don’t make the same mistake I did.”

The line went dead. My hands were shaking. My heart was hammering in my chest.

Then — the unmistakable sound of the front door handle turning.

I grabbed the closest thing — a lamp — and shouted,
“Who’s there?!”

Silence.

Then… footsteps. Faint. Moving away.

I waited for what felt like forever before daring to look through the peephole.
No one. Just a folded piece of paper on the floor.

I picked it up. In handwriting identical to mine, it said:
"You listened this time. Thank you."

And then… the landline rang again.
It was still unplugged.Start writing...

“This story was assisted by AI tools for writing and editing.”