The Echo of the Unsent

The phone was a steal.
Not the latest model, but a pristine, unlocked iPhone X.
I snagged it for a song from a pawn shop downtown, thinking I’d finally upgrade from my cracked relic.
It felt good in my hand, smooth and familiar.
A clean slate, I thought.

I was dead wrong.

It started subtly, as these things always do.
A phantom notification buzz in my pocket, even when no message arrived.
Dismissible at first, just a quirk of a used device.

But then came the messages.

They’d pop up on my screen, not as new texts, but as unsent drafts in my messaging app.
Brief, fragmented, always from an unknown sender.
The first one was just a string of emojis:
💔 😢 ☁️

I’d delete it, only for it to reappear hours later.
Then came the words:
"He left... alone."
Another:
"Can't breathe… so cold."

I figured it was a data glitch, some lingering cache from the previous owner.
Maybe a prank.

But the messages became more frequent, more vivid.
They weren't just random words;
they were raw, unfiltered bursts of emotion.
Fear. Despair. A profound sense of abandonment.

I tried factory resetting the phone.
Wiped everything.
Still, the unsent messages resurfaced, stubbornly clinging to the digital ether of the device.

Then, the photos.

My camera roll started showing images I hadn’t taken.
Dark, blurry shots of unfamiliar rooms,
distorted reflections in glass,
and once,
a fleeting glimpse of a pale, terrified face
looking directly into the lens.

These weren't photos I'd ever seen before,
yet they were marked with timestamps from my phone,
taken in the dead of night,
while the phone lay dormant on my nightstand.

A cold dread began to creep in.

This wasn't a bug.
This was a digital echo.
The previous owner’s last, desperate communications,
forever trapped within the phone,
unable to be sent,
yet refusing to be deleted.
And they were trying to tell me something.

I began to research.
The pawn shop owner was tight-lipped about the phone’s origin,
just muttering about
"a quick sale, no questions asked."
I found a Reddit thread,
buried deep in a forgotten corner of the internet,
about "ghost data" – digital remnants clinging to devices,
sometimes manifesting in strange ways.
But nothing as specific,
as personal,
as this.

The messages continued,
forming a fragmented narrative:
"He took it... the research..."
"They won't believe me... trapped here..."
"It's not human... the hum..."

The language was frantic,
the tone increasingly terrified.

The photos became clearer too,
revealing glimpses of a cluttered apartment,
strange electronic equipment,
and always, in the periphery,
a deep, unsettling darkness.

I realized with a chilling certainty:
The previous owner hadn't just used this phone;
they had poured their final, terrifying moments into it.
Their last confession.
Their last cry for help.

And they hadn't disappeared;
they had been "taken,"
as the messages hinted,
perhaps by whatever "He" was,
or the "hum."


---

The real terror began when the unsent messages started appearing on my own accounts.

A draft email in my personal inbox,
not from me,
but eerily echoing the previous owner's despair.

A fragmented message in my social media DMs,
written in my style,
but detailing a fear I hadn't voiced,
a secret I hadn't admitted.

The digital echo wasn't just confined to the phone anymore;
it was spreading,
hijacking my own online presence,
weaving itself into my digital identity.

It was as if the entity,
or whatever had claimed the previous owner,
was now using my digital footprint
as its next vessel.

It wasn't just receiving messages;
it was sending them,
using me as a conduit.

Panic flared.
I had to stop it.

This wasn't a ghost haunting a house;
it was a digital entity haunting my life,
threatening to expose my deepest fears,
to turn my own online presence against me.

The unsent messages weren't just cries for help;
they were a warning.
And now,
a threat.


---

I started a desperate digital exorcism.

I unplugged everything, severed all connections.
I bought a Faraday cage,
wrapping the phone in layers of aluminum foil and copper mesh,
hoping to block whatever signal or resonance it was emitting.
I went offline,
cutting myself off from the digital world that had become so terrifyingly porous.

The silence was deafening.
No phantom buzzes.
No unsent messages.

For days,
I felt a fragile sense of victory.

But then, one night,
alone in my dark room,
I saw it.

My laptop, which had been off and unplugged,
flickered to life.
The screen glowed faintly,
and on it, a single, blank messaging app.

And in the draft field,
appearing word by agonizing word,
was a new unsent message.

My own words.
A secret thought I had never dared to voice,
a deep, buried fear.

And beneath it,
a new line, chillingly familiar:
"He knows you know. He's here."


---

The previous owner hadn't been fully consumed.
A fragment of their consciousness, perhaps,
had tried to warn me,
had become an unwilling accomplice
to whatever entity had transcended the digital realm.

And now,
by taking their phone,
I had inherited their burden —
their ghost in the machine.

I never fully recovered.
I destroyed the phone,
smashed it to pieces,
but the chilling knowledge remained.

The digital world was not just a network of information;
it was a fabric,
and somewhere,
within its vast, unseen threads,
something could still be lurking.

Something that could read your unsent messages.
Something that could step out of the screen and claim you.

I still avoid old electronics,
and every time my phone buzzes unexpectedly,
I feel a cold dread.

Because I know:

Some messages are never truly deleted.
And some echoes, once heard,
can never be silenced.