Midnight Caller

“Sir, you’re calling me in the middle of the night. I don’t know you. What do you want?”

Arthur sits in his boxers, still half-asleep, slumped in his armchair. He’s holding the receiver of a telephone that exists now only as decoration, no longer connected to anything.

On the other end of the line, there is silence. Arthur breathes heavily, as if the weight of the world has settled on his shoulders.

“Artuur, it’s me. Don’t you recognize me?”

His name is pronounced wrong. Too intimate to be a mistake, too wrong to feel familiar. The emphasis lands on the final syllable, stretched just enough to unsettle him. He frowns and taps his fingers incessantly against the small table beside him.

“I’ve already told you, I don’t know you, and this phone line has been disconnected for years. You’re calling a landline that no longer works. Is this some kind of joke?”

He glances at the old rotary phone, the receiver attached by a curled cord. It has been passed down through generations; that’s why he kept it, an heirloom rather than an object.

“Artuur, didn’t you used to go by the nickname Globe?”

How does the caller know that? Arthur scratches the back of his neck. He was called Globe once, long ago.

“How did you get this number, and why is there still a connection?”

“Your landline number was never changed, Globe. I’m the past. I’m not now. I had to call you back — that’s it.”

Arthur clenches his hand into a fist.

“I’m repeating myself,” he says. “I’m hanging up now.”

“Wait, wait — there’s a reason I’m calling you back—”

Arthur places the receiver back on the hook and returns to bed. That night he sleeps fitfully, plagued by anxious dreams of dead telephones ringing endlessly.

When he wakes the next morning, he knows immediately: this is going to be a bad day.

He doesn’t sit still; he happens. His knees spring, his hands shoot forward as if already applauding something that hasn’t arrived yet. His eyes gleam too brightly, like freshly polished coins under fluorescent light. He laughs at nothing, startles at the sound of his own laughter, laughs again — faster now, driven.

Words push their way out. They trip over one another, break off, are overtaken by better words, bigger words. He talks with his shoulders, with a chest that heaves like an elevator stretched too tight. His heart feels like a drummer who’s decided to take a solo. Everything is possible. Everything fits. Everything must happen now.

He feels light, almost weightless, as if his body is only a suggestion. Thoughts streak through him like flocks of starlings: no beginning, no end, only direction. His fingers tingle — electricity with no outlet.

But somewhere, just for a moment, something else flickers. A shadow in the corner of his vision. Fatigue, perhaps. Or fear. He waves it away with a sweeping gesture, as if brushing smoke from his own head. No time for that. Sleep is for people who stand still.

He smiles broadly, almost solemnly, as though guarding something important. And deep down he knows it, too: this isn’t rest — it’s a storm holding him upright. For now.

Relieved that the day has finally ended, Arthur sleeps soundly that night. At exactly twelve o’clock — the same time as the strange call the night before — the antique telephone rings. He bolts upright, his heart beating just a little faster. For a moment he decides not to answer, but something in him knows there’s no point.

The same scene. Arthur in his underwear, seated in the armchair. An unknown caller, speaking in the same fragmented way.

“Artuur,” — again that wrong pronunciation, Arthur thinks, irritation rising — “years ago you asked me to remind you of something. I get the sense you don’t remember anymore, so I’m calling you back.”

“Even if what you’re saying were true — on a dead line — why call at such an unchristian hour?”

“Good question, Artuur. That’s not a choice I have. I’m from the past. I’m not now. I am you, in the past. Time bending is possible — but in our case, only at midnight.”

“What’s so urgent that I need to remember it now, all these years later?” His lips press into thin lines, making his words hard to hear. His shoulders are hunched.

“A dinner, my friend. You need to prepare a three-course meal. One course per day. Important: it has to be exactly the same dinner you made when you were me. For Louise. I’ll give you the first course: shrimp cocktail. You’ll remember the others.”

“But… but…” — he can barely get the words out — “who is—”

Beep. Beep. Beep. The line goes dead.

His thoughts begin to crowd each other, interrupting themselves before they fully form. Even the silence feels impatient, urging him on. He hasn’t touched the cookbooks from his student days since graduating — but he still has them.

He flips through them restlessly, at random. Sometimes he skips pages without noticing. Where should he look? He takes a few deep breaths. Of course. The table of contents.

“Got it.” In the third cookbook he finds a recipe for shrimp cocktail. In the margin, he’s written a note himself: dinner Louise. So she did exist. The caller hadn’t invented her.

He spends the rest of the day preparing the appetizer. That evening he kills time by searching through the cookbooks again for more clues. Finally: five, four, three, two, one — the antique phone rings at exactly midnight.

“Let me guess,” he says, before the caller can speak. “Tomorrow I’ll make lamb roast, my grandmother’s way. Next to that recipe — just like the shrimp cocktail — I wrote the same note: dinner Louise.”

On the other end of the line, there’s a brief silence. His former self hadn’t anticipated that opening.

“Good evening to you, too,” the voice replies dryly. “Did the shrimp cocktail turn out well?”

Arthur rolls his eyes. “Of course. I eventually found the recipe. Too bad smartphones didn’t exist in your time — otherwise I could’ve sent you a photo. What do you want me to do with it?”

“Artuur, calm down. Keep breathing. This is an agreement you made with yourself — back when you were me. I’m just here to remind you. Save the appetizer, along with the main course you’ll make tomorrow.”

“You’re doing well, my friend. I knew you’d find the main course on your own. Do you have any idea where this is all leading?”

Arthur runs his hands through his hair. His eyelids feel heavy; the corners of his mouth sag. He wipes his forehead.

“No, young man. I haven’t got the faintest idea. I’m preparing a three-course meal from the last century involving someone named Louise, and it feels like you’re enjoying watching me struggle all the way to dessert.”

“I wouldn’t call it struggling. Cooking was your greatest hobby when you were me. Hold on — you’ll see in the end.”

A day later, with a perfectly roasted leg of lamb behind him, Arthur searches for the final course: dessert. Just as his eyes land on the only recipe with Louise scribbled in the margin, the phone rings again. He should be used to it by now, but the harsh, old-fashioned ringing still makes him flinch.

“The lamb turned out perfectly, and I’m looking at the only dessert where I wrote her name.”

“Right, good,” his former self says thoughtfully. “You’re so close to the truth now that it may not even be necessary to actually prepare the dessert. Vanilla ice cream in sabayon with raspberries, right?”

“Exactly,” Arthur snaps. “And you know that because you’re doing the same thing right now?”

“No, Artuur. That’s no longer possible. I can only reach my future self through time bending. The downside is that my life path is no longer identical to yours. What ingredients do you need for the dessert? One of them is crucial to the truth you haven’t been able to see all these years.”

Arthur thinks. “Egg yolks, sugar, white wine, liqueur.” As he rereads the recipe, something shifts. “Louise and the dessert,” he murmurs. “There’s something about the dessert.”

His former self falls silent. Arthur sets the receiver down and walks into the kitchen in a trance. “Espresso, espresso, espresso,” he mutters, obeying the command. His mind races. Louise and the dessert. What truth can’t he see?

Three espressos later, he picks up the phone again. “Louise and the dessert,” he manages, his voice faltering. Something is beginning to surface. “Louise came over for dinner. I wanted to do something special. It was our first date. I was nervous. But the evening went so well. Butterflies everywhere. I secretly hoped she felt the same.”

The line stays ominously silent. He has to remember it himself.

Then it hits him. Out of nowhere. As if someone smashes him in the head with a rubber mallet. His ears ring; his vision blurs. For minutes he’s frozen, unable to move or speak.

His voice breaks. “Louise choked and died during dessert. Completely unexpected.” The raging, unbearable panic of that night crashes over him again in full force.

“Are you happy now?” he shouts into the phone. “Do I have to feel guilty forever? Because she died? Because it was my fault? Why are you digging this up?”

His former self answers in a warm, gentle voice. “No, Artuur. That’s not the reason. On the contrary. Neither of you could have known why she died. You were admitted to a psychiatric facility almost immediately afterward. You were already struggling with several psychiatric conditions, but Louise and the dessert were the final straw. For your own safety, no one ever spoke of Louise again in your presence.”

“Now that my timeline differs from yours, I know the Louise from back then as a classmate. She had an egg allergy. You couldn’t have known that. She didn’t even know it herself. The eggs in the sabayon triggered a severe allergic reaction. Anaphylaxis can be fatal within minutes. It was never your fault. That’s what you need to understand.”

Silence settles on the other end of the line. The connection breaks. The antique telephone will never ring again.

Arthur no longer needs to answer.