When the last echo of that phantom utterance faded, the silence that remained felt suffocating.

I sat up in bed, my heartbeat loud in the near-dark. The moonlight slivered thin through the curtains, and in that fragile glow, I could almost see the tremor of my breath. I reached for my phone, hands shaking—not for the time, but for some explanation. Notes, voice memo, anything. But all I found was my own ragged pulse.

I whispered into the emptiness, half in dread, half in insistence: “Who are you?” Only static answered.

Morning came like a betrayal—soft pastel light that made everything seem fragile. By daylight, the whisper seemed almost a memory, distant and disbelieved. Yet I knew it had happened. The undeniable evidence was the knot in my throat, the loneliness of my voice that had spoken on its own.

At breakfast, my phone pinged with alarms—reminders of routine life: meetings, deadlines, chores. I tried to fill the silence with noise, with normalcy. But words hovered beyond my lips, unspoken. I could sense them, shadows of sentences, waiting in the edges of my consciousness.

When I spoke, the words felt borrowed. I caught myself calling out my roommate's name before I even thought to. He looked up, startled.

“Everything okay?”

I smiled, too fast. “Yeah. Just… morning brain.”

But inside, a question grew louder: If my voice can betray me, what else lies hidden—waiting to be undone?

When the last echo of that phantom utterance faded, the silence that remained felt suffocating.

I sat up in bed, my heartbeat loud in the near-dark. The moonlight slivered thin through the curtains, and in that fragile glow, I could almost see the tremor of my breath. I reached for my phone, hands shaking—not for the time, but for some explanation. Notes, voice memo, anything. But all I found was my own ragged pulse.

I whispered into the emptiness, half in dread, half in insistence: “Who are you?” Only static answered.

Morning came like a betrayal—soft pastel light that made everything seem fragile. By daylight, the whisper seemed almost a memory, distant and disbelieved. Yet I knew it had happened. The undeniable evidence was the knot in my throat, the loneliness of my voice that had spoken on its own.

At breakfast, my phone pinged with alarms—reminders of routine life: meetings, deadlines, chores. I tried to fill the silence with noise, with normalcy. But words hovered beyond my lips, unspoken. I could sense them, shadows of sentences, waiting in the edges of my consciousness.

When I spoke, the words felt borrowed. I caught myself calling out my roommate's name before I even thought to. He looked up, startled.

“Everything okay?”

I smiled, too fast. “Yeah. Just… morning brain.”

But inside, a question grew louder: If my voice can betray me, what else lies hidden—waiting to be undone?