The Operator at the Payphone on Bellflower Road

It was late November in the town of Bellflower, Missouri, a place of rusted grain silos and empty storefronts. I was working the late shift at the switchboard, nursing cold coffee, when a call came in from a payphone at the abandoned gas station on Bellflower Road. The man on the other end sounded wrong—his voice was cracked and dry, like he hadn't spoken in years. He said he needed to be connected to a number he'd written down before the fire. I asked what fire. He said, 'The one that burned down the house on Mulberry Lane.' I checked the directory. There was no number matching what he gave me. He got angry. He started listing names, addresses, dates. All things I had no way of knowing. But the names... some of them matched the obituaries from last year's fire at the feed store. I asked who he was. He said, 'I'm the one who called from the payphone on Bellflower Road.' Then the line went dead. I tried to call back. The phone rang and rang. At 2:14 AM, the same payphone rang my switchboard. I answered. There was only breathing. When I looked out the window, through the frost on the glass, I could see a figure standing at the payphone across the street. But the payphone had been disconnected since the fire. And the figure was still there when I left at dawn. #FexingoHorror #HorrorPodcast #WhisperLines #Bellflower #Payphone #Switchboard #LateShift #Fire #Obituaries #Disconnected #Breathing #November #Missouri #AbandonedGasStation #MulberryLane #FeedStoreFire #Unresolved #AtmosphericHorror Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo