The town’s last phone booth stood like a relic in a dust-clogged field behind the defunct gas station. No phone book. No dial tone. Just glass streaked with sun-rot and someone’s greasy handprint on the inside.
Mason, a 19-year-old community college dropout, discovered it by accident while looking for a place to piss after a late-night drive. The desert air smelled of scorched rubber and dry iron. Even the moon looked exhausted.
He opened the booth. Dust curled out like breath. The phone, weirdly, was intact. Cord tangled. Cracked receiver. But it was there.
And it rang.
He stared at it, gooseflesh rising under his flannel. Who was calling a dead booth?
It rang again.
He picked it up.
Static.
Then: “Don’t come home.”
He pulled the phone away, stared at it like it had teeth. His heart hiccupped in his chest. Then, a voice—his own—came through the line, trembling.
“They got me. Or… will get me. Shit. This is hard to explain.”
Mason laughed, half-hollow. “Okay. Who is this?”
“It’s you. But not yet. Listen to me. You die tonight. Around 3:17 a.m. Gasoline. Screaming. Bones snapping. I thought maybe this would change something. Maybe if I warned myself—”
Click.
The line went dead.
He drove home anyway.
By 2:41 a.m., Mason had convinced himself it was a prank. That it was his buddy Tyler screwing with him. He even laughed about it during a snack break, scrolling through Reddit and thinking how viral the story might’ve been if he’d filmed it.
At 3:10 a.m., someone knocked on the front door.
Hard. Frantic.
He opened it. No one there.
Except the smell.
Gasoline.
His living room light blinked. Once. Twice. Then failed.
The house groaned.
He turned to run.
The phone in his pocket—silent all night—buzzed.
Caller ID: Unknown
He answered.
His own voice, whispering: “You didn’t listen.”
Then the window shattered.