She answered a phone call from her own number.
“...hello?”
“Ah, hi!”
“Who is this?”
“I’m you!”
She looked all around her empty room. Then checked the number again.
It really was her own.
She didn’t really think about it before. Didn’t expect anything at all. Just picked up a phone call. Like she does every day at work, hundreds and hundreds of phone calls. But this one... It really was from her own number.
“Me...” she spoke her thoughts out loud. “Me from the future?”
She heard her own laugh on the other end. “No, silly. I’m you!”
“Then... from the past?”
“I’m from the past as much as you are.”
“So, I’m from your past?” Tired from work, she tried to think. The thought came to her that it might be just some sort of a prank. But who sounds, talks, even laughs exactly like her? Who has a number that’s exactly the same as her own?
“No,” her voice from the other side of the phone declined once again. “You are from your past.”
No, she thought. She’s had enough of this. She needs to sleep, she has to get up early for work tomorrow. She doesn’t have time for such bullshit.
“Hey,” she started, with visible annoyance in her tone. “I don’t have time for shit like this. Can you just stop—”
“No,” the other voice interrupted. “I can’t stop, until you stop living in the past.”
She was left speechless.
After a bit of silence, the voice continued: “Remember when you ran away from your parents?”
She ironically laughed. Unbelievable. “Of course I do. They didn’t approve of my boyfriend at the time. So one day I just... packed my stuff and left.”
The voice on the other end hummed peacefully, sounding satisfied with her finally going along. “You ignored all their calls. Blocked their numbers. All contact. Without even saying goodbye.”
“Because I was so mad at them! Or... Well... From the very start I was.”
“Why?”
“Because all I wanted was just to be with my boyfriend!”
A chuckle could be heard from the other end of the line. “And how did that turn out?”
She sighed in response. “...it turned out pretty shit.”
“Yes,” her voice on the phone agreed. “It indeed did. You guys moved states together. Travelled through half the Europe trying to find a good place to live. He had the money. Oh, he had the money. He brought an apartment for the two of you to live in. He paid for really prestige college for you. It was everything you ever dreamed of, right?”
She nodded, even though that couldn’t be heard through the phone. Her eyes were beginning to tear. She didn’t want to accept that was true.
She didn’t say anything. Just listened to her own voice.
“You even got pregnant! Beautiful family you have always dreamed of.”
“Not for long,” she let out another sigh with a single tear sliding down her cheek, falling into her lap. She kept her voice calm. While her head was screaming. “He started acting... strange when I was pregnant. It just kept getting worse and worse. He... he started staying out late, drinking a lot as well. It was like...” she sobbed, “like from the love of his life, I turned into an enemy. An intruder. A burden. And... and then one day... one day he...” she went silent, hoping her voice on the phone would do it for her.
“Come on, say it! What did he do?”
She kept silent. Silently sobbing. Still hoping she wouldn’t have to say it out loud. She never did. But the silence was getting way too loud.
“He...” she started. “He pushed me down the stairs. During... during one of our arguments. I don’t remember what it was about. The memory is pretty foggy.”
“You hit your head pretty bad, it’s understandable you don’t remember much.”
“Yeah, I passed out. I woke up in the hospital.”
“You had a concussion. A lot of bruises, nothing broken. But you lost the baby. The only thing you had left from him, right?”
“Yeah... He... he left. Never came for me to the hospital. Wasn’t picking up the phone, nothing. When they let me go from the hospital, I only had the clothes I was wearing during the accident, nothing else, not even the keys to the apartment. I didn’t even try to go back.”
“Your parents never knew you were pregnant.”
“They didn’t. I never called them.”
“Why? You missed them so much at that point!”
She sighed. She did miss them. She missed them so much. “I still haven’t called them. I was so scared they would be mad at me. It would be understandable, after just abandoning them like this without a word...”
“You didn’t even call them for help after you left the hospital.”
She sighed once again. “I’d hate myself for asking them for help, after all of this...”
“So instead, you chose to live in the streets. For years!”
She laughed in desperation. “I deserved that, didn’t I? I put myself in this shit, so it was my own responsibility to pull myself out.”
“So you were alone, with nothing to your name but a bunch of clothes. And you still didn’t come to your parents.”
She shook her head. That was not a response one could hear through the phone. Yet she felt like her voice on the other end still understood.
“And then you finally managed to pull yourself out of it! You found yourself a job, found yourself a one room apartment. So you’re happy now, right? You’re doing amazing!”
She chuckled. Because it wasn’t true. She let out a small: “Yeah.”
“No. You hate that job. It pays barely enough to pay the rent, let alone enough food for you to live.”
She kept silent. So the voice continued. And she listened.
“You can’t even get anything nice for yourself from time to time. You eat once a day, if you’re lucky. If you didn’t have the phone from work, you wouldn’t have one at all. You have no internet, not even a proper bed. You have no friends, because you’re scared they would look down on you because of your poverty. I’ll ask you this one thing. Is this the life you wanted to live?”
“No! Of course not! You tell me, who would want to live like this? Who?”
“You never finished your university, even though it was all paid for.”
She breathed out sharply. This was starting to make her more angry than sad. “Oh, you really don’t think I’d keep going to that university that piece of shit has paid for.”
“But you weren’t going there for him, were you? If you finished it, you would get way better paying job, you could offer bigger apartment, food, an actual bed even,” the voice laughed, she felt like. “It would be better for you, not him.”
She didn’t know what to say to that.
“And you didn’t go back to your parents either, even though they would probably be happy to finally see their long-lost daughter... To at least know you’re okay.”
She didn’t know what to say to that either.
“Every parent wants good for their children. No parent would want to see their child living like you are right now.”
She still kept silent.
“So let me ask you another thing. You always wanted to call for help. The real reason you never called your parents was because you were ashamed of yourself. You’d rather drown in your own failure than to reveal it to another person, especially your parents, whom you abandoned without a word after they took care of you for your entire life. Am I right?”
She thought for a bit. Then just nodded in defeat.
“Great. I’m gonna leave you now. You already know what to do.”
As the beeping sound played from the speaker, she dropped the phone on the ground, along with herself. She bursted into tears. For hours and hours, she laid there without a single movement. The tears stopped after a while. She just laid there. Endless thoughts reeling through her head, yet she hated all of them.
Just a few hours before she was supposed to get up for work, she finally moved. She picked herself up, picked up the phone as well. She typed out the number she had stored in her memory this entire time. She was hoping it wasn’t even active anymore. But deep down, she hoped it actually was.
She pressed the call button.
And waited through the beeps.
Until finally, a voice could be heard from the other end. She tore up immediately as she heard it.
She was horrified to speak. But she managed.
“...mom?”
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