The voicemail was three minutes of breathing.
Not heavy. Not panicked. Just… there. In and out. Like someone trying not to be heard.
It came from my own number.
I played it twice before texting myself, which is stupid, I know.
who is this
The dots appeared immediately.
you tell me
I was at work. Fluorescent lights, copier heat, that lemon cleaner smell that never actually cleans anything. I stepped into the stairwell.
“Okay,” I said out loud. “Ha. Very funny.”
My phone vibrated.
don’t talk like that
“Like what?”
like you don’t remember
I checked the call log. The voicemail was timestamped 2:17 a.m. Duration: 2:59. I was asleep at 2:17. I think I was.
I called my number.
It didn’t ring. It answered.
Breathing.
And underneath it, something wet. A small clicking. Rhythmic.
“Stop,” I whispered. “Who is this?”
A swallow. Close to the mic. Close to my ear.
“You left me,” a voice said. It was mine, but swollen. Like it had been underwater. “You left me in there.”
“In where?”
A long inhale. I could hear a smile in it.
“You zipped it up.”
The stairwell smelled wrong. Not lemon. Coppery. Like coins in a mouth.
“I don’t— I didn’t—”
“You were crying,” it said. “You said it was the only way. You said you’d come back.”
I checked my reflection in the metal door. My face looked… off. Too still. Like it was waiting for a cue.
“I live alone,” I said. “There’s no one—"
“Open it,” my voice breathed. “Please. It’s tight.”
The clicking sound got louder. Nails? Teeth? No— plastic teeth. The sound of a zipper being worried from the inside.
My locker at work. Bottom row. The one I never use.
I don’t remember putting anything in there.
“I can’t,” I said. “I’m at work.”
“You’re always at work,” it said, almost tender. “That’s why it had to be small.”
Something in the locker thudded. Soft. Then again. A patient knock.
A coworker pushed into the stairwell. “You okay?”
I hung up.
The knocking didn’t stop.
My phone buzzed.
it’s hard to breathe when you forget your own lungs
The locker door was flexing outward, just slightly, like something inside was learning the shape of the room.
I don’t remember owning a duffel bag that size, but I remember the sound it made when I zipped it closed, and I remember thinking the second inhale was just the air escaping.
