Static Between Us
(Elena & Mara)
Elena
The mirror is still wet.
She doesn't want to touch it, but she finds her fingers lifting anyway, tracing the last word — open.
Her skin tingles.
Her breath fogs the glass, and the message seems to waver beneath her reflection, like it's breathing with her.
Her phone buzzes once.
Then again.
Then stops.
She snatches it up — but the screen stays black. No notification. No missed call.
A pressure builds behind her eyes, like someone is pressing their fingers gently, almost kindly, into her skull.
"Stop," she whispers, clutching her head.
The lights flicker.
Once.
Twice.
Then go out completely.
She dials Mara's number by instinct, hands shaking.
The phone rings, but she doesn't hear the normal ringing tone.
Instead…
A deep, hollow sound.
Like wind rushing through a tunnel.
Like breathing.
Then a whisper layered over it — her own voice, but not from her mouth:
"She'll hear you now."
Elena stumbles backward, heart clawing at her ribs.
"Mara… pick up. Please."
On the fourth ring, the line clicks.
Mara
Her phone lights up in the dark, buzzing across her nightstand.
She grabs it without thinking — Elena's name glowing across the screen.
She answers immediately.
"Elena? It's late. Are you okay?"
At first she hears nothing.
Just a low crackle.
Like someone wading through dry leaves.
Then a thin voice threads through the static — high, warped, stretched too far to sound human.
"M—ra—ha—re y—in—?"
Mara pulls the phone away from her ear, staring at the screen as if it might explain the sound.
"Elena? Your connection is bad. Say that again."
She presses the phone back to her ear.
A long inhale floods the line.
Slow. Wet.
Like someone breathing inches from the microphone.
Mara freezes.
"Elena…? Is someone there with you?"
She hears a whisper then — faint, trembling:
"I didn't close it."
Her blood runs cold.
"What do you mean? Close what?"
The static deepens, vibrating her speaker.
She hears footsteps — but they sound wrong, as if walking on soil instead of a floor.
Then someone else speaks, a voice she's never heard before:
"She came back hollow."
Mara bolts upright in bed. "Who is that?! Put Elena on!"
Then she hears it —
Elena screaming, distant, muffled, as if underwater.
Followed by the sickening crack of something heavy slamming into the floor.
The call disconnects.
Elena
She wakes on the floor.
Or she thinks she wakes.
Her body feels wrong — too heavy and too light at the same time.
The air tastes like the forest again.
Her walls have blurred into tall silhouettes of trees, their shapes moving, breathing.
Her phone lies beside her.
The screen is lit.
A message is open.
She doesn't remember typing it.
But it's to Mara.
And it reads:
"Don't come here. It's awake."
Before she can react, her phone vibrates again — a new message incoming.
The sender:
Unknown Number
no name, no digits.
The message is only three words:
"We never left."
Elena drops the phone.