Short story
The day started like any other, though something about the air felt… off. We were traveling, leaving a place that felt foreign but strangely familiar at the same time. People spoke Spanish, or so I thought, but as we moved through the streets, the words around us morphed into German. The dissonance was unsettling, but we didn’t have time to dwell on it.
We were late. The airport loomed ahead like an inevitability, yet I realized too late that I had forgotten something in my backpack. “I’ll be quick,” I said, rushing back into the house.
But quick didn’t happen. As I rummaged through my things, the house seemed to shift. What should’ve been a simple task became an excavation of my past. Toys from my childhood appeared beneath my hands, old journals spilled open, their pages heavy with memories I hadn’t revisited in years. For a moment, I was rooted there, unable to tear myself away from the pieces of myself I had long forgotten.
When I finally snapped out of it, you were gone. The car, the chance to make the flight—all of it had vanished. You’d left with Jamal, who must have been waiting outside. My heart sank, panic rising.
Scrambling, I pieced together a makeshift route to the airport. I hopped between rides, each one more precarious than the last—strangers with questionable motives, buses that didn’t follow schedules, cities that seemed to dissolve into new landscapes every time I blinked. By the time I reached the city where the airport was located, my phone buzzed.
“Go to this address,” the voice said, robotic and clipped. “Recite this code.”
The call ended before I could respond. My stomach tightened. Something in the tone was wrong, mechanical but authoritative, as if whoever—or whatever—had called wasn’t entirely human. They mentioned you. They said you had left something for me.
I followed the instructions, unease curling around me like a second skin. The address led me to a sterile, sprawling facility that seemed to exist outside normal reality. Walls buzzed faintly with a rhythmic hum. The people—or were they people?—moved with a precision that felt unnatural.
I gave them the code, and the room shifted. Tension rippled through the air as they glanced at each other, silent messages passing between them.
“I need to know where he is,” I said, my voice trembling. “Why did he leave something for me? What’s going on? Is he okay?”
No answers came. Instead, they assigned me a controller, a woman who stuck to me like a shadow. She was calm, too calm, with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
I waited, days blending into each other, until a man appeared, his face tugging at some distant recognition I couldn’t place. “Come with me,” he said quietly.
Something in his voice urged me to trust him. I followed, slipping past surveillance and through labyrinthine hallways until we reached an open platform. There, hovering in midair, were sleek, gravity-defying monopods.
“We don’t have much time,” he said.
We launched into the air, the city below dissolving into a sea of blurred lights. The woman wasn’t far behind. She followed us, attaching herself to me with cables that snaked through the air like living things.
The cables latched onto the back of my neck, sending shocks that rippled through my body. My mind felt invaded, as though she were pulling at my thoughts, trying to overwrite them with commands I couldn’t understand.
I screamed, wrenching forward, the monopod shaking beneath me. The man ahead shouted something I couldn’t hear, his words lost in the chaos of wind and static.
With a final, desperate pull, I tore the cables free. The jolt sent me reeling, my vision blurring as the city below twisted into unrecognizable shapes.
And then—nothing.
I woke up to the shrill sound of my phone, the room bathed in morning light. My heart raced as I grabbed the device, my hands trembling. It was just the boiler service secretary confirming my appointment.
I sat there for a long moment, staring at the wall, trying to piece together what had happened. The dream—or whatever it was—still clung to me. I touched the back of my neck, half-expecting to feel the cables still there.
Sometimes, I wonder if I truly woke up.
