Genre: Psychological Thriller, Mystery, Supernatural
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I remember the night it began—cold, quiet, and unnervingly ordinary. I was sitting in my apartment, sipping coffee, editing a podcast I had recorded earlier that day. I’m a sound designer by trade, obsessed with audio quality, every detail, every whisper. That obsession would become my curse.
Around 2:34 AM, the screen flickered. My editing software glitched for a second, then resumed. That’s when I heard it—a soft voice layered under my own monologue. At first, I thought it was just background noise, maybe a neighbor’s TV, but as I isolated the track and cranked up the gain, the words chilled me.
> “He knows. Stop pretending.”
The voice was mine.
Identical tone. Same inflection. My speech patterns. But I never said those words. Not in the recording. Not ever.
I stared at the waveform—there was no break, no cut, no evidence of splicing. The voice wove seamlessly into my recording like it had always been there. I replayed it over and over. Was I losing it? Sleep-deprived? Delusional?
I texted my best friend and audio tech, Casey.
> “Weird glitch. Need you to hear something.”
She agreed to meet in the morning. I barely slept. My dreams were a fog of whispers and distorted echoes, and when I woke, the static buzz from my speakers was still playing in my head.
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The Second Message
By noon, Casey was in my studio. We listened together. Her face went pale.
“That’s you, but... not. What the hell, Julian?” she asked, eyes wide.
“I don’t know. It wasn’t in the original track. I swear.”
She ran a spectral analysis. The voice had the same acoustic footprint as mine. Same room tone. Same vocal texture. It was untraceable. Unnatural.
Then the second voice clip appeared—embedded in the re-rendered file:
> “Don’t trust her. She’s lying.”
Again, it was my voice.
Casey recoiled. “What kind of sick prank is this?”
“I didn’t do this!” I snapped. “I don’t even know how this is happening.”
She stormed out.
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Echoes of Truth
That night, I locked my doors and unplugged every mic. Still, at 3:33 AM, my laptop turned on by itself. A file named “LISTEN” blinked on the desktop.
With a shaking hand, I pressed play.
My voice, again. “It started when you were nine. The woods. The fire. You forgot. But I didn’t.”
A repressed memory burst like a dam breaking.
The forest behind my childhood home. The hidden tape recorder. The shadow in the trees. My friend David—missing for years. The fire that consumed everything that night. My parents said it was a lightning strike. I always believed them. Until now.
I remembered someone whispering in my ear back then.
> “He can’t leave. Not yet.”
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Unraveling
I went back home—to the cabin ruins in Marrow Creek. Among the charred remains, I found something: an old, half-burnt reel-to-reel recorder. I carried it back to the city. I don’t know why. It felt... alive.
That night, I hooked it up.
The machine played itself.
The voice that came through was mine—but layered, deeper, angrier. Like another version of me.
> “You buried the truth, Julian. I lived in the silence. Now it’s your turn to listen.”
Then I heard screams. A child. Fire. David.
The tape ended with static.
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The Confrontation
Casey showed up the next morning, frantic. “Julian... I dug into the original files. There’s something—someone—inside the waveforms. It’s not code. It’s organic. Like... a memory embedded in sound.”
She looked terrified. “Julian... it’s not just your voice. It’s your consciousness.”
We experimented further. Played the tape backwards. The whispers changed.
> “Set me free... or take my place.”
That night, I blacked out.
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Now
I’m still here. In my apartment.
But something’s different.
When I speak, there’s a delay.
A second voice follows mine—slightly off, slightly... wrong.
And in my dreams, I see him—the other Julian—trapped behind a veil of static, screaming, clawing, waiting.
I play the tape every night.
Sometimes, it speaks first.
Sometimes, it speaks last.
But every time... the voice is mine.
And I never spoke it.
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