I lay on the couch, staring at the ceiling, listening to every creak and whisper of my apartment like the building itself was trying to speak. Each sound felt like it meant something. Like a coded message slipping just beyond the edge of comprehension. The world felt… off. Not broken, but misaligned—like a vinyl record just slightly off-center. The melody still played, but the harmony was warped.
And that email—it haunted me.
So did the woman across the street.
Was it Elara?
Or someone wearing her—dressed like her, moved like her, knew how to be her in a way that made my bones ache.
I hadn’t left the house, or so my phone said. But buried in my location history, between idle Reddit scrolling and a half-eaten bagel, was a timestamp:
“You were near 5th & Holloway for 12 minutes.”
That’s halfway across the city.
I haven’t been there in months.
The time?
6:41 AM.
But at 6:41, I was wide awake, still in bed, rabbit-holing through threads about hallucinations, false memories, and time anomalies.
I checked my building’s security footage.
6:38 AM—the lobby feed glitches.
Cuts to black.
It stays dead until 6:55.
When the video returns, the front door is swinging gently shut, as if someone just left.
So either I’m sleepwalking with the precision of a ghost…
Or someone is covering their tracks—and wearing my skin to do it.
I tried grounding myself the way I always do: timelines, data, logic. Facts. But this isn’t just slipping through the cracks of logic—it’s digging new ones. Deep ones. The kind that reach into places you don’t name out loud.
Then, at noon, another email.
Same sender. Same timestamp as the last—exactly one year into the future.
Subject: Last Warning.
It had an attachment.
I clicked it.
And I flinched like I’d been struck.
It was grainy—low-resolution, dim—but unmistakable.
It was me.
Lying face down in a narrow alley, partially obscured by a dented green dumpster. Blood pooled beneath my head. One arm twisted at a grotesque angle. My phone lay beside me—shattered like ice glass, the screen frozen at:
11:04 PM.
The timestamp?
May 29, 2025. 11:04 PM.
Two days from now.
I didn’t feel fear. I felt certainty.
Like I wasn’t looking at a threat.
But a memory I hadn’t lived through yet.
I left my apartment for the first time in almost 24 hours. I needed answers. Or air. Or a different kind of madness than the one humming inside my walls.
I went to Holloway Street.
The alley in the photo is real. I found it easily—behind that dusty old bookstore Elara used to love. The one we used to joke had portals disguised as poetry sections.
It looked just like the photo. Same crooked “NO PARKING” sign. Same dented dumpster. Same shadowed narrowness that made your breath catch.
On the brick wall, barely visible beneath years of grime and dust, were two sets of initials:
E.A. + M.R.
Ours.
We carved them there ten years ago.
My heart slammed against my ribs.
Then I saw something—tucked beneath the dumpster, barely visible in the grime. A small tin box. Rusted shut at the edges.
Inside: a polaroid.
Wrapped in faded newspaper.
Still sharp after all these years.
It was us.
But not then.
Now.
I’m not 23 in the photo. I’m me—as I am now. The leather jacket I bought last winter. The faint scar above my eyebrow from last summer’s bike crash. And Elara—smiling at me like we’ve just said something only we could ever understand.
I don’t remember this photo.
I’ve never taken it.
I don’t own a Polaroid camera.
And I haven’t seen Elara since 2015.
Unless I’ve already lived this.
Unless this isn’t a timeline—it’s a loop.
And I’ve circled this path before.
On the back, scrawled in shaky black ink:
“This time, don’t forget.”
I don’t know what I’ve stepped into.
A glitch in time? A warning from a future that keeps bleeding into the present?
Or something worse—something becoming me from the inside out?
All I know is this:
I die in two days.
Unless I find Elara.
Unless I figure out what’s real.
Unless I remember what I was supposed to never forget.
I’ll post again tomorrow.
Rise Between Realities 
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