Beep… beep… beep… “Damn, what time is it?” Beep… Beep… Beep… “8am? Good, I didn’t oversleep today.” Beep… Beep… Be… I dismiss the alarm and quickly hop out of my bed and say, “I’ve got no time to lose.” And so my daily routine begins.  

I head to my closet to get dressed. It’s full of the same 5 dress shirts for the weekdays and a white T-shirt for the weekends. I take one of the dress shirts and put it on along with blue jeans, black socks and dress shoes. I then make my way over to the kitchen to make myself a bowl of cereal, usually just corn flakes. After that, I brush my teeth and head off to my job. I work at an office, so it’s usually just the same stuff every day. Not that it really matters to me, though, my job isn’t that hard at all. I get my work done in the first 2 hours of my 9-5 day and I get to do pretty much anything I want after that, I have no reason not to be happy.  As I drive to work I usually stop at a Wendy’s drive thru. It’s always the same person working the window, they’re really shy so they don’t like to show themselves that much, but that’s fine. Wendy’s is only 5 minutes from my job, so it’s not a long drive and I usually get there before I finish my food because there isn’t much traffic this early in the day.

I approach the front door to the office building and walk in. It’s a very bland area, panel ceilings, carpet with tiles in specific areas, nothing special. I take the elevator to the 5th floor. I don’t work in a cubicle like most office workers, I work in a room down the hall. I like to cover my windows and door because I like the dim lighting. I arrive with a stack of papers on my desk. Not too large, but sizable nonetheless. Either way, I get it done quickly. After about 2 hours of actual work and 7 hours of basically nothing, I finally clock out and head home. I stop at Wendy’s for a second time for dinner, and head home to take a shower and fall asleep. I set my alarm and start to rest my eyes.

I wake up with the same alarm blaring in my ears, I quickly dismiss it and continue the same morning routine as usual. I notice something, unusual, while i’m making cereal, however. It seems like the box didn’t get lighter from yesterday. Either this box is deceiving or I didn’t eat as much as I thought I did yesterday. It doesn’t matter really, I shouldn’t let little things distract me.

I get in my car and start driving to work. Due to my little observation earlier I decide to start looking at things I normally don’t look at and drive down roads I don’t usually drive on. I notice a pattern in the cars that drive by, it’s usually the same 8 cars,  Red Mercedes, Black Toyota, white Toyota, Blue ford, 3 white Audis, and then it repeats. “That’s… Odd,” I said to myself. Why would there be a pattern to these cars? I must be imagining things. I decided it was time to just eat and go to work, so I do just that.

While i’m walking to my office I see that there is nobody in any of the cubicles. I am usually really early but I spent a little bit of time doing something so other people should be here. Today has been pretty weird, maybe I didn’t get enough sleep? I don’t know, I just want to get to work and be done with it. After a long day at doing nothing, I finally am able to go home, I get my Wendy’s, and I drive home. I set my alarm and fall asleep.

When I awake, I feel like something’s different. Nothing changed around the room, but I can feel it. Wait, my alarm didn’t go off. I set it last night but it didn’t go off, I still awoke at the same time as usual but with nothing to do it. That’s it, today i’m not going to work, i’m going to find every weird thing possible in this city. I skip breakfast this morning, and I get in my car and drive to Wendy’s, although instead of going through the drive-thru, I go in. It’s… empty, no one is in here, not even any staff. I go behind the counter to see if the drive-thru girl is there, and… she isn’t. I then drive my car through the drive-thru and sure enough, I hear her. This is not right, I skip Wendy’s and try to drive to my job, but I see something, horrible. Nothing. Nothing is here, it’s all empty. Everything cuts off as soon as Wendy’s gets out of sight. The cars driving on the street just disappear on the edge of nothingness. I come to the conclusion that everything that I have ever known is most likely under control, and that i’m living in an infinite loop. It’s not worth it, it just isn’t. I don’t want to live in this cycle, so I’m going to end it. I step out of my car walk to the middle of bustling traffic. I stand wide and open my arms to welcome my demise.

…

…

I’m … not dead? How, I stood in the middle of traffic, I should have died- Oh, that’s why. Every car on the road stopped a centimeter before it even touched my body. There isn’t even anyone in the cars. I guess there really isn’t a way to escape this place. I drive back to Wendy’s and buy something to “load” the rest of my day. I angrily drive to work and check out everything about it. I want to check out every floor other than my own, to make sure that it’s normal. I press floor 2, … Nothing. The button light doesn’t turn on, the elevator doesn’t move. I try 3, the same. Then 4, and 6, and 7. It’s all the same. I finally press floor 5. It moves. When the elevator reaches floor 5 I dart to the stairwell. If the elevator won’t work, then the stairs will. I open the door to the stairs and go down the steps…. A wall. A wall at the bottom of the stairs, right where it goes out of sight. No doors either. I make my way up the steps worrying that I might find the same wall. Lo and behold, I do.

Hold on, do I even work here? I don’t remember even applying for a job here, let alone looking for one. I don’t remember buying my car, or buying all these shirts, buying food, hell even getting paid. All of the papers that I do are exactly the same. Now that I think of it, I don’t remember anything other than the previous day. What state do I live in? I don’t remember school, or my childhood, or… even my parents. Did I have parents? Who am I? Everything that I have ever known has been a lie, I’ve been placed into this broken record of a life and I have no control over it. A tall man in a business suit approaches me from the corner of my eye, he doesn’t stop until I turn to acknowledge him.

“Why so distraught? Is something the matter?”  

I looked straight into his eyes, they were lifeless, but at the same time, full of joy and excitement, I noticed a slight smile on his face that he has been trying to hide.

“Who are you, and where am I? What are you doing to me?” I yell,

“Whose memories have you put into my brain?”

“Oh…  That’s not it, nothing is wrong, you’re just a little tired, that’s all,” he said condescendingly.

“Tell me!” I whimper while on the verge of breaking into tears,

“Don’t worry, everything will make sense soon enough.”

He had now abandoned the facade he tried to put up, and now was fully smiling as if he found pure enjoyment out of it, I know for a fact that he knew I was right.

Before I can even respond he takes some sort of metal rod and hits me in the back of the knee, the rod releases an electric shock, but before I get knocked out he mutters a final phrase in a soft tone, “Be seeing you."

…

Beep… beep… beep… “Damn, what time is it?” Beep… Beep… Beep… “8am? Good, I didn’t oversleep today.” Beep… Beep… Be… I dismiss the alarm and quickly hop out of my bed and say, “I’ve got no time to lose.” And so my daily routine begins.