MARA
My foster mom made meatloaf again. It's the third time this month. Which means she's run out of safe recipes and is cycling back. She always adds too much ketchup to the glaze, and that just makes it taste like cafeteria food, but I've never told her that. Some battles aren't worth fighting. I ate enough to be polite and excused myself before dessert.
Upstairs is quieter. Always is.
My room looks the same as always—Functional, neat.
I've lived here for six years and still can't shake the feeling that I'm a guest who's overstayed her welcome.
I sit at my desk. Open my chem notes. Reaction rates. Looks like Mr. Austin wants to know if we actually paid attention during summer.
My pen moves while my brain wanders. Standard routine.
"Mara?"
My foster mom. I don't answer, waiting to see if I'm who she actually needs or my attention which would rather be locked in here.
Silence.
She does this sometimes. Calls my name, and forgets ever doing so. Back to my notes then.
"Mara?"
My pen stops mid-word.
That was the same. Exactly the same. Not the word—the tone, the timing, the volume, everything.
I move to the doorway. "Yeah"
The TV just keeps murmuring downstairs. My foster dad laughs at something but no one responds back.
Moving down the hallway, my heart began pacing up.
"Mom?". Still nothing.
Okay. So, either I'm losing it, or something just repeated itself.
Closing the door completely felt like the wrong move, so I left it open a little bit. Just in case.
The clock on my desk glows at me from across the room. 9:51 PM.
The buzz in my pocket pulls my phone out. 9:47 PM.
Four minutes off? That's not possible. Two minutes ago, my phone and clock were perfectly in sync. And the desk clock never runs fast. I'm obsessive about replacing the battery every six months. Like clockwork.
Now's not the time for jokes Mara. Focus.
Sitting back down felt automatic. My phone went on the desk next to the clock, both of them just sitting there.
The phone ticks up by one minute but the clock stays frozen at 9:51.
My chest cramps up. Breathing feels heavy.
This is stress. It has to be. Three nights on barely any sleep does things to your brain. Makes you see patterns that aren't there.
Except clocks don't lie. And voices don't repeat themselves word-for-word unless someone's literally replaying a recording.
My notebook's already in my hands before I realize I've reached for it. Writing helps, always had. If can document it, maybe I can understand it.
9:47 PM (phone)
9:51 PM (desk clock)
Mom's voice. Hallucination?
Looking at this now, it just might actually be the start of subtle lunacy. But I need to find a way to make sense of this. Need to clear my head.
Splashing some water onto my face does the trick. I grab a towel as I'm heading back to my desk passing the mirror mounted on the wall.
That's when everything stops.
One step forward, my reflection doesn't come with me.
It's only about half a second, maybe less. But the is there—me moving, the glass showing a version of me that's frozen. Then it snaps back. Catches up. Like some sort of glitch.
At this point, there's too much going on and I'm starting to burn up. I can't look away from the mirror.
Slowly, carefully, I raise my hand.
The reflection raises its hand as well in perfect sync. I lower it down like I'm expecting a different result again. Instead, it's just me staring at myself in a mirror like a paranoid mess.
But the delay was real. I saw it.
Pulse is hammering so hard I can feel it in my throat. I couldn't register my own movements until my legs met the edge of my chair. A hard trust fall followed.
The pen's back in my hand. Another line goes on the page.
Mirror—reflection delayed approx. 0.5 seconds.
My handwriting looks worse now. The letters are shaking.
My hands won't stop trembling. This isn't stress. Something is actually, measurably wrong. And I have no idea what to do about it.
The chirp sound from my phone helps snap me out of things. But who would text this late. Friends? Can't be. None that I can think of.
[UNKNOWN NUMBER]
You're going to want to act alone. Don't. You'll regret it.
It almost feels like I'm in the Jason Bourne franchise I saw last weekend. Things went from crazy to riveting really fast.
First it was my foster mom's voice. Then the clock. And the mirror. God, the mirror. All in the last thirty minutes. And now this.
I would much rather be scared to death and informed, than have this sense of anxiety be the end of me.
I need answers. And I need them now.
[ME]
Who is this?
I hit send before second thoughts begin to creep in.
Three dots. That means it wasn't a spam message. I really am playing out a CIA movie script right now.
[UNKNOWN NUMBER]
Elias Thorne. Watch him. He doesn't know what he's part of yet.
This can't be for real. Elias from chemistry class? The kid who barely pays attention half the time?
[ME]
What does he have to do with this?
Three dots again. Then they disappear. I wait. Ten seconds. Twenty, thirty... That's it. That's all I'm getting. A random warning and a name I'd rather not be associated with in this type of situation.
Fine. If they're not going to give me answers, I'll find some myself.
I grab my laptop and fire it up.
Start with the number. I copy it into a reverse lookup site. Hit search.
INVALID NUMBER FORMAT!
That can't be right. You don't text someone with a number and suddenly it disappears off the face of the internet.
I try another site.
ERROR 404: NUMBER NOT FOUND
Frustrated and desperate, I try a third site. This one's sketchier, buried deep in a forum I found sophomore year when I was researching digital privacy.
It takes even longer to load up, but it finally spits out a result.
No carrier information. No location data. No registered user.
But there's something else. An alias.
E.PARADOX
I stare at it. E.Paradox. Not a name. A username? A handle? I copy it. Paste it into a search engine.
Pages of results. Gaming forums. Social media accounts. YouTube channels. But none of them seem connected. Different people, different locations, different contexts. It's a dead end.
I lean back in my chair. The frustration's taking its toll. I take off my glasses. This is beginning to feel like way more than I bargained for. But I can't give up yet.
Okay. Different approach now. The anomalies.
I open a new tab. Start typing.
Time discrepancies. Audio repeating. Visual delays. Hit search.
Thousands of results pop up. Most of them garbage. "10 Signs You're Living in a Simulation", "Glitches in the Matrix: Real Stories", "Time Slips and Temporal Anomalies Explained"
I scroll through them anyway. Click on a few. Skim the articles. Most of it's just nonsense. People seeing the same car twice in a row and calling it a glitch. Clocks stopping because of dead batteries. Conspiracy theories about government experiments and parallel dimensions. Nothing concrete. Nothing that matches what I experienced.
But one thread catches my eye. It's buried on page three of the search results. A forum post from six years ago.
"Localized Time Distortion - Has Anyone Else Experienced This?"
I click it.
The post describes almost exactly what happened to me. Clocks showing different times in the same room. Visual delays that lasted less than a second. Glitches of different kinds. Also, something time freezing all around them. The person who wrote it thought they were losing their mind.
There are replies. Most of them dismissive. A few offering explanations—stress, sleep deprivation, carbon monoxide poisoning.
One reply stands out.
"This isn't psychological. If multiple devices are showing temporal inconsistencies simultaneously, you're dealing with something external. A time fracture possibly. Pay attention to patterns. And whatever you do—don't ignore it. Crazy beats dead or erased any day."
The username is a Dr Reinhard. Reply dated as far back as five years ago. I screenshot it. Add it to a folder on my desktop labeled "Notes." Not enough. But it's something. I close the tab. Open a new one.
Time to find out who Elias Thorne actually is. I start with the school directory. Pull up his profile.
Elias Thorne. Junior. Same grade as me.
Classes: Chemistry, English Lit, History, Calculus.
No clubs listed. No extracurriculars. Just soccer listed under sports. Nothing remarkable.
I search his name on social media. Look up his Instagram public profile. Scroll through his posts. Nothing interesting. Photos with friends. Memes. A few shots from soccer games. He looks... normal. Completely, aggressively normal.
So why did someone supposedly from the future tell me to watch him?
I keep scrolling. Looking for anything out of place. Any hint that he's connected to what's happening. Nothing.
Just a regular teenager who apparently ignores warnings and doesn't know he's part of something bigger.
It's time to call it a night.
I close the laptop. Lean back. Take in a deep breath and a moment to process everything one last time.
My notebook's still open on my desk. I pick up the pen. Add another entry.
E.Paradox - alias tied to unknown number
Forum post - localized time distortion (6 yrs ago)
Elias Thorne - junior, soccer, unremarkable Why him?
I underline the last question twice. Because that's the part I can't figure out.
The anomalies, I can almost rationalize. Maybe there's a scientific explanation I haven't found yet. Maybe it's environmental. Electromagnetic interference or something. But the message? That was deliberate. Personal. Someone chose to warn me. Chose to give me a name. Which means Elias isn't random. He's the key. I just have to figure out why.
I close the notebook. Check the time on my phone. 11:34 PM. Too late to keep digging. And my brain's already starting to blur at the edges. I need sleep. Or at least, I need to try.
I shut my laptop, set my phone on the desk, plug it in. I fall into my bed, staring at the ceiling. My mind won't stop running.
E.Paradox. Elias Thorne. Time distortions. Warnings from the future. None of it makes sense.
But tomorrow, I'll start watching. I'll figure out what makes him important. And maybe—just maybe—I'll start to understand what the hell is happening.
My alarm goes off at 6:30. But I'm already up. Couldn't sleep. Just laid in bed, my thoughts spinning in circles until the sky got noticeably brighter outside my window.
It's not much of a choice now, I have to get up. My body feels heavy, like I'm moving through water.
Shower. Get dressed. Go through the motions on autopilot. I grab my laptop and notepad into my bag. I'm all set.
My desk clock catches my attention. I glance my watch. 7:11 AM. I get to the front of my mirror pretending to checkout my outfit when I'm really just being nostalgic. Seems like everything's back to normal. The door slams behind me on my way out.
My foster Mum's making breakfast. "Morning sweetie", a warm welcoming smile attached to the greeting.
"Morning" trying not to sound empty.
She puts a plate in front of me. Scrambled eggs. "You look exhausted. Did you sleep okay?"
"Not really"
She hovers for a second. Like she's deciding whether to push. Thankfully, she doesn't. "Well, try to rest tonight. okay?"
"Yeah."
I'm careful not to rush my food, but quick enough to finish eating before my foster dad comes down.
School's never really been my element. Too many people in too small a space. It's not exactly illegal to self-quarantine.
I head straight to class. Mr. Hammond's chemistry class. Elias is here too. I find my seat near the back. Getting a good view of the whole room.
Mr. Hammond's talking. Reaction rates or catalysts or something. Doesn't matter. I'm way of ahead on the semester already. Shifting focus for one class won't do anything to my grades.
This isn't considered stalking is it? Whatever. There's definitely more at stake than social violation right now.
He's just tapping his pencil on the table. Eyes drifting toward the window every few seconds. He's not focused, not engaged, barely even present.
Why would anyone think he's the center of all this?
Mr. Hammond's still talking. I should probably be taking notes. Instead, I'm watching Elias lean toward the guy next to him.
Jonah. I barely know him. What I do know is, we're in the same year, he's loud and he's always laughing at something.
I can't make out what they're saying, but I can see Jonah's mouth moving.
"Cafeteria.... after class?" they're talking about food?
Elias nods, Says something back. I focus. Try to catch it. His lips form the words slowly enough for me to piece together.
"Yeah. Field."
Jonah gives him a look. Says something else. I catch "practice" and maybe "tryouts"
Soccer practice! They're going to the field after school. It's that or the cafeteria prank is about go down again. I'll stick with field.
If I really want to observe him, that's where I need to be.
The rest of day drags on. I take notes I won't remember, answer when called on. And most importantly, avoid eye contact.
The bell rings, finally.
I'm racing through a see of teenagers to get the field. It's empty when I get there. Maybe I rushed over too quickly.
I hide behind the bleachers before they arrive and pull out my notepad the moment, I spot them.
They're playing casual football as far as I can tell. Jonah's in goal. I think. It's hard to make out a lot from here.
I can see them passing the ball around. At some point, Elias kicks a little too and midway across the field, the ball—stutters.
That's the only word for it. It skips. Like a frame got cut out of a video. Exactly like my mirror did. I jot it down instantly.
That's the second sign. Meaning he probably got the clock twist sometime in school when I wasn't paying attention.
They're both just staring at each other right now. Elias is walking away. That's not surprising. Soccer balls that glitch aren't exactly a morale booster.
I need to get home to. It's getting pretty late.
In my room, I'm flipping back to yesterday's notes and comparing them to today's events.
Elias experienced a glitch. Right in front of me. Right in front of his friend. Which means he's not just connected to this. He's in it. Same as me.
He doesn't know it yet. But he will. Because if this is happening to both of us, he's going to get a message too. And based on what I saw today? He's going to ignore it. Just like they said.
I pick up my pen and add one more line to today's notes.
He'll get a warning soon. He won't listen. I need to make sure he does.
Tomorrow, I'll approach him. Somehow.
Because if we're both caught in this—whatever this is—then trying to handle it alone is the worst thing either of us can do.
I need to listen to my warning too.