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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Theeaglestrikes on 2024-09-23 18:08:41+00:00.
“I think that might be the wrong way round,” I said, smirking.
The message had not been inked, but engraved into the plastic laminate partition. It’s the staple of any public bathroom stall. A number that, let’s be honest, is either false or owned by an unwilling participant of a bad practical joke. But this message was different. Unlike the other musings and doodles on the cubicle wall, it caught my eye. That was no meagre feat, considering it was three in the morning, and ten bottles of cider were sloshing around in my belly.
It wasn’t the unbalanced handwriting that entrapped my gaze. Not even the brown trail of rust left in the grooves of the etching. So what if an inebriated moron had written his phone number with his house key? That didn’t interest me at all. My curiosity was piqued by the length of the number.
Four digits. I didn’t ring it, of course, because I didn’t expect that the call would actually connect. That, along with the backwards wording of the message, started to poison my intrigue. There was an omen lurking in the message. I didn’t like any of it.
But I shook my head, realising that my drunken mind was playing cruel tricks on me. If a drunken stranger had written the message, it would make sense that he’d only remember four digits of his number. It would make sense that he’d mix up a common saying too.
Get a grip, scaredy-pants, I told myself, chuckling as I struggled to aim my stream away from the seat of the toilet.
“The fuck are you yapping about?” Mason slurred, slipping on the damp floor as he pulled my cubicle door open.
I zipped up my jeans and drunkenly grinned. “Trying to sneak a peak?”
“Keep your fantasies to yourself, Alec,” Mason said, swaying listlessly in the doorway. “Now, what were you saying, tosspot?”
“I don’t remember,” I admitted, laughing and shrugging.
“Something about the wrong…” my friend hazily began, pausing to belch. “Something was round? I don’t know.”
I slapped my head in realisation, then jabbed a pointing finger at the cubicle wall. “The message! I was saying it’s the wrong way round.”
Mason crouched, squinting to read it. “It’s missing, like… three numbers…”
I snorted so hard I choked. “Mason, it’s missing a few more than that. You’re drunk.”
“So are you!” he protested, standing up with hands on his hips, then stumbling into the opposite cubicle wall.
“True, but at least I have more than one brain cell left,” I pointed out.
“That isn’t saying much, considering you only started with two,” Mason retorted.
I laughed. “Damn.”
“Yeah,” he replied, tapping his temple with a grin. “See? Even tipsy, I’m witsy.”
“Witsy?” I asked, giggling.
“Witty,” he corrected.
I was searching for a smart reply when I noticed that my friend had produced his phone from the front pocket of his jeans. My inebriated friend’s bobblehead hindered his ability to focus on the screen, but I already knew from the tone of the phone’s digital clicks that he was dialling a number. A short number.
“You’re not serious?” I asked as the phone started to ring. “It’s not going to work.”
“We’ll see, won’t we, Mr Smart Alec?” Mason asked, mashing the phone against sweaty hair in a completely failed attempt to meet his ear. “That name hits the spot every time.”
“Yeah?” I scoffed, rocking from side to side. “So does your mum.”
My friend laughed, shoving me into the green, rickety wall of the cubicle. “My mum’s too wonderful for you.”
“You’re too wonderful for you.”
The phone had barely stopped ringing when the response sounded through the speaker. I heard the voice with such clarity that I twisted my head to ensure the responder hadn’t appeared in the cubicle.
As my friend and I locked eyes, I knew that we felt the same chilling sensation. The same chilling realisation.
Mason should not have called that number.
“Who is this?” my friend calmly asked, struggling to sober himself up.
“Who is this?” the voice parroted, speaking in a misshapen way.
Mason started to pant, his chest bloating and compressing rapidly as he trembled on the spot. I tried to control my breathing, but I knew why were both so afraid. There was background noise behind the voice on the other end. And that sharp, spiky audio didn’t signify bad reception. Something was hidden in the static of the call.
“Hang up,” I said.
I reached towards the phone in Mason’s hand, but he retracted it and shook his head at me in absolute terror, as if to say that ending the call would be a dreadful idea. As if he were hearing more than me. And I wonder, sometimes, whether he’d simply been trying to stop me from hearing it too.
I trusted my friend, as I’d never seen him that way. Possessed by terror that surpassed even my own, and I’d certainly never been so frightened in my life. His transformation became fully apparent when a drunken pub-goer stumbled into the bathroom. The barfly that locals call Barmy Barry, but only because he does, in fact, act a little barmy if we don’t.
“Fuck off, Barmy!” Mason yelled.
The old, dishevelled gentleman wore a matching waistcoat and corduroy trousers, as if he were either attending a funeral or preparing to perform amateur magic. And knowing Barmy Barry, it may well have been both. I was actually relieved to see him. Relieved to be drawn back into the real world and forget, for a second, the unsettling nature of the phone call.
“What are you boys doing in here?” the grumbling man mumbled as he walked towards our cubicle.
“Blow,” I joked.
“You’re blowing each other?” Barmy Barry gasped.
I sighed. “No, Barry, it’s… Never mind.”
“Barmy Barry,” he corrected.
“Just get out of here,” my friend icily ordered.
Barmy Barry narrowed his eyes. “I’m going to tell Michele that you two are up to no good. I’ll be back to check on you if you haven’t left in a few minutes. And then I’m taking a piss, okay? Once you’ve calmed down.”
“Bye, Bazza,” I said as the man exited the room.
My friend summoned a deep breath.
“It was only Barry,” I said, before gulping. “Just… hang up the phone, Mason. We don’t need to keep talking to him.”
“Who is this?” the phone voice repeated with that horridly unnatural timbre.
Mason ignored me and started to reply. “This is—”
“This is Mason,” the voice interrupted, answering its own question.
The two of us quaked in the bathroom stall. Nobody had mentioned my friend’s name. Not me. Not Barmy Barry. Yet, this mysterious voice knew.
I pleaded with silent eyes for Mason to hang up the phone. To my surprise, in spite of the unwilling look on his face, my friend nodded. But as he started to lower the phone from his ear, the voice on the other end spoke again.
“Why are you listening to Alec? Don’t you want to enjoy a long time?” it whispered.
Before my friend responded to the voice, the door to the bathroom stall swung closed, sweeping my friend out of the cubicle with unholy force.
“Mason!” I shouted, instantly grabbing the handle.
Something was wrong. I sensed it before I’d even opened the door. Sensed, somehow, that I would be facing a new land when I stepped outside.
I was both right and wrong.
The grimy, stained, neglected bathroom still stood before me, but its pieces had been scrambled. Before me was the familiar row of sinks, but it stretched much farther, much like the row of cubicles beside me. And when I twisted to face what should have been the room’s far end, I found only a long tunnel. The two walls, lined with sinks and stalls, were no longer straight and finite. They curved sharply to the right, and whatever lay around the corner was just out of sight.
“Alec?” a familiar voice cried.
My chest tightened.
“Mason?” I replied, voice cracking as it barrelled down the tiled chamber ahead.
There did not come a second response from my friend. However, a few seconds later, the sound of a shutting door echoed down the tunnel towards me, seemingly carried by a far-off breeze. It became clear to me that I wouldn’t find the bathroom’s end once I rounded the corner. A thought confirmed when I finally took ginger steps out of the cubicle, skidding slightly in the same mystery puddle that had nearly claimed my friend.
And after following the curving tunnel for only a few steps, I saw that I was correct. The bathroom continued ceaselessly. The two walls did not meet some end-wall. I did not see an exit beside the last cubicle on the right, for there seemed to be no last cubicle. All that awaited was a never-ending passageway of sinks and stalls.
I didn’t want to follow the bend. I had a feeling that I should wait in the first cubicle for the nightmare to pass. But I knew, if I were to do that, I would be turning my back on Mason.
As I walked farther and farther from the faux safety I’d felt in the initial cubicle, I tried to focus on my trainers clapping against damp tiles. But the persistent echoes of distant noises drowned each step, no matter how heavily I walked.
Far-flung faucets gushed. Poorly-oiled stall hinges groaned. Doors locked or unlocked. Every sound typical of a public bathroom, which would have been banal in any other circumstance, seemed to excavate a fresh layer of fear from the pit of my stomach. I held my sanity together with duct-tape and faith.
It was when a not-so-distant sound emerged that I finally unravelled.
Only three or four cubicles ahead from me, a stall door closed. But not before I had a chance to scream at the sight of translucent fingers gripping the plasti...
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