The Other Woman

Hey there, it's Edwin and this is Scary Story Podcast. We have three short stories here based on your messages. We're going back to how things used to be. Abby turned away and walked out the door abruptly. She was going to be late for work. A little ironic, I think, considering that the whole ordeal had started because of work itself, my work. I used to feel terrible about it, even though I wanted to be right. I knew that I wasn't. I had been working long hours, but it was because it was springtime and parts and entire air conditioning units were going up in sales volume. During that time, I had started managing the team of salesmen in my region, and soon I was going to be promoted to super after meeting one of the co owners of the company. That meant I would basically double my salary and Nabby and I would finally be able to go to the honeymoon we never went to because we Yeah, I was busy with work. Little did I know things would be changing. I just didn't think it would be like this. Nabby and I were okay now, I mean we had started talking once again after almost a week of awkward, passive aggression. Neither of us knew how to move on from the problem. My perspective was that if we wanted to get a house together and pay off her car, and I would have to keep working. Her salary as a school teacher was not enough for both of us, and I thought that it was such a simple sacrifice to make for a better future. I really couldn't understand why she shouldn't get that about my plan. Instead, what she said was that she did not want to raise a family with someone who would not be there. I mean, I could at least understand that. I grew tired of explaining that it was only a temporary thing, but then things escalated. She strongly hinted that I had a thing with one of the new saleswomen who had joined as part of the huge growth hiring spree that the company had. The new trainees needed help with their approach lead acquisition, so I used to take their phone calls after work. Her main concern was with Ashley, who she claimed had no right to be texting me with so many emojis, especially to one of her bosses, akaa me. Honestly, I think Abby was just trying to pick fights now, but I really did want to fix things, so I made her a promise that I would cut back on my hours immediately after my meeting with one of the owners. The rule would be that I would stop working after six in the evening, that I would make a deliberate effort to spend more time with her. Liked rules. So you can imagine how hard it was for me to get those words out of my mouth. But like I said, after that week, things slowly started to get better. She started leaving breakfast on the pan for me before she went off to the gym, and I started coming home promptly at five point forty five every single evening. We planned out movies to watch, games to play, and set time aside to go hang out with some of our friends from college. One night, we're driving back from Billie's and the trunk was full of groceries this time. When I got the call, one of the owners was going to a convention in Arizona and needed me to be there to talk to some of his other partners about assigning some of the major sales operations for the entire state of New Mexico. Everything to me. I pulled the car over, and honestly, I didn't even consider what Abby would say, But as soon as I hung out, she looked over to me and wondered what the call had been about. Of course, she was excited for me, but I saw when her expression changed once I said that I would have to travel that weekend. We had already made plans, but she knew that this was going to be more important. It wasn't something I needed to ask permission for or justify. But suddenly all of the problems we had and the ones that we had just fixed, just started to come back, even the stuff about Ashley, the supposed other woman. I will write to you and call you all the time, I promised. I told her I'd forgotten that she didn't like being alone in the apartment. But the day for my flight came and off I went. I messaged her from the airport, and from the plane, I sent her video messages of where I would be staying, in pictures of how I got the wrinkles off the suit. Once I arrived, I was excited. This was one of those opportunities that you don't come across too often. There was no way that I was going to miss it. And that same night was when abbe stopped replying to me. I called her at one in the morning. I think I know that it was late, but she texted back with the stern reminder that this was not going to be easy to not talk to me anymore. She said. I must have called her ten times and sent her even more messages asking what was wrong. The messages from her stopped coming the whole night. I could hear her voice saying hello, I'm here now. The next morning I went to my meeting, which didn't go too bad. They offered me the job. I called her sister, who also didn't answer. I called her mom, and I could tell that she felt sorry for me, but also didn't seem to know what was going on. Now, this wasn't the first time that had happened. Abby had been a bit on edge for a while, and I think I lost her with my work. But we had agreed to make changes. We were going to make things right. The long silent ride home on the taxi felt like it took forever. In the news radio station that the guy had on was interviewing a woman who sounded a lot like Abby. She wasn't. I kept scrolling through my phone the lost text messages undelivered, still resting on my phone with nowhere to go, and a day turned into four and then five nights. I knew where she was, but by the second day I knew that maybe I should give her some space. Things were difficult, and maybe she needed it more than I did. But those nights, man, there were something else. I would wake up cursing at the sound that the air conditioning made. I wondered what my life would have been like had I accepted another job, had we never hired Ashley. I would pick up my phone and open up YouTube, close it, open up my email, close it, then open up my messages tabby I swear I would hear a woman's voice again, and she sounded a lot like her, or at least pretended to sound like her. The words were off, with the tone was spot on. Hello. She would say, I'm here now. I tapped the media tab on the messages and I ran through the last ones. She sent me a quick how's it going audio message that I actually managed to say before it expilted. When my phone was off airplane mode, and as I was coming into the hotel room, I recorded a video showing her the room, and I clumsily stepped in, nearly tripped over my suitcase and started searching for the light switch. I walked over to it and flicked it on, and I gasped. Good night. I said, I'll call you tomorrow. I replayed the video again and again. Every single time I did, I swear her smile grew larger. It was all in my head. When I stepped into that room. In the background was a silhouette sitting on the bed. I could see her. I left the suitcase against the wall. I turned around again. There she was, her shadow, not moving. I flicked the light on. She smiled polaroid. I had a pretty small group of friends back in college, but we were all very close. Things were different back then. It must have been what ten years before Facebook was invented. Our phones were not even up to the flip phone style yet. But anyway, one thing that I really appreciate was that we would all gather at each other's houses, and those who had become roommates were probably the coolest people around. There was one particular friend, Jessica, what happened to be one of the most fun out of the bunch. She had absolutely everything going for her, so everyone was surprised when she was found dead in her room just a little before we all graduated. But this story is not about that, though. Just in order to get to it, we have to know a little bit about her. She used to live about an hour away from our university, closer to the Central Valley in California. And if you think that they are underdeveloped now, back then they still had dirt roads. I mean, everyone knew their neighbors and everything, but still the houses looked like something out of a Stephen King novel, large with fields and everything. Minus to reign. Jessica was known for having a strange group of friends back in high school. They were cool, but they all dressed in strange clothing and they didn't care much for how much they hurt you when they would tell you the truth. Jessica would avoid talking about them, but her dad used to be happy to have us her normal friends. He would call us around the house whenever they had a celebration at her place. It would all go. There was one particular time when I was doing a course for winter breaks, and so I had to retake part of my math classes for goofing off during exam season. I was on a scholarship, so I was determined to do better this time around, and for the most part, my friends didn't question me too much. Jessica's birthday was on December fourteenth, but she had saved her party for a Friday or Saturday night. Still, my final exams were that Monday, and there was no way that I would mess around that weekend and risk falling behind losing everything I had worked for. My friends had no idea, and honestly I forgot the reason why I told them I couldn't go when we hung out from the little party we had going on the phone. Take lots of pictures, I asked before they all started hanging up. And so that weekend came and went, and I studied as hard as I could, and I managed to score a B minus as my final grade, with averaged my score combined with the other one to a solid C enough to pass and stay on my scholarship. Thank goodness, ones We had all come back from break and had already gotten into the rhythm of our new classes and everything. The topic of some guy that Jessica met at the party came up. Everyone seemed to know about him, and they were all tangled up in gossip when Jessica then asked me something about him and I didn't go. I told her. They all laughed and try to continue the conversation with me, but I didn't get the joke. I didn't go. What are you guys talking about? I asked him. You did go, Jessica said, telling me a whole story about how I surprised him for showing up after I had said that I wasn't going to go. By that time, they had already assumed that I was making things up and trying to be funny, and one of them, Monica, turned directly to me and said, you were there. I agreed sarcastically, and they all looked at each other again. I don't know how, but we changed the subject. The very next day, Monica showed up in my dorm room and asked about what we had talked about yesterday, smiling and telling me that we had proof that I had been at the party. I remember sort of just rolling my eyes and asking her to show me, and that she did. She took out a polaroid photo from her purse and held it up to me and the crowd around Jessica was Monica, Beth, two guy friends, one of her weird of friends and off next to her me. My jaw dropped immediately. I grabbed it and checked carefully. The photo had not been cut or drawn over, and it was clearly me. The pink and yellow top that I wore often was on this person. She smiled just like me. But I was not there. I never went. I couldn't get on a car, drive one hour to the valley, drive back, take my exams and not remember doing so. In fact, one of my study partners was able to confirm this with me. We had studied Thursday night, all of Friday, all of Saturday, and we even met up on Sunday at her dorm room. Monica showed me the other photos and I wasn't none of them, but I could confirm that it had been the same event. Had this been a practical joke, the picture edited on some sort of software, which of course was expensive back then. Where if someone else had pertend to be me the night of the party, I will never know. My friends and I still talk about it sometimes and have found no explanation. The following story titled When We Die It's coming up right after this. My best friend and I grew up together. Basically there was a spot around town that we always used to meet at, and it was by one of those courts for a sport I forget the name of. There, we would talk about games and girls and complain about our teachers. As we grew older, the topics also became surprisingly deep. As we heard the ball slap against the concrete walls around us, we talked about the purpose of life, and about what the stars meant, what our dreams were trying to tell us, and whoever would end up ten years from then. One question that always got to me was about what happens when we die. It was around that time when we really started talking about the topic when we made an agreement, whoever died first, we'll let the other one know what happens. How I remember asking him, if I'm going to be dead, how can I even call you or write it on a post it or what. We both stared at the ground for a bit, wondering how this quote unquote major problem would be solved until we settled on dreams. Whoever died first would come back in a dream and tell the other what happens when we die? And how will we know that it isn't just a trick of our own minds explaining something. How would the other know that this was real? Again, we took a few seconds and almost said it at the same time. A secret. One will tell the other a secret that nobody knows, and then we have to figure out if it's true. And if it's true, then it was for sure that the other person was speaking from the dead. When I think back on it, I wonder why nobody else had thought about doing this before. It is basically a full proof way of knowing if we are actually talking to a ghost or not. Anyway, we both shook on it, and we both sort of forgot. We kind of lost touch in college. He stopped going after the first year and I camped at it. I finally graduated and got a job in Phoenix, while he stayed at home back in New Mexico. I married my girlfriend while he stayed single, posting once in a while about the many adventures he was having as an outdoors guy, hiking mountains, fishing, you know, the whole thing. I had nothing interesting to post about what happened during my day between going to work and coming home to watch Netflix every day. But eventually, like with most friendships, we just stopped talking. Gone were the days when we would stay up to talk about our ideas and how we were going to change the world. We stopped complaining and we stopped dreaming. My wife was pregnant at the time, and I forget how many years had passed since I had last talked to George. But it was my friend Hannah who called that around eleven at night. I was surprised my phone still remember her phone number. Will She said, George is dead. I won't lie and tell you that I remember what it felt like because I don't. My eye sort of drooped down loose to look at the carpet. My phone in my hands started feeling warm. I don't remember much of our conversation after that. About eight months or so later, George's family was about to celebrate his birthday and had called me to invite me to their house and also for a short visit to the cemetery. I agreed and got my stuff ready for the trip. And had it been his name on my mind during those days or something else, but it didn't take long for me to start seeing him in my dreams. I shook myself awake at one point. I think it was from fear, but also from the frustration of not being able to speak to him. All I could do was listen as he told me about life after death. That he was everywhere, he would say, and that I was everywhere too. I had so many questions to ask him, but they all kind of faded once I woke up. I wanted to know how it could make sure that it was really him, And it was strange because we would both be He's sitting on a bench by the courts of the park. After the first dream, I could speak, talking like we used to, but we weren't young anymore. He wore those same blue jeans and a black hoodie, but he looked tired and sick, sad. And it was weird because in the dream I didn't know he was dead until somewhere in the middle it would click and I would ask him, how do I know it's really you. He'd simply ignore the question, or I would wake up suddenly. For a few days after that, he would keep visiting my dreams, and for an instant after waking up in the middle of one of them, I saw his figure standing right next to my bed. I actually saw him several times. He would walk out from the window and lurk around to the other side of the room to my wife's side, stand there well, then over to me, just stare. I would then rub my eyes and look his way, only to see the large smile form on his face as the yellow teeth reflected from the exterior light coming from the window. The thing would then vanish k me panic but also trying not to wake up my wife. I would sit up on the bed and stare, trying to adjust my eyes to the darkness, and just like that, it would vanish again. I brought this up to one of my friends, who said that certain spirits try to play jokes with you, especially when you open up a line of communication with them, and that this entity sounded like something dark. The last dream I had like that, the thing that looked like George collapsed in the park and hit the ground. He had been looking worse and worse as the dreams went by, though I hardly remember many of the conversations. Once I would wake up, I didn't have the same dreams after that. The day came for my trip to visit George's family, I was not about to bring this up, so instead I went to the cemetery with everybody and I got the chance to sit there alone. Once everyone was heading out to the cars, I looked out into the hills filled with the white tombstones around those beautiful gardens, wondering those same questions that George and I used to ask. What happens when we die? I asked out loud. It was then when I turned around over to the bench on the right side of me, and I stopped breathing for a bit when I saw my friend George sitting still smiling. His teeth were white now, and it was that same smile that I had gotten to know from the many stories and jokes we used to tell. A soft gust of winds surrounded the hills of the cemetery. Then a tiny bird, a common gray one, landed on his tombstone. I looked back at him, but he was gone. His tombstone read his name and the day that he died, August twelfth. But it was much later when I finally got my answer. August twelfth of that year was when my son was born. So what happens when we die? Another life begins. And as for that dark shadow that kept showing up in my dreams, I'll never know what it was. Scary Story podcast has written and produced by me Edwin Komarrubias. Thank you so much for all of your ratings and reviews, as well as the messages that keep these stories going. If there's a comment or suggestion, I'll be sure to leave my email address in the description of this episode. Up next, be sure to check out my other show called True Scary Story, where real people talk about the paranormal encounters. Just don't listen by yourself. Thank you very much for listening. See as soon