I’m Outside the House

The evening had unravelled slowly, lazily even, wrapping Zoe in the quietude she both craved and loathed. It was one of those cold December nights when the wind carries an edge sharp enough to scratch against windowpanes. She’d lit a single candle on the coffee table, an anchor of light in the otherwise dim living room, the television a muted hum in the background. Outside, the skeletal branches of the huge tree tapped against the glass like impatient fingers.

Zoe had always been comfortable with solitude – too comfortable, perhaps. Her little house on Doe Street was modest and secluded, sitting at the edge of a wooded lot where the streetlights petered out into darkness. Tonight, she had her woollen socks, her tea steeping on the table, and the certainty that no one would bother her.

But when her phone buzzed, she was startled. She wasn’t expecting anyone. Her first thought was spam—yet another promotional text from some faceless company. She reached for the phone lazily and unlocked it, expecting to delete it with barely a glance.

What she saw instead made her hand freeze, her breath snagging in her throat like a hook.

The message was from her own number.

“I’m outside the house.”

Her first reaction was to laugh—dry, incredulous. Some kind of glitch, surely? It had to be. She clicked into the message thread, trying to find a context that wasn’t there. There were no prior messages from her own number. Just that single sentence, sitting in the middle of the screen like a taunt.

Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. She typed back, the way one does to dismiss something ridiculous.

“Very funny.”

She set the phone back down and picked up her tea, which was now lukewarm. The room suddenly felt colder, the shadows cast by the candle sharper. Zoe glanced toward the large window by the couch, the curtains drawn apart just enough for her to see the pitch-black void beyond. Her reflection stared back, a pale, distorted figure against the glass.

The phone buzzed again.

This time, the noise made her flinch. She looked down, her pulse quickening.

“I am not joking.”

The message was immediate, as though whoever—or whatever—was texting her had been waiting for her reply. The words sent an icy rivulet down her spine, pooling somewhere deep in her chest. She put the phone down as if it were a snake ready to bite and looked around the room.

The house was silent. The only sound was the faint rustling of wind outside. Zoe’s rational mind kicked in, desperate to explain this away. Someone was pranking her, surely—a neighbour? A hacker or a stalker? Someone who’d cloned her number? That must be possible now.

She grabbed the phone again, her thumbs moving swiftly.

“Who is this?”

The reply came within seconds.

“You know who it is.”

A lump formed in her throat. Her gaze flicked to the front door, locked with its deadbolt and chain, then to the back door in the kitchen, which she hadn’t used in days. She was safe. She had to be. She clung to that thought as though saying it aloud might make it true.

Her phone buzzed again. She didn’t want to look, but something compelled her to.

“I am watching you.”

Her heart felt like it had stopped and restarted in a moment. The candlelight wavered, casting jittery shadows on the walls, and for the first time that night, Zoe realized how vulnerable she was. She was alone, isolated. The house felt vast and alien now, the very walls seeming to close in.

She forced herself to stand, moving toward the window with slow, deliberate steps. Her reflection stared back at her, but beyond it, was nothing: no outline of a figure; no car parked at the curb; no sign of movement. Just the dense darkness of the street and the occasional flurry of snow blowing sideways in the wind.

She drew the curtains shut.

The phone buzzed again, and Zoe’s hand trembled as she reached for it.

“Why are you closing the curtains, Zoe?”

Her name…

Her knees buckled, and she had to steady herself against the arm of the couch. She hadn’t told anyone she’d be home tonight. In fact, she hadn’t told anyone much of anything for weeks. She’d been too busy, too tired, too… alone.

Panic unfurled in her chest like a coiled snake finally unspooling. She dialled 911 with shaking hands, her breaths shallow and ragged.

The line clicked, and a woman’s voice came through. “911, what’s your emergency?”

Zoe almost wept with relief. “Someone’s outside my house,” she said, her voice hitching. “They’re texting me from my own number—they know my name… they said they’re watching me—”

“Okay, ma’am, stay calm,” the operator said. “Can you see them right now?”

“No, but—”

The lights in the house went out.

The candle remained, its flickering flame the only light in the suffocating darkness. Zoe’s breath caught as she turned, the phone still pressed to her ear.

“Ma’am?” the operator said. “Ma’am, are you there?”

“They cut the power,” Zoe whispered.

“Stay where you are. Officers are on their way. Do you have any weapons in the house?”

Zoe barely heard her. The house had become a black void, every creak of the floorboards magnified, every gust of wind against the windows a threat. She stood paralyzed, clutching the phone like a lifeline.

The candle flame quivered as though disturbed by a breath of air.

The operator’s voice was distant now, drowned by the sound of her own heartbeat pounding in her ears. She felt the air shift before she saw it—movement at the edge of the room, just beyond the reach of the candlelight. A shape.

“Who’s there?” she shouted, the words tearing from her throat in a mixture of fury and terror.

No response.

The shadows seemed to ripple, and then a voice—a low, intimate whisper—cut through the darkness.

“You should have stayed quiet, Zoe.”

She screamed, dropping the phone as the figure lunged from the shadows. It was a blur of movement, impossibly fast, and all she could see was a flash of a face—her face.

Her own twisted reflection.

The candle went out.

When the police arrived twenty minutes later, the house was silent. They found Zoe’s phone on the living room floor, its screen shattered, the thread of texts still open. The last message read,

“I’m inside the house.”

But Zoe was gone, no trace of her, nor a sign of forced entry…

Only the faint scent of extinguished wax lingered in the air.

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