It takes me between 12 and 14 minutes to get to class.
I time myself every day. I know it’s weird, but it’s something I do, I pay a lot of attention to time, I always have. I leave my house at 8:40 on the dot, and arrive at school between 8:52 and 8:54. Depends how long it takes me to cross two streets, and how quickly I’m walking. Once I did it in 11 minutes, but that was an outlier.
I got to my classroom and walked in to find the class before still going. I excused myself and backed out. Must be running late. I checked my watch.
8:43.
That was impossible. I couldn’t sprint to class in that time, and I certainly hadn’t been hurrying this morning.
I must have left early and misread my watch, that made sense.
I had class at 9, and then a seminar at 10 for 2 hours. I walked over to the student center for lunch and decided to read outside. I sat down at 12:15 with a sandwich and a book. I read for a while, close to a hundred pages. I checked the time.
12:20.
That was impossible. My watch must be dying. I’d go to the bathroom and then swing by the bookstore to get a new one before my afternoon class.
I went into the bathroom and closed the stall door. Suddenly all the lights went out. I have no idea how the bathroom was so dark, had someone closed the shades over the windows? I fumbled my way out to the door and opened it to a darkened building.
It was night. I checked my watch.
7:30.
I walked down to the exit that thankfully locked from the outside and started to walk home.
Home was an old house my weird Aunt used to own. When she passed away the family decided I should live in it for a few years while going to school, I could keep it up and save money on student housing. I was honestly not impressed, the house is too big for me, and it’s creepy. I’d rather live in a dorm with friends, but my family gave me the guilt trip. The house came with weird rules too. No roommates, no bringing friends over. It was a strange place.
I watched the clock carefully at home. No issues. Everything took the time it should take. Maybe I was sick? I had been stressing about my exam the next day. Four long essays for my english lit course, and the professor was a hard grader. It must have been stress.
That night I slept of dark figures standing over my bed, and I was paralyzed. “She’s come unstuck,” one of them said, “it won’t be long now.”
I woke up alone, covered in sweat.
My walk to class took 13 minutes the next day. Everything was back to normal.
I got my exam at 10:03 and started writing furiously. My arguments were fantastic. I was prepared for the questions. I filled the blue exam book up and then filled up half of a second one. I felt so great as I was the first student to walk up to the front of the class to turn in my exam. I knew I had gotten an A.
The professor flipped through the exam books with a bemused look on her face. “In the future, if you want to cheat, you shouldn’t be so blatant about it.”
I was aghast. “I didn’t cheat.”
She laughed, “there’s no way you wrote all this in that time.”
I checked my watch.
10:07.
I ran out of the classroom and didn’t stop until I got home. Nothing made sense. I entered the front door and checked my watch, 10:16.
I booted up my computer, I had to find out what was happening.
I had 945 unread emails. I am an “inbox zero” type of person, I never go to bed with unread emails. How did I get this many emails since I woke up?
I checked the date. Three weeks had passed.
I hyperventilated for a few minutes. Something was very wrong with me. I decided I would walk back to campus and go to the health center, they could call an ambulance and get me to a hospital. I had to get there quickly.
I walked outside into the freezing cold. It made no sense, it’s a warm October day, I was just outside. I came upstairs to get a jacket and decided to check the weather to see how it got so cold in the last hour.
I don’t understand what I’m seeing. It’s supposed to be October 2014. The news doesn’t make sense. Is someone playing an elaborate prank on me? Why does my computer say November 2018?
I think I need to go to the hospital. Something is very wrong with me.