The Socket That Swallowed the Light

The first time my phone vanished, I blamed the clutter. My nightstand was a graveyard of half-read books, crumpled receipts, and a ceramic mug that had long ago surrendered its coffee to a brown crust. But the phone wasn’t in the clutter. It wasn’t under the bed, in the bathroom, or in the kitchen. I called it, expecting the familiar buzz from some forgotten corner, but the line went straight to voicemail. The ringer was on, but the phone was dead—literally, because I’d plugged it in before bed, the green charge light glowing like a tiny beacon in the dark.

Maren, my partner, found it the next morning, sitting on the kitchen counter, its screen lit with a notification I didn’t recognize. It was a photo of my own face, taken from above, like someone had held the phone over me while I slept. The timestamp was 3:03 AM. My skin crawled, but I chalked it up to a weird glitch, maybe a pocket dial from the night before. Maren laughed, said I’d probably sleepwalked and taken the photo myself. I didn’t laugh. That photo was the first brushstroke of a portrait that would soon cover every surface of our home.

The second incident was stranger. I’d placed my keys on the hall table, right next to the bowl where we tossed loose change. When I reached for them, they were gone. I searched for an hour, retracing my steps, peering under furniture, even checking the trash. Maren, who had been watching me from the kitchen doorway with a bemused smile, finally said, ‘Maybe the house is playing tricks again. Just ask it to give them back.’ It was a joke, our little ritual from the first time things went missing. I sighed, rolled my eyes, and said, ‘Okay, house, I’m sorry for whatever I did. Can I have my keys back?’ And I followed her to the couch, defeated. When I came back ten minutes later, the keys were on the table, exactly where I’d left them, arranged in a neat little spiral. Maren’s smile faded. We looked at each other, and I felt the first true chill of something watching us from the walls.

The third act was the masterpiece. It was my phone again, but this time the prank had a signature. I plugged it in at night, the charger secure, the screen flashing a quick ‘charging’ alert before I turned away. I woke to silence. The room was dark, the usual hum of the fridge absent. My phone was gone from the nightstand. The charger cord dangled, its tip glinting in the moonlight. I searched the floor, the bed, the bathroom. Nothing. Maren was still asleep, undisturbed. I made a cup of tea, trying to calm my racing heart, and when I walked back into the bedroom, the phone was on the pillow. But it wasn’t just there. It was displaying a live feed from the camera, showing the room from the ceiling corner, as if it were hovering. The image was grainy, but I could see myself standing next to the bed, and I could see the phone on the pillow, and I could see something else—a faint, shimmering shape in the corner of the frame, like heat distortion, but with a suggestion of limbs.

I grabbed the phone, and the feed flickered. When the screen cleared, it showed a text message, typed in my own hand, but I hadn’t typed it. It read: ‘I like your electricity. It feeds me.’ Maren woke up then, saw the message, and her face went pale. We didn’t sleep, we didn’t speak. We just sat in the kitchen, watching the lights flicker, and I felt a cold certainty that the prank was over. The entity had graduated from mischief to intent. It wasn’t hiding in walls. It was living in the current, in the hum of the wiring, in the glow of every screen. And tonight, when I plug my phone in again, I won’t be surprised if it answers back.