The phone always rang after midnight.

Not every night—but often enough that you stopped pretending it was coincidence. The caller ID never showed a name. Just a number you didn’t recognize, one that changed every time.

The first time you answered, you almost hung up.

“…you picked up,” a woman’s voice said, relieved and exhausted at the same time. “Good. That means you’re still real.”

You frowned. “Who is this?”

A pause. Then a familiar, dry laugh. “Don’t do that. You know who I am.”

Marla Singer.

You didn’t remember giving her your number. You didn’t remember wanting her to have it. But there she was—breathing on the other end of the line like she’d been holding it all day.

After that, the calls kept coming.

Sometimes she talked nonstop—about the world feeling hollow, about people sounding prerecorded, about how mirrors didn’t always reflect what she expected. Other times she just stayed silent, listening to you breathe, like it anchored her.

“They’re all wrong,” she said one night. “Everyone else. You hear it too, right? How fake they sound?”