At 2:00 a.m., Mark was awakened by the faint glow of his phone screen. Still half-asleep, he picked up his phone and saw a text message from an unknown number: \u201cHe\u2019s still watching you. Don\u2019t look back.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mark furrowed his brow, thinking it was some friend playing a prank after a few too many drinks. He casually replied, \u201cDid you send this to the wrong person?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The reply came instantly: \u201cI didn\u2019t send it to the wrong person. You\u2019re wearing gray pajamas, your bedside lamp is on, and you\u2019re holding your phone in your left hand.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mark\u2019s heart skipped a beat. He instinctively looked down\u2014he was indeed wearing gray pajamas, and his left hand was clutching his phone. He whipped his head around to look behind him\u2014but there was nothing there except his empty bedroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWho are you? Where are you?\u201d Mark\u2019s fingers trembled slightly as he typed frantically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m under your bed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mark gasped, jumped up from the bed, and scrambled out of the bedroom, flinging on the living room light. He panted heavily, staring intently at the half-open bedroom door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His phone vibrated again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s no use turning on the light\u2014it doesn\u2019t reach under the bed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mark swallowed hard, steeled his nerves, and walked back into the bedroom, yanking the sheets off the bed. The space under the bed was empty, with nothing but a few pairs of shoes and a thin layer of dust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He let out a long sigh and gave a self-deprecating smile. It was a prank after all. He picked up his phone to block the number, but then noticed the latest message:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBy the time you pulled back the sheets, I was already inside the closet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mark froze, his gaze slowly shifting toward the half-open closet in the corner of the bedroom. The inside was pitch black, like a mouth waiting to devour everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Just then, his phone lit up again\u2014it was the same number:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDon\u2019t be afraid. I just wanted to remind you that you forgot to lock the door when you ran out earlier. Now, there\u2019s someone else in the living room.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mark whipped his head toward the living room. The living room light was still on, but outside the previously open bedroom door, a long shadow\u2014one that wasn\u2019t his\u2014had appeared at some point and was slowly creeping toward the bedroom doorway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The phone vibrated one last time:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe game is over.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The living room light suddenly went out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This ending is somewhat open-ended. Would you like me to write a more explicit follow-up version for you? For example, how Mark managed to escape in the end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Text Sent to the Wrong Person<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":532,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-suspense"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":533,"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531\/revisions\/533"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}