The Man by the Payphone

The street lamps on Eager flickered like they were as tired as the people walking below them. Dre leaned against the busted brick wall outside the corner store, eyes scanning the block, bundled up on this cold night. Malik was late aa usual so Dre wasn’t surprised by his lateness. What he was surprised by was how this night in particular felt. There was something in the air so palpable Dre could feel it physically. He’d never felt this feeling before he couldn’t explain it but he knew he didn’t like it. It was as if the air was waiting on something or someone.

When Malik finally came around the corner 20 minutes late, his face was pale under the sodium lights. He held the duffel like it held the Epstein files. “Yo,” he said, voice low. “We gotta move this quick. Dude I got it from… he ain’t normal. Gave me the ick his vibes were all the way off.”

Dre smirked. “Who’s normal these days anyway.”

But Malik didn’t laugh, his face staying a blend of confusion and fear. He looked back down the block, where a man in a long black trench coat stood by the payphone — not moving, not talking. The expression on his face not readable but his body language seemed like he was guarding the phone. The glow from the streetlight bent strange around him, like it didn’t wanna touch him.

They ducked into Dre’s cousin’s basement, the smell of damp concrete heavy. Malik opened the bag. Inside: bundles of cash, but each one was bound by thin, old rubber bands, brittle, yellowed — like money from another time. The bills were crisp though, faces unfamiliar, numbers off.

Dre picked one up. It felt… warm. “Where the hell you get this from?”

“I told you — some dude by the harbor. Said he was a collector.”

“Collector of what?”

Malik shrugged. “He ain’t say. He just said, ‘Don’t count it under the light.’”

Dre laughed, but the sound hit the concrete weird — like it didn’t echo right. He looked up, and the single bulb overhead was swaying though no air moved. Shadows stretched too long across the walls. Malik looked sick.

“You count it yet?” Dre asked.

Malik shook his head. “I tried. Kept losin’ track. Like… the numbers don’t stay the same.”

Outside, a siren wailed somewhere deep in the city. Dre stuffed the bills back, zipped the duffel. “Man, money’s money. We spend it before anyone comes lookin’.”

Malik didn’t answer. He was staring at the corner of the room, at a patch of darkness that seemed thicker than the rest.

When Dre turned to look, it was gone.

They left quick, splitting the bag between them, heading opposite directions down Eager Street. The streetlights buzzed above — now every other one out.

Later that week, Dre bought new kicks, a chain, a used car off Edmondson. But when he handed the man the money, the dude frowned. “This don’t look right,” he said. “Ain’t no president named Harlan Pierce.”

Dre blinked. The bills were slick now, faces warped, ink running like wet paint. He looked down the street — and thought he saw Malik watching from the shadows.

But when he looked again, there was nothing.

And under the failing light of Eager Street, the bag in his hand felt heavier than it should — like something inside it was breathing.

By the next night, Dre couldn’t sleep. The duffel sat on his dresser like it was watching him. Every time he tried to close his eyes, he swore he heard that faint paper shuffle — slow, like someone counting behind his ear.

At 3 a.m., his phone buzzed. A text from Malik.

“You hear him too?”

Before he could type back, another text came through.

“Don’t answer if he calls.”

He stared at the screen, waiting. The room was too quiet. Then his phone lit again — an unknown number. No name. Just the word Payphone flashing where the contact should be.

He didn’t pick up.

The next morning, Dre walked to the corner store. The air felt thick, even the pigeons moving slow. The payphone down the block — the same one that man had stood by — was off the hook, dangling, swaying in the wind.

Inside, the cashier, old Miss Renée, gave him that narrow look. “You still hangin’ with that boy Malik?”

“Sometimes,” Dre said, grabbing a soda.

“Mm.” She looked toward the street. “You tell him stop knockin’ on folks’ doors at night. Ain’t right. People got kids.”

Dre froze. “Malik ain’t been—”

But she’d already turned away.

That night he went by Malik’s building — a rowhouse with its windows boarded. The front door was cracked, the inside dark. The duffel Malik had taken half of was there on the floor, wide open. No money. Just dust, like someone had burned paper and let the ashes cool.

“Yo, Malik!” Dre called.

Something shifted upstairs. Slow steps. Not heavy, not light — off.

Then he heard it: that faint whispering count again. Not quite English. Not quite numbers.

He backed out, left the door swinging open. The wind was cold now, though it hadn’t been all day.

Walking home, Dre saw a man leaning by the payphone again — same long coat, face shadowed. He held the receiver to his ear but said nothing. When Dre passed, the man turned slightly, like he knew him.

“Yo, you—” Dre started.

But the payphone clicked, and the dial tone came from Dre’s pocket. His phone lit up again.

Payphone calling…

He dropped it, but it kept ringing on the sidewalk, the sound echoing too long, too deep for one phone.

By morning, Dre’s number stopped working. Folks said he’d skipped town, that he was flashing weird money and ran when it turned fake.

But Miss Renée swore she saw him last week — standing by the payphone on Eager Street. Said the light bent around him funny, like it didn’t wanna touch him either.

Two weeks after Dre vanished, the city moved on. Sirens still cut through the night, buses still rattled past boarded rowhouses, and the payphone on Eager still hung there, dead but never quiet.

Malik hadn’t slept since the night he left that money in the basement. The voices came through anything that carried sound — the hum of the fridge, the static before a song played, even the silence before rain. Always whispering, counting, like the world was trying to measure him out in numbers that never added up.

He walked the block one last time before dawn, hoodie tight, eyes darting between puddles that reflected no sky. Eager Street looked thinner now — like something had been scraped out of it.

He stopped by the payphone. The receiver was back on the hook, clean, gleaming like someone had polished it. His hands shook when he reached for it, half expecting heat, half expecting nothing.

It was cold.

He lifted it. Static filled his ear. Then a voice — low, tired, familiar.

“You counted it, didn’t you?”

“Dre?” Malik whispered.

The line hissed, then settled into slow breathing.

“He said not to count it under the light,” the voice went on, soft as dust. “You remember that?”

Malik’s heart kicked against his ribs. “Where are you?”

A pause. The hum on the line deepened, and for a second he thought he could hear a city moving somewhere far below — cars, sirens, laughter — but twisted, all running backward.

“Right here,” the voice said. “Been here. You coming?”

Malik dropped the phone and stepped back, but his reflection in the payphone glass didn’t move. It just stared, eyes hollowed with light that wasn’t streetlight.

He stumbled away, but the reflection lingered, still holding the receiver, still whispering numbers that weren’t numbers.

By sunrise, the payphone was gone. Just the empty post left, wires hanging loose.

Later, folks said they saw Malik too — standing where the phone used to be, head tilted like he was listening to something only he could hear.

No one’s touched that spot since. The new light they put up there keeps flickering, no matter how many times they fix it.

And when the wind cuts through Eager late at night, it sounds like someone’s still counting — quiet, patient — waiting for the next one to pick up.