The Message at 9:47

By Murad Ali Shah

It started like any ordinary morning — the kind where you almost forget you’re alive because everything feels too routine. The alarm went off at 7:00 a.m., my phone buzzed endlessly with unread notifications, and the neighbor’s dog barked like he always did. I made coffee, burned my toast, and scrolled mindlessly through messages until one stopped me.

It was from an unknown number. Just one line. "Don’t go out at 9:47." No name. No context. I stared at it, confused. It wasn’t a spam message — it felt too personal, like someone knew me. I checked the time — 8:12 a.m. A part of me laughed it off, thinking maybe it was a prank. But another part, a quieter one, whispered, What if it’s not?

I told myself to ignore it. By 9:30, I had already forgotten about it — mostly. I grabbed my laptop bag, locked the apartment, and headed down the stairs. At 9:45, I was waiting by the roadside, scrolling through emails when I remembered.

9:47.

For no reason I could explain, I froze. The street was quiet, unusually so for a Tuesday morning. I stood there, phone in hand, eyes darting between the screen and the clock. And then, right on time — 9:47 — a delivery truck sped past. Too fast. It swerved to avoid a stray cat, jumped the curb, and crashed into the exact spot where I had been standing.

For a few seconds, everything blurred — the sound, the smell, the disbelief. My heart pounded as I took a step back, realizing that if I hadn’t stopped… I would have been under that truck. People gathered, shouting, taking photos, calling the police. I couldn’t move. My phone buzzed again. The same number.

"You’re welcome."

My hands shook. I tried calling back — it rang once, then went silent. I checked online databases, reverse lookups — nothing. No trace of the number. That night, I didn’t sleep. I replayed the moment over and over. Who would warn me? How would they know? Over the next few days, I became obsessed. Every sound made me jump. Every message made me flinch. By Friday, I started believing that maybe it was some kind of guardian angel — or something darker.

A week later, I decided to change my number. Before deleting the old SIM, I scrolled through the messages one last time. That’s when I noticed something strange. The message wasn’t sent to me. It was sent from my own number.

For a long time, I just stared at the screen. It made no sense. But there it was — my number in the “From” field. I thought maybe it was a glitch. I took the SIM to a service center. They said everything looked normal.

That night, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. How could my number text me? And why that time, that exact minute? Then I remembered something else — the accident. In the chaos, someone had uploaded a short clip of it online. I searched for it. There it was — the truck, the crowd, the smashed bench. I pressed play.

But as the camera panned across the road, my breath caught. There was me, standing on the sidewalk. And there was another me — crossing the road at 9:47, right before the crash. The second version of me disappeared in the blink of an eye. I replayed it again and again. It wasn’t edited. It wasn’t fake. It was real — like I had existed twice, just long enough to save myself.

Since that day, I still get messages — once a month, always from the same number. Sometimes they say, "Take the long way home." or "Don’t answer the door tonight."

And every time, I listen. Because I’ve learned one thing — sometimes, the voice that saves you… might just be your own.