The phone lights up in the dark.
Your name.
For half a second, relief floods her chest so hard it hurts. Muscle memory takes over, she reaches for it, smiling before she even thinks.
Then she remembers.
The smile dies mid-breath.
The phone keeps buzzing, insistent, hopeful, wrong. She lets it ring until the screen goes black again. Her hand is shaking now. She tells herself it must be a glitch. A delayed notification. Anything but what it feels like.
A voicemail appears.
Timestamped now.
She doesn't listen.
She sits there instead, staring at the quiet phone, realizing something awful all at once:
This is the last time the world will pretend you're still alive.
Tomorrow, nothing will light up. No name. No buzzing in the dark. Just an object that finally understands what it's for.
She turns the phone face-down and whispers, "I'm sorry I missed it," even though there was never a call.
Only the absence of one.
-Melpomene49