Elias stared at the blank document on his laptop, the cursor blinking impatiently. His fingers hovered over the keyboard, yet no words came. A faint headache pulsed behind his eyes, as if his mind had been running for hours while his body remained still.
It had been a week since the dream.
He hadn't told anyone about it—not that he could explain it even if he wanted to. The sensation of drowning in a reality that wasn't his own lingered like an aftertaste, an itch beneath his skin. Every time he closed his eyes, flashes of the girl—her voice cracking, breaking, distorting—flooded his thoughts.
"Elias... Listen... The time..."
The rest was a haze, fractured beyond repair.
His days had begun slipping into a strange rhythm. He'd wake up exhausted, convinced he had just lived through something important but unable to recall what. Small things unsettled him—his coffee tasted different one morning, though he swore he hadn't changed the brand. His neighbor, who always walked his dog at seven, was suddenly absent for three days, then reappeared as if nothing had happened.
At first, he dismissed it as paranoia. Sleep deprivation. An overactive imagination. But then the coincidences started.
It was small at first—predicting a phone call a second before it happened. Reaching for his mug only to realize it wasn't where he swore he had placed it. Sentences from books he hadn't read before felt eerily familiar.
And then, the déjà vu struck with a force he couldn't ignore.
"Sir, your total is $8.50," the cashier said.
Elias blinked.
For a second, the entire store seemed to shift—not change, but repeat. The cashier looked at him expectantly, the same way she had in the hazy memory now surfacing in his mind. The way her fingers drummed against the register, the exact phrasing of her words, even the dim buzz of the fluorescent lights—he had lived through this moment before.
But when?
His throat tightened. Slowly, he pulled out his wallet, the movements instinctive. He knew exactly which bill he would grab before his fingers even touched it. His receipt was handed over before he even extended his hand.
He left the store in a daze.
That night, sleep came reluctantly. He told himself it was stress. That he was tired. That his brain was playing tricks on him.
But when he closed his eyes—she was there again.
The same girl. The same faceless figure.
This time, the dream didn't start with her speaking. It started with her screaming.
A sharp, high-pitched sound that made his entire body tense. But he couldn't move. He couldn't even react.
Then—static. Distorted words bled into his ears, as if spoken through a broken radio.
"—has been compromised—"
"Elias, listen— you don't—"
A painful ringing filled his head. His limbs were heavy, paralyzed, just like before. He wanted to ask—who are you? What are you trying to tell me? But his voice wouldn't come.
The dream shifted. Blurred.
And then—silence.
A deep, suffocating silence.
He woke up gasping for air.
His body was drenched in sweat, his heart hammering against his ribs. He bolted upright, gripping his bedsheets as if they could anchor him back to reality.
Something was wrong.
These weren't normal dreams. They weren't just stress-induced hallucinations. They were something more.
And if the girl in them was real—
Then she was trying to tell him something.
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