It was supposed to be a joke. The fan buzzed overhead in lazy circles as I lay on my bed in my favorite hoodie, phone in hand, waiting for Kael to reply to my last message, but he hadn’t, and boredom was a dangerous thing with a mind like mine. Kael and I had this tradition—our private horror game—where every few nights, one of us would send a creepy voice message, no context, no build-up, just whispered dread, stupid but fun, adding some cinematic tension to our dull engineering lives. So I stared at the ceiling and hit record, whispering, “I think I just found a body behind the electronics building. There’s blood… and I swear someone’s following me. I can’t tell if they’re breathing or if I’m imagining it. But I’m not alone.” I paused dramatically, let a breath shiver through the mic, and sent it, but not to Kael. My thumb slipped, and the message went to an unsaved contact, probably someone from a study group weeks ago. I froze, debating whether to follow up with an “oops,” but before I could decide, my phone buzzed with a reply that said, “Where exactly did you see it? Be specific.” A hollow feeling opened in my chest because my first thought was that Kael was messing with me, maybe he’d changed his number again, like he’d done before just to prank me. So I replied, “Haha, wrong number. Ignore that.” A moment passed before another reply came: “You shouldn’t have seen that.” I sat up slowly because there were no emojis, no laughter, just stark words that made my room feel colder. My rational brain insisted it was nothing, someone playing along, a bored stranger—but I locked my phone and threw it onto my pillow, just in case. I didn’t hear from Kael the next morning, which was unusual because he was always the first to react to my messages, especially if he hadn’t sent one in return, and by the afternoon, I was checking his social media which hadn’t updated, sending him three messages with no response, and finally asking in the campus group chat if anyone had seen him, but only one person replied saying, “Didn’t he have a lab last night?” My chest tightened because that lab was right behind the electronics building—the same place I’d described in my message—and then the news hit, a headline blaring “Student Missing – Last Seen Near electronics Block,” and though his name wasn’t in the headline, the photo was unmistakable: Kael, in his navy windbreaker. My fingers went numb as I read the article, which said he was last seen at 9:47 PM, alone, security footage showing him heading toward the west wing of the electronics building, and then… nothing. Gone. I checked my messages again, hoping Kael would reply, but there was nothing, only that stranger’s number still sitting there in my phone, no new texts, just the ones that read: “Where exactly did you see it?” and “You shouldn’t have seen that.” And I couldn’t breathe.
The day Kael’s face showed up on the news felt unreal, as if the world had gone slightly out of focus, and I found myself reading the same line on my phone over and over—Student Missing, Last Seen Near Science Block—while my heart thudded against my ribs like it wanted out of my chest, because the coincidence was too sharp to ignore, the same electronics block I’d jokingly described in my message, and suddenly I was terrified that somehow, by speaking those words, I had willed this nightmare into existence, and as hours crawled by without word from Kael, dread wrapped itself around my spine like cold fingers, while my phone remained stubbornly silent except for that stranger’s number glaring back at me in my chats, daring me to tap it again, and by evening, my door banged open and two campus police officers stepped into my tiny dorm, their radios crackling softly as they asked me questions I could barely process, my mind flashing between Kael’s grin and the pale glow of the phone screen, and then one of the officers played a voice note on his phone, my own whispering voice filling the room as I said, “I think I just found a body behind the electronics building,” and hearing it outside my own device made me feel exposed and panicked and small, so I stammered out that it was just a joke, a stupid game between friends, nothing real, but the officer’s gaze remained hard and skeptical as though he’d heard that excuse one too many times, and after they left, warning me not to leave campus, I felt like the walls were pressing in, my phone buzzed again with another message from that unknown number saying, “You lied to them,” and then, “You’re part of this now,” followed by photos that shattered any hope I had left for coincidence, because one showed me walking across campus looking over my shoulder as if I’d felt eyes on me, and another was a shot through my dorm window at night, my silhouette visible against the glow of my desk lamp, and my knees went weak as I realized this person was watching me closer than I could have ever imagined, so I locked my door, pulled the curtains shut, and barely slept, haunted by thoughts of Kael and whoever was behind that number, until three days later a new message arrived that said, “Come alone. electronics Building. 1:00 AM,” and I knew every part of me should have ignored it, called the police, anything but go, yet I also knew that if there was even the slightest chance Kael was still alive, I couldn’t abandon him, so that night, under the thick silence of campus curfew, I slipped out of my dorm with my phone gripped tight, my breath fogging in the cool air, every shadow stretching longer than it should as I reached the side entrance of the science building, pushed open the door, and stepped into a hallway that smelled faintly of chemicals and dust, my footsteps echoing off tile floors until I found an open lab door spilling a sliver of light, and inside, my blood froze because there was Kael, tied to a chair in the center of the room, his wrists bound, dried blood matted at his hairline, and he looked up at me with wide, frantic eyes and yelled, “Mira—RUN!” just as I spun around to find myself face-to-face with Mr. Dreven, a professor I hadn’t seen in over a year, who was rumored to have quietly left after some murky accusations that no one ever confirmed, and he was standing there holding a syringe, his expression calm and patient as though we’d merely bumped into each other in the hallway, and he said, “You’re braver than I thought, Mira,” his voice soft like silk over glass, while Kael thrashed against his ropes and cried out, “He’s the one—he’s been doing this for years, girls, rumors, files, I found proof and he found out,” but Dreven only tilted his head and murmured, “Your little voice message was a perfect gift, a convenient narrative for a missing student, a girl lost in paranoia,” and then he lunged, but Kael hurled himself forward, crashing the chair into Dreven’s legs, sending the syringe clattering across the floor, and in that frozen second, I dove, seized the syringe, and without thinking plunged it into Dreven’s neck, feeling the resistance of skin and muscle and the shock on his face as he staggered back and collapsed onto the linoleum, unconscious, and I don’t fully remember calling for help, only the whirl of red and blue lights and the wail of sirens as campus police poured into the building, discovering a hidden, soundproof room in the basement lined with files, photos, meticulous notes, names of girls who’d disappeared or transferred or dropped out quietly, and eventually, Kael and I sat together on the back bumper of an ambulance beneath a sky turning pale with dawn, silence stretching between us until finally Kael spoke in a voice hoarse with exhaustion, “I’m sorry, I never meant for it to go that far, I just wanted him exposed,” and I stared at him because the realization was crashing over me that he’d staged part of his own disappearance to force the truth into the open, and I whispered, “You used me—you sent those texts, didn’t you?” and he dropped his gaze and admitted, “I had to, Mira, no one would have believed me without your message to make it real,” and though I wanted to be furious, part of me understood, because Dreven would have kept winning if Kael hadn’t risked everything, so I just closed my eyes and let out a trembling breath and said, “So what now?” and Kael managed a tired, fragile smile and replied, “New hobby. Preferably one that doesn’t nearly get us killed,” and for the first time in days, I actually laughed, soft and shaky, because it started as a joke, a harmless voice message meant to scare my friend, but it ended with a truth so dark and sharp it almost didn’t feel real, and yet somehow, against all odds, we’d both survived to tell the story.
