Chapter 2

I called in sick to work.

First time in two years. I'm the guy who shows up with a fever, who powers through migraines, who treats PTO like some kind of personal failure. But I sat on the edge of my bed watching the sun come up and I knew there was no way I was going to make it through eight hours of spreadsheets and conference calls. Not today.

Not with that face burned into my brain. My face, technically. But wrong. Twisted up with fear I didn't understand, mouthing words I couldn't hear.

I tried to sleep after the sun came up. Figured maybe daylight would make the whole thing feel less real, the way nightmares fade when you're eating breakfast. But every time I closed my eyes, I saw them. Sitting up in that bed. Leaning toward me. Lips moving around that single sharp syllable I couldn't decode.

By noon I'd given up on rest and started researching.

I know what you're thinking. I said I'd already seen doctors, already gone down the rabbit hole of sleep disorders and quantum theory and interdimensional speculation. And I had. Eight months ago, when this all started, I spent weeks drowning in forum posts and academic papers and YouTube videos made by people who were either geniuses or deeply unwell. Maybe both.

But back then, I was trying to explain the phenomenon. The room. The other me. The seventeen seconds. I was looking for a framework that made it make sense.

Today I wasn't looking for explanations. I was looking for communication.

How do you talk to someone you can only see for seventeen seconds? Someone on the other side of something you can't touch or cross? Someone who exists in a room that isn't there?

I found articles about lucid dreaming. Techniques for maintaining awareness while your brain tries to convince you that you're awake. But this isn't a dream. I've pinched myself, slapped myself, done all the stupid tests. When 3:33 hits, I'm awake. Fully, completely awake.

I found forums about astral projection, remote viewing, out-of-body experiences. People claiming they could visit other planes, other versions of reality, just by meditating hard enough. Most of it felt like wishful thinking dressed up in mystical language. But I bookmarked a few posts anyway. At this point, I wasn't in a position to be picky.

I found one thread, buried deep in a subreddit I'd never heard of, where someone described something similar. Waking at the same time every night. Seeing a room that was almost theirs. A figure that was almost them.

The post was three years old. The account had been deleted. No replies except one, from a user whose profile was also gone: "Stop looking. It's not what you think it is."

That's all. No elaboration. No context. Just a warning from someone who didn't stick around to explain it.

I stared at those words for a long time.

By mid-afternoon, I had a plan. Or something like one.

I dug through my closet until I found a small flashlight. Not too bright, nothing that would blind me in a dark room, but enough to illuminate a piece of paper. Enough to see writing clearly.

Then I got a thick black marker and a notepad. The kind with big pages, the kind you can see from across a room if the letters are large enough.

If they could mouth words at me, I could hold up words for them. Level the playing field. Seventeen seconds wasn't much time, but it was enough to read a short message if both parties were prepared.

I wrote out my first question in block letters, each one taking up half the page: WHAT DO YOU WANT?

Seemed like a reasonable place to start.

Then I wrote a backup, in case they answered and I needed to respond: I CAN SEE YOU

And a third: ARE YOU ME?

Stupid question, maybe. Obviously they were me. Some version of me, from some version of this life. But I needed to know if they saw it the same way. If they thought they were the original and I was the copy, or if they had some other explanation entirely.

I taped the pages to my headboard where I could grab them quickly. Set the flashlight on my nightstand, within easy reach. Practiced the motion a few times. Wake up. Grab flashlight. Turn it on. Hold up sign. Read response. All within seventeen seconds.

It felt insane. Preparing for contact with myself like I was planning a hostage negotiation.

But what else was I supposed to do? Go back to pretending this wasn't happening? Accept that I'd watch my own face twist with fear every night and never know why?

I couldn't do that. Not anymore.

The day crawled by in that particular way time moves when you're waiting for something you're dreading. I cleaned my apartment, which I never do. Organized my closet. Did dishes I'd been ignoring for a week. Anything to keep my hands busy while my brain chewed on the same questions over and over.

What were they trying to tell me?

Why did they look so scared?

Why now, after eight months of sleeping peacefully through every encounter?

I kept circling back to that deleted Reddit post. "Stop looking. It's not what you think it is." What wasn't? The other room? The other self? The whole phenomenon?

And what happened to the person who wrote it? Did they stop looking? Did it help? Or did stopping make things worse?

I ate dinner without tasting it. Watched TV without seeing it. Took a shower that lasted forty minutes because standing under hot water was better than sitting still with my thoughts.

By 10 PM, I was in bed. Way too early to sleep, but I didn't want to risk being awake when the moment came. Something about being conscious for the transition felt wrong, like watching the gears of reality turn in a way you weren't supposed to see.

I must have drifted off eventually. I don't remember it happening.

I just remember opening my eyes.

3:33.

The room shifted around me like a lens coming into focus. Blue curtains instead of gray. The plant by the window. The wooden headboard I'd never bought.

I reached for the flashlight. My fingers found it, fumbled with the switch. It clicked on, a small circle of light that seemed too bright against the darkness.

I grabbed the first sign. WHAT DO YOU WANT?

I held it up.

And then I saw them.

They weren't in the bed.

They were standing in the middle of the room. Closer than they'd ever been before. Close enough that I could make out details I'd never seen clearly. The shadows under their eyes. The way their hair stuck up on one side like they'd been running their hands through it for hours. The slight tremor in their shoulders.

They were holding something too. A piece of paper, like mine. Letters scrawled in what looked like the same thick marker I'd used.

I angled my flashlight toward their sign, desperate to read it before the seconds ran out.

Three words. Block letters. Unmistakable.

DON'T TRUST HER

My mouth went dry.

Her? Who was her? There was no one else in my life. No girlfriend, no close female friends, no one who—

I looked back at their face, hoping for some kind of clarification. Some hint about what they meant.

But they weren't looking at my sign anymore.

They were looking past me. Over my shoulder. Into the dark corner of my room that I suddenly realized I couldn't see.

Their expression changed. The fear I'd seen last night was nothing compared to this. This was terror. The kind that doesn't scream because screaming would be a waste of precious seconds.

They raised their hand. Not reaching for me this time.

Pointing.

Behind me.

And then the seventeen seconds ended.

My room snapped back. Gray curtains. Cheap nightstand. The flashlight trembling in my grip.

I didn't turn around.

I don't know how long I sat there, frozen, staring at the wall in front of me because looking at the wall meant not looking at whatever might be behind me.

The silence was enormous. The kind of silence that has weight, that presses against your eardrums like deep water.

I told myself there was nothing there. Told myself the other me was confused, mistaken, seeing things that existed in their world but not mine. Told myself that if something was really behind me, I would feel it. Hear it. Sense it somehow.

But I didn't turn around.

I sat perfectly still until the sun came up, my neck aching, my eyes burning, the words on that sign repeating in my head like a song I couldn't stop humming.

Don't trust her.

Don't trust her.

When the light finally crept through my gray curtains, I made myself look.

There was nothing there. Just my closet door, slightly ajar the way it always was because the latch didn't quite catch. Just my laundry basket overflowing with clothes I kept meaning to fold. Just the corner of my room, ordinary and empty.

But the closet door.

I always left it slightly ajar. I knew that. The latch was broken. It never closed all the way.

So why did it feel like I was seeing it wrong? Like the gap was a little wider than usual? Like someone had opened it recently and tried to close it but couldn't quite manage?

I got up. Walked over. Pulled the door open all the way in one fast motion, the way you rip off a bandage.

Nothing. Just clothes on hangers. Shoes on the floor. The same mess that had been there for months.

I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding.

And then I noticed it.

On the floor of my closet, in the thin layer of dust that had accumulated because I never vacuumed in there, there were marks. Faint scuffs in the dust. The kind you'd make if you were standing very still for a long time, shifting your weight slightly from foot to foot.

Two feet. Roughly my size.

Facing outward.

Toward my bed.