It was Tuesday when I noticed the crack in time. Not on a clock or a calendar — but in the air itself. A shimmer, like heat rising from asphalt, hovered just above the sink in my tiny apartment. I reached for it. My hand passed through. But when I pulled it back… the scar on my finger was gone.
The one I got at sixteen from Dad’s shattered whiskey bottle.
I stood still, breath heavy in my chest like guilt. I tested it again, then again, pushing my whole arm through. On the other side: no pain, no memory, no time. Just silence — warm and infinite. I slept that night with the lights on, too afraid that I might wake up yesterday.
When I woke, my neighbor’s dog barked backwards. I mean that literally. From growl to yip to whimper, as though reversing a cassette tape. Outside, people walked with shadows leading them, not following. One man handed a rose to a woman, and it unbloomed as she smiled.
I went to work and found no one knew me. Not my manager, not my desk, not even my reflection in the office restroom. I touched the mirror. My face rippled. Behind me, I heard a voice — my voice — saying,
“You left the present too long. It doesn’t remember you.”
I turned. Empty room. Just a flickering light and the smell of rain on old stone.
I tried to go back. To step through the shimmer again. But it had grown — no longer a slit near my sink. Now it bled along the ceiling and under doors, like a spilled dimension. I opened my wardrobe, and inside was my fifth birthday. My father — alive. My mother laughing. I closed the door in sobs.
Later, I found myself in a library that didn’t exist. No walls. Just shelves, floating in black space. Every book was about me. My thoughts. My doubts. Even this moment — this very line — was written on page 122 of a volume titled The Man Who Refused to Stay Linear. I screamed. But there was no echo in infinity.
A woman met me near the river that doesn’t flow. She said her name was Mira, and that she too had slipped — through memory, through meaning, through cause and effect.
“We are unstuck,” she whispered. “And the universe is watching to see where we land.”
We walked together until days folded like paper. She kissed me once and vanished, her lips becoming dust, then stars, then nothing. I remembered her only as a color. A feeling. A question.
I now sit at the end of the story, unsure if it’s the beginning. I write these words in hope you read them before they’re erased by time’s folding. If you see a shimmer — a crack in your Tuesday — do not touch it.
Unless you’re ready to lose everything that made you real.
Do read previous stories like The room no 69
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