MY BOYFRIEND LEFT HIS WORK BAG AND A MESSAGE POPPED UP
The phone screen glowed hot in my hand as I scrolled through notifications I shouldn’t have seen right there on the lock screen. His phone lay face down on the coffee table, vibrating silently against the cheap wood grain I hated but couldn’t afford to replace right now. I picked it up to clear the notifications that were stacking up, and a banner for a text message flashed across the lock screen from a contact labeled only ‘K’.
My breath hitched reading the preview – something about “can’t wait for next week” and “finally got your package, it fits perfectly.” My stomach tightened into a cold knot of dread because he had sworn he was just working late, buried in paperwork, every night last week at the office.
He came back into the living room carrying a glass of water, saw the phone in my hand, and froze instantly in the doorway. “What are you doing with my phone?” he asked, his voice far too sharp, his eyes darting everywhere except directly at me.
I couldn’t even answer, just held the screen towards him, my hand shaking uncontrollably now. He lunged, grabbed the phone, fumbling to swipe it closed while babbling about it being a work contact, but ‘K’ wasn’t a company name on his business card, and the meeting location mentioned was nowhere near his actual office building.
But then I heard the distinct sound of footsteps directly above my head.
👇 *Full story continued in the comments…*My head snapped upwards. We both knew who – or *what* – lived in the cramped, leaky apartment above us. Mrs. Henderson, a woman so reclusive she made Howard Hughes look like a social butterfly, rarely made a sound. We’d lived here for two years and only heard her move around a handful of times. The distinct, deliberate footsteps were unsettling, to say the least.
My boyfriend, Mark, clearly sensed the shift in my attention. The panicked look in his eyes lessened slightly, replaced by a flicker of… relief? He seemed to regain his composure just a fraction.
“Look,” he said, lowering his voice. “Let’s just put the phone down, okay? We can talk about this later. What was that noise?” He tilted his head, feigning innocent curiosity.
I hesitated, my gut churning with suspicion but momentarily distracted. The footsteps above had stopped abruptly. The silence was heavy, almost oppressive.
“I don’t know,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “Mrs. Henderson never makes any noise.”
We both stood there, listening. Then, a slow, deliberate tapping sound started. Tap… tap… tap. It sounded like someone dragging a heavy object across the floor. It stopped, then started again, closer this time.
Mark swallowed hard. “Maybe she’s sick? Maybe we should check on her?” The suggestion felt forced, desperate.
“Maybe,” I replied, still holding his gaze. “Or maybe she’s just heard *everything*.”
He paled. He knew I wasn’t talking about the noise upstairs anymore. I was talking about his lies, the secret meetings, the mysterious ‘K’ and her perfectly fitting package.
The tapping grew louder, closer to the doorway that led to the shared hallway. It was undeniable now, the sound of something heavy being deliberately moved.
“We need to leave,” I said, grabbing my keys and purse from the cluttered side table. “Now.”
He didn’t argue. He grabbed his wallet and followed me out the door, leaving his phone behind on the coffee table. As we hurried down the narrow hallway, I glanced back towards our apartment. Just as we reached the bottom of the stairs, the door to Mrs. Henderson’s apartment creaked open, and a single sheet of paper fluttered down, landing silently at our feet.
We stopped, frozen. Mark cautiously picked it up. Scrawled across the paper in large, shaky letters was a single word: “TELL.”
He looked at me, his face ashen. I didn’t know what ‘K’ represented, but I knew this: whatever he was hiding, Mrs. Henderson knew too. And she was letting me know I deserved the truth. He had to tell me everything, or our already shaky foundation was guaranteed to crumble completely. The choice was his. And for the first time, I didn’t care which way it went. The silence from above grew more oppressive, and the only thing I wanted was for him to tell me the truth.