horror story: the call from Phone Box 13 on an Australian highway

okay I wasn't going to post this but here we go.

November 2013. A couple traveling through the rural outskirts of New South Wales went missing. The last thing anyone heard from them was a text to a friend saying they'd received a call from a payphone on the side of the road. And then. Nothing.

Police investigated. The location they described? No payphone existed there.

I first heard this story at a motel near Sydney. The front desk guy just casually dropped it while I was checking in. I didn't even ask.

"Phone Box 13?" he said. "Everyone around here knows it like an urban legend. But if you have the coordinates... you can actually find it."

I was skeptical but also like. okay. I plugged the coordinates into my map. About two hours outside Sydney, near some isolated highway. Perfect creepy road trip content, honestly. I figured worst case it's a fun story.

So I drove out there at dawn.

The sun was just coming up and this orange fog started rolling across the road, killing my visibility. And then I saw it.

An old payphone. On the side of the road. A metal tag bolted to it that said "13."

Here's the thing though. It wasn't on any map. No road signs mentioning it anywhere. No gas station nearby, no town, nothing. Not even a power line running to it.

I picked up the receiver anyway because I'm apparently that person.

Dead silence. Just this thick, muffled quiet.

I was about to leave.

And then it rang.

I nearly had a heart attack. There was literally nobody around me. And I don't know why I did it but I picked up again.

"You came." A woman's voice. Soft but with this weird echo to it, like she was in a much bigger space than I was.

"You're late. But that's okay. Time... doesn't move here."

I slammed the receiver down. But the ringing didn't stop.

I picked up again and this time it was a man.

"Who's sitting in your car right now?"

I looked up.

Someone was in the driver's seat.

The light inside the phone box cut out. Cold air hit me out of nowhere. I ran to the car but the door wouldn't open. And the person in my seat slowly turned their head to look at me.

It was my face.

I blacked out.

Woke up near a highway on the outskirts of Sydney. The phone box was gone.

Since then I keep getting calls. Not logged in my call history. Always at 13:00 exactly. I pick up and there's nothing for a while and then, at the end:

"Come back. It's not over yet."