It’s Not Every Day You Get a Phone Call From Yourself

“It’s not every day you get a phone call from yourself.”

Through blurry vision, I can barely read my own name on my phone’s screen, and still half in my dreams, I fancy that I had mumbled something profound. When I answer the call, I’m confronted with a voice that’s similar to my own, but gravelly and menacing, like a mobster with throat cancer.

“Mr. Emilio, I want my phone back.”

My throat’s dry, but I manage to rasp out a response. “What are you talking about?”

“Our phones got swapped at the pub last night.”

I rub my eyes with the back of my hand and take a closer look at my phone. At first glance, it appears to be mine, but doesn’t have the impressive gash down the side that I gave my phone when I dropped it a while back.

“OK. Do me a favor and call me back in ten minutes. My head is killing me. Must have had one too—”

My voice catches in my throat as I notice my surroundings for the first time. I’m in a strange bedroom. The curtains are light pink, the bedsheets silk, and the pillows trimmed with lace. This is a woman’s room.

On the nightstand, however, sit devices unlike any I’ve ever seen. They look like they belong in a movie. Small, sleek, reflective domes project holograms into the air above them. I can’t make heads or tails of the charts and graphs being displayed. Instinctively, I swipe my fingers through the holograms, sliding from one view to the next, until I arrive on one that makes me freeze in place.

It’s a video feed of my bedroom, and it looks like it’s been completely torn apart by someone searching for something.

My attention snaps from the hologram as I hear the doorknob click open. A woman enters the room. The first thing I notice is how her short red dress clings to her, showing off her curves. The second thing I notice is that she’s pointing a pistol with a very intimidating-looking silencer at me.

With a smirk on her face, she gestures to the phone in my hand. “Evan, dear, hang up the call, will you?”

Only then do I recognize her as the woman who lived next door when I was growing up. “Ms. Ellison? What are you doing with that gun?”

She sighs and lowers the pistol. “How many times have I asked you to call me Melanie? And this is just a precaution.”

“A precaution against what?”

Before she can answer, her daughter pushes past her into the room. It’s been years since I’ve seen either of them, and Liana has grown into an almost carbon copy of her mother. Her rust-colored hair is even tied back in the same style. She charges up to the bed, grabs the phone out of my hands, and taps the screen to end the call.

“Unlock the phone for us, or we’ll put a bullet through your head,” she says, thrusting the phone into my chest.

Ms. Ellison—Melanie—shakes her head. “My, my, and to think you used to be so sweet on him.”

Liana’s face contorts in a sickening combination of disgust and rage, becoming so red and wrinkled that I fear she’ll turn into a prune. “Me?! You’re the one who was always trying to get him in your bed.”

“Oh, please. I was just teasing him. You can’t blame me. The two of you were just too precious. I couldn’t get enough of the way he would blush and look away or the way your mouth would hang open in shock for a moment before you started yelling at us.”

To tell the truth, it never felt like simple teasing. There has always been an intense creepiness in the way she acted toward me. It made me uncomfortable, but she never made me feel unsafe before now.

“Yeah, yeah, we all know you’re a real piece of work,” Liana says. “Anyway, he’s in your bed now, so what do we do with him?”

“Watch and learn.” Melanie steps forward and gently pushes her daughter out of the way. “Evan, honey, we need the data on that phone. Would you please unlock it for us?”

“I’d love to,” I reply.

A triumphant smile spreads across Melanie’s face and she puffs her chest out. “See? You catch more flies with honey.”

“But it’s not my phone,” I explain. “I don’t know the password.”

Liana grabs my collar and shakes me so hard I think my neck’s about to snap. “Listen here, you lazy shit. That phone contains the key to finding Mila, so stop playing games and let us help you find your sister.”

“Mila?” My mind goes blank, unable to process the fifth shock in as many minutes. “She’s alive?”

Melanie sits on the edge of the bed and places her hand over mine. “She is, but if we don’t find her quickly…”

“I really don’t know the password. I’d tell you if I could. I—” My brain’s still sluggish, but I need it to think of something. Mila’s life is on the line. “But the man who called does. We swapped phones last night.”

The smile on Melanie’s face fades as she presses her lips tightly together. “He’s probably on his way here now. Will you help us capture him?”

“Sure, but how will we find him? You hung up the phone.”

“Oh, that’s easy.” Melanie runs her fingers through a hologram, and a map of the town appears with a single dot moving toward us. “I can track your phone’s location.”

“Seriously?! Just my phone?”

Liana groans at my stupidity. “Is it any weirder than the hidden camera in your room?”

As much as I hate to admit it, she has me there.

⁂

The plan’s simple. We don’t have time to come up with anything else. I’ll jump out of the window and make a run for him. Melanie will fire a shot that will miss us, the two of us will panic and run, and I’ll lead him into an ambush.

At first, everything goes well. I jump from the window and perform a convincing roll across the lawn before sprinting away from the house. I meet the man just as he turns the corner, nearly knocking him over.

“What the—” He has the same gravelly voice from the phone call. No doubt, it’s him.

But he’s also me—an older me. His hair is thin and graying, his face rounder and covered in worry lines, but he is undoubtedly me.

He stumbles backward, and I stumble over my words. So many questions try to escape my lips at the same time. Why? How? But while I stand there dumbfounded, he pulls a pistol from his waistband and aims it at me.

A split second later, he opens fire—a split second too late. I dive out of the way as Melanie puts a bullet in his shoulder, yanking his aim away from me. She must have some skill to be confident she wouldn’t take off my head at that distance. Or maybe she doesn’t care.

We both drive in opposite directions to escape her line of fire, and I hide behind a bush. Through the leaves, I can see Liana tackle him to the ground and knock him unconscious with a blow to the head.

“Interloper’s down.” I can barely hear her over the ringing in my ears, “but the one from this timeline still has the phone.”

The phone! It wasn’t my phone, but it was his, and if he was me, then the phone really is mine. I try punching in the passcode, 5309, and to my relief, it works.

Only it’s not my phone, nor is it his. It’s Mila’s. The phone opens up straight to her inbox, but all the messages are from years in the future. What’s going on here? Searching for clues, I flick to the home screen, but there’s only one other app installed, and it’s named Time Machine.

For real? I think to myself. There’s no way. But then again, how else can I explain the messages from the future or the older copy of myself? If this works, I can go back to before Mila disappeared. I can warn her. Frantically, I swipe the date picker in the app. I need to go back a few years, but it’s taking so long to scroll.

Cold steel presses against my scalp. I look up to see Melanie holding the gun to my head. I have no time to care about the date. I just have to press the button and hope.