A Call From My Future Self

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The day after I gave birth, I tried to call my old numbera lingering habit from before my life fell apart. Instead of a busy signal, the call went through, and the woman who answered was me.

Me, three years in the future.

I held up my newborn, my heart swollen with a mother's fresh, fragile joy. How is she in three years? I asked, my voice a breathless whisper. "Is she sweet? Is she beautiful? And..." I felt a blush creep up my neck. "Are Gordon and I... are we incredibly happy?"

The version of me on the screen stared back. The look in her eyes was so thick with longing it nearly broke through the glass. But when she spoke, her voice was a shard of ice.

"Do you know why Gordon isn't in your room right now?" she asked.

"Because right this second, he's in the next wing. Larathe Crawford familys golden child, the girl who should be rotting in a prison celljust gave birth to his baby, too."

My grip on the phone tightened. The smile slid off my face.

"Later on," my future self continued, her voice hollow, "Gordon wanted to make his bastard child legitimate. So he staged a kidnapping. He pretended someone had snatched our daughter for ransom, but it was all a game to write her out of his life."

The camera suddenly flipped. I was looking at a dizzying expanse of sky. The wind roared through the speaker, a violent, thrashing sound.

"She was only three," she whispered. "She died alone in a pitch-black, freezing, abandoned factory. When they did the autopsy, even the medical examiner couldn't stop crying. And now, Im going to find her."

The line went dead. A split second later, the sickening, heavy thud of a body hitting concrete echoed through the receiver, vibrating right into my bones.

I huddled in my hospital bed, clutching my baby to my chest, my body trembling so hard the sheets rustled.

In my mind, I saw Gordonthe way he used to lean down, press his warm forehead against my swollen belly, and laugh softly whenever he felt a kick.

How could that man betray me with the woman I hated most? How could he let our child die for hers?

The door to the maternity suite burst open.

Gordon strode in. His features were sharper now, slightly hardened, like a portrait that had been left to dry for too long. He looked around the sterile room, his gaze finally landing on the bundle in my arms.

His eyes held a dark, twisting complexity.

Could it be...?

"Im the Gordon from three years in the future," he said.

He watched my face, entirely unsurprised by my terror. "You don't look shocked."

"When did it start?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper, my fingers clawing into the hospital blanket until my knuckles turned white.

I wanted him to deny it. I wanted him to laugh, to pull me close and tell me that the call was a cruel, impossible prank.

But Gordon merely shrugged, his tone chillingly casual.

"I don't really remember," he said. "If I had to put a date on it, probably the second month after we made things official. Lara and I slept together. I think you were asleep in the next room once. I told her youd taken cold medicine and were dead to the world, but she was still so nervous."

So Lara had never gone to prison. Gordon had lied to me from the very beginning.

My stomach turned, a hot wave of nausea rising in my throat. I grabbed the heavy ceramic mug from the bedside table and hurled it at him. It shattered against the wall.

My screams were drowned out by the sudden, sharp wails of my baby.

"Why, Gordon? Why? You knew what she did! You knew Lara ran my parents down in the street!"

I had been abandoned as a baby, passed from one foster home to another until the Hendersons took me in. They loved me, cherished me, gave me a real lifeuntil the night Lara Crawford, racing her luxury sports car down a dark boulevard, slammed into them and killed them instantly.

I had been consumed by grief and rage. I called the police, begged for justice, wanted her locked away forever. But the Crawfords were too powerful. If they hadn't discovered by some freak DNA match that I was actually their long-lost biological daughter, I wouldn't have survived the year.

I ripped open my hospital gown, exposing the ugly, jagged scars Laras hired thugs had left on my collarbone.

"You said you loved me!" I screamed, my voice cracking. "You said you felt my pain! You promised you'd help me destroy her! Why did you do this?"

A slow, mocking smile touched the corner of Gordons mouth.

"I actually intended to help you at first," he said smoothly. "I even kidnapped her to scare her. But that girl... she has fire. She wasn't afraid of me at all. She climbed right into my lap and kissed me. We did it in the back of my car. She's wild, Jo. She's adventurous in ways you could never comprehend. A good, quiet girl like you... you wouldn't understand how thrilling that kind of danger is."

My C-section incision felt like it was on fire, the pain radiating through my abdomen as tears streamed down my face.

I had spent years filing police reports, appealing dismissals, standing outside courthouse doors with protest signs, desperate to make my parents' killer pay. And all the while, as Laras hired men beat me and eventually dragged me to a private asylum to force my silence, Gordon was sleeping with her. They were building a life together. They had a child.

"Come on, don't cry," Gordon said, stepping closer. He reached out, his hand warm and gentle as he wiped the tears from my cheek, his tone as casual as if he were commenting on the afternoon weather. "If it makes you feel better, I'll have her apologize to you."

And then, before I could push him away, his hands darted down. He snatched my daughter from my arms.

My chest felt suddenly, violently empty.

"Gordon, what are you doing? Give her back!"

He idly poked the baby's cheek, making her cry harder.

"Oh, I forgot to mention," he said, his eyes distant as he drifted into his own memories. "I went through hell to come back to this moment, specifically to get this child out of the picture."

He looked down, a soft, sickening tenderness in his expression when he thought of Lara. "You have no idea how bad Laras postpartum depression gets in three years. She couldn't even handle the sound of our baby crying if your daughter's cries were louder. It was breaking her. So, I had to stage that kidnapping to get your kid out of the house. But then I realized there was a better way."

He held the crying infant in one arm and used his free hand to gently tuck a stray lock of hair behind my ear. "I could just come back here and solve the problem at the root. Before Lara ever finds out about this baby... I'm going to send her far away."

"Away? Where?"

He dropped a slip of paper onto my lap. I looked at the address, and my heart stopped.

The asylum.

To spare Lara's fragile nerves, he was sending our newborn daughterhis own flesh and bloodto the very same psychiatric facility where I had been tortured.

"Give her back to me!" I screamed, throwing myself out of bed.

My incision tore open, hot blood immediately blooming through my white hospital gown.

Gordon stepped back, just out of reach. I managed to grab only the hem of his coat, sinking to my knees on the cold floor, sobbing hysterically.

"Please, I beg you, give her back. I'll sign the divorce papers. I'll let Lara have everything. I'll take the baby and disappear. We'll never look at you again. Just please don't do this!"

A flicker of hesitation crossed Gordon's face. He reached down as if to help me up. "Why do you have to make this so hard on yourself"

The heavy door swung open.

Lara walked in, rubbing her eyes. "Gordon? I had a nightmare... I dreamed you had another baby..."

Suddenly, her eyes went wide. She pointed at the bundle in Gordon's arms and shrieked.

"Who is that? Do you have another child? Are you keeping secrets from me?"

The hesitation in Gordon's eyes vanished instantly.

He wrenched his coat from my grip, letting me fall hard against the linoleum.

"Lara, honey, no," he said, his voice laced with panic as he quickly handed the baby to a waiting bodyguard behind him. "It's nothing. Just a random baby from the ward. It doesn't mean anything."

"No! No!"

The pain in my stomach was blinding, but I dragged myself forward on my hands and knees. "Don't take her! Don't take my baby!"

It was useless.

Just like the night my parents were killed, I was entirely, utterly powerless.

Behind Gordon's back, Lara shot me a look of pure, triumphant malice. Then, she threw herself into a hysterical fit.

"You think I'm stupid, Gordon? I heard her! She said it was her baby!"

Rage burned away the physical pain. I forced myself up from the floor, throwing my body toward her, desperate to tear her face apart.

"Lara, you did this on purpose! You soulless, disgusting bitch, I'll kill you!"

Before I could touch her, Gordon's hand came down hard across my face.

The force of the slap threw me to the floor. His eyes were dead and cold.

"You'd better watch what comes out of your mouth," he warned.

Then, turning back to Lara, his voice instantly softened into a gentle, cooing murmur. "Honey, don't listen to her. She's sick. She's clinically insane. Nothing she says is real."

Lara's sobbing stopped instantly. She stared down at me, a cold smile playing on her lips.

"Well, if she's crazy," Lara said softly, "then we should probably send her back to the asylum."

I looked up, cold dread washing over me.

Even Gordon frowned.

He knew exactly what they had done to me in that place. When we were dating, I couldn't bear it if he hugged me too tightly; the restriction of his arms triggered flashbacks of the heavy leather restraints.

Back then, Gordon would wrap me in a gentle embrace, rocking me like a child, whispering, "Don't be scared, Jo. I'm here. No one will ever hurt you again."

And now, my protector had become my tormentor.

Seeing the utter despair on my face, Gordon tried to object. "Lara, she's your sister... you know she has severe PTSD from that place..."

Lara immediately burst into tears, taking a running start toward the concrete wall. "You don't care about me at all! If you don't care about me, you won't care about our baby! Why should we even live? We might as well just end it right now!"

Gordon lunged forward, catching her by the waist. "Of course I care about you! Don't say things like that, it kills me."

It took him several minutes to soothe her.

When she finally quieted down, Gordon looked at me with a heavy, conflicted expression. He knelt beside me, his fingers gently brushing the hair from my forehead.

"Jo," he murmured, "just do this for me. Be a good girl, okay?"

Be a good girl.

When I was dragged back to the Crawford house, covered in bruises, my biological parents had looked at me with that same mild, useless pity.

Be a good girl, Jo. Don't make a scene. Don't make things difficult for us.

Because of Lara, I had been forced to give up seeking justice for my adoptive parents.

And now, I was expected to give up my newborn daughter.

Why?

By what right?

As the bodyguards dragged me out of the room, my boots scraping against the floor, I fixed my eyes on them.

"You will regret this, Gordon," I said, my voice dead. "I swear to God, you will regret this."

Looking at the raw, burning hatred in my eyes, Gordon took a step forward, his chest heaving.

For the five years we had been together, he was used to me looking up at him, chin propped on my hands, smiling and saying 'yes' to whatever he wanted. He knew that all he had to do was whistle, and I would run to him.

Seeing me like this, he hesitated.

He wasn't sure if he wanted to completely destroy a woman who had loved him with her entire soul.

"Wait" he started.

"Gordon!" Lara shrieked, leaning over the window ledge. "If you hesitate for one more second, I will jump right now with our baby!"

Gordon panicked. He turned to the guards and yelled, "Get her out of here! Now!"

I spent three days in the asylum.

They had a thousand ways to make someone with PTSD suffer without leaving a single mark. But the physical torture barely registered. My mind was entirely focused on the roof of that building.

That was the place where my future self had jumped.

And that was the place where she had left me the weapon to make them all pay.

On the fourth morning, they dragged me out.

Gordon was waiting. Seeing the fresh bruises overlaying my old scars, a flash of guilt crossed his face. "You just had a baby, Jo. Your body is weak. Why did you have to go out of your way to provoke Lara?"

I looked at him, my expression entirely blank.

"Gordon," I said quietly. "Did you know? I'm already dead."

"You killed me."

He froze. He stared at me for a long moment, then tossed a tube of medicated cream onto the seat.

"You've completely lost your mind," he muttered, storming out of the car.

I watched him go, a cold smile spreading across my lips.

Gordon didn't get it.

I never lied to him.

Whether it was the fact that I was already dead, or the promise that he would regret thisevery word was the absolute truth.

I escaped.

I slipped away under the cover of darkness when the guards weren't looking.

I spent days walking the streets, going from one private psychiatric facility to the next.

From the east side to the west side. From north to south.

My feet were covered in bloody blisters, my body screaming in exhaustion, but I kept going.

At the final asylum on my list, there was still no sign of my baby.

A shadow fell over me.

I forced my heavy eyelids open. Lara stood there, a wide, ugly sneer on her face.

"Look at you. You look like a stray dog that's been kicked down the street."

She shoved her designer boot into my shin, laughing. "I knew a rat like you wouldn't stay put. I had Gordon move the baby days ago. And I left the asylum doors unlocked on purpose."

She crouched down, her sharp, manicured nails digging into my cheek until a thin line of blood welled up.

"So what if I killed your parents? So what if I tore your baby from your arms? As long as I'm alive, Jo, you will always be beneath my shoe."

My chest felt like it was being squeezed by a giant, crushing fist. The pain was unbearable, but the hatred was worse.

Lara stood up, waving her hand to her men. "Bring her. We're going."

They drove me to the cemetery.

Even from a distance, I could see Gordon standing in front of a headstone.

It was the plot where my adoptive parents were buried.

My voice was raw and ruined from days of screaming. "What are you doing?"

Gordon looked at me, his eyes dark with a twisted kind of sorrow.

"Jo, I hoped those three days would teach you how to behave. But Lara is right. You're like a feral dog. Sometimes you have to beat a dog until it learns to submit."

He raised his hand. "Dig."

A group of hired men immediately began driving shovels into the earth.

My vision turned blood-red.

"Gordon! Are you insane? Stop them! Stop!"

Lara pinned my arms behind my back, her voice whispering in my ear. "This is your punishment, Jo. Because of your stubbornness, your sweet little foster parents don't get to rest in peace. We're going to dig them up and scatter them to the wind."

The torment lasted for two agonizing hours.

Lara forced my eyelids open, refusing to let me look away for even a second.

And Gordon just stood there, watching.

When Lara was finally bored, she threw me onto the dirt like a piece of garbage and took Gordon's arm.

"Let's go home, Gordon. My mom made beef stew for dinner. It's your favorite."

They walked away hand-in-hand. Gordon never looked back.

I lay in the dirt, clutching the loose earth, watching my parents' ashes slip through my fingers.

Mom. Dad. Wait for me.

On the rooftop.

I left my baby in the hands of the only person in this world I still trusted completely.

Then, I opened a live streaming app on my phone.

I used the very last of my savings to boost the broadcast. Within seconds, tens of thousands of viewers flooded the room.

I disabled the comments. I stared directly into the camera, and in a quiet, steady voice, I told them everything.

I told them about my parents' hit-and-run death and the cover-up.

I told them about my stolen child.

I told them about the psychiatric ward, the torture, and the systematic destruction of my life.

The viewer count skyrocketed.

The heavy metal door of the roof burst open. Gordon and Lara ran out, their faces pale with terror.

"What the hell are you doing? Shut that off!" Gordon roared.

I smiled. I took one step backward. Then another.

I spread my arms wide.

And under the horrified gaze of millions of people, I let myself fall.

As the wind whipped past my ears and my body plunged toward the earth, I caught a glimpse of Gordon's face. He was screaming, his hand reaching out into nothingness.

I smiled.

Gordon, I told you. I never lie.

Now, lets burn this entire world down together.

"Jo!!!"