I arrived at work the next morning, feeling a weight I couldn't shake. The same flickering lights greeted me as I walked through the office doors, but now, the pulsing of the fluorescent bulbs seemed to mirror the uneasy rhythm in my chest. Everything from the previous day was still vivid in my mind—the misplaced coffee mug, the strange sounds, the flickering lights. I tried to convince myself it was all just the result of a bad night's sleep, but even as I told myself that, I knew I didn't believe it.
The elevator ride up to the 7th floor was uneventful, but as soon as I stepped out, I felt it again—something was off. The office looked the same, the hum of computers and low chatter filled the air, but there was an odd silence beneath it all, like a wrong note buried in the background.
I settled into my cubicle, opened my laptop, and stared blankly at the screen. As the same spreadsheets and emails greeted me, I felt a creeping sense of dread. I should have been able to just dive back into the routine, lose myself in the monotony of work. But instead, everything felt… fragile, like reality itself was stretched too thin.
*Maybe I'm just overtired,* I thought, rubbing my temples. *It's not like anything really happened yesterday. I misplaced a mug. Big deal. Maybe the noises were just the building creaking, or the HVAC system rattling again. That clock thing? Maybe I looked at it wrong. People make mistakes like that all the time.*
But no matter how much I tried to rationalize it, that gnawing feeling wouldn't go away. It was like I could feel something lurking just beneath the surface, something I couldn't name or explain.
*Am I going crazy?*
I wasn't someone prone to paranoia, but everything about this felt wrong, like the world was fraying at the edges, and I was the only one noticing it.
I shook my head, determined to focus. The sooner I could drown myself in work, the sooner I could forget about the oddness from yesterday. My fingers tapped at the keyboard, and for a moment, I got into a rhythm. But then I heard it—a soft, distant shuffle behind me.
I turned, but no one was there. Just the usual expanse of cubicles, each one filled with my co-workers tapping away at their own keyboards or mumbling through phone calls.
I shrugged it off, telling myself I was being ridiculous. That's when I saw Derek, the guy from IT, walking toward me. He was a good guy, always up for a chat. He gave me a quick nod as he passed my cubicle.
"Morning, Alex," he said.
"Hey, Derek," I replied, forcing a smile.
He kept walking, disappearing behind a wall of cubicles.
I turned back to my screen, but I couldn't focus anymore. The sounds of the office had faded into white noise. A few minutes later, Derek passed by again. He was coming from the same direction as before, but this time, he didn't look at me.
"Morning, Alex," he said again, in the exact same tone as before.
I blinked, confused. Hadn't we already had this conversation? I opened my mouth to reply, but he was already gone. I looked around, wondering if I'd imagined the whole thing. But no, Derek had walked past me twice and said the exact same thing both times. It was like déjà vu, but worse—like the world had glitched, repeating a scene without any explanation.
I tried to ignore it, but my heart was racing now. I glanced over at his cubicle, but he wasn't there. In fact, his entire workstation was empty, as if he hadn't even shown up yet.
*Maybe I'm just tired,* I thought again, but the words felt hollow.
As the morning dragged on, more odd things began to happen. I reached for my pen, only to find it wasn't where I left it. I searched around my desk, only to discover it had rolled to the edge, precariously close to falling. I grabbed it, annoyed, but also uneasy.
Then, at around 10 a.m., I noticed Linda from HR was missing. Her desk was usually cluttered with files and paperwork, but today it was neat, almost too neat, like no one had touched it in days.
I glanced around, expecting to see her in one of the nearby offices or grabbing coffee in the break room, but there was no sign of her. I mentioned it to Jenna, who sat a few cubicles away, but she just shrugged.
"Maybe she's out sick," Jenna said. "Or working from home. Who knows?"
But the thing was, Linda never worked from home. And she'd been at her desk yesterday, same as always, smiling and talking about the weekend.
No one else seemed to care, though. It was like her absence didn't register with anyone. Just another missing person in a sea of indifference.
I leaned back in my chair, trying to calm the growing sense of unease gnawing at me. Something was wrong. I just didn't know what.
The rest of the morning passed in a blur of unanswered emails and half-finished spreadsheets. My mind kept drifting, unable to stay focused on anything for too long. I had to force myself to work through the growing sense of dread gnawing at the edges of my thoughts.
As I made my way toward the break room to grab a coffee, I caught snippets of conversations drifting over from the nearby cubicles. Normally, I wouldn't pay much attention, but something about the tone of the discussions today caught my ear.
"...yeah, and then I looked up and the whole document was gone. Just vanished," one voice said, followed by a chuckle. "I swear, it's like I blacked out for a few minutes. I think I might need more sleep."
"Maybe the system's glitching again," another voice replied, but there was an undercurrent of unease beneath the casual words. "First the flickering lights, now files disappearing. Maybe this building's haunted."
They laughed, but it felt forced, like they were trying to laugh away something that didn't sit right with them.
I hovered in the hallway, pretending to scroll through my phone, listening to the scattered conversations around me. Bits and pieces floated by—mentions of strange noises, the lights flickering worse than usual, and someone even joking about hearing whispers when they stayed late to finish a project.
It wasn't just me. That much was clear now. The oddities weren't isolated to my cubicle or my tired mind. They were happening to everyone, but no one was truly acknowledging it. There was a collective shrug, a willingness to chalk everything up to stress or malfunction, as if admitting something was wrong would somehow make it worse.
In the break room, the tension was palpable, though unspoken. A few people were gathered around the coffee machine, making small talk, but the usual chatter about weekend plans or office gossip was replaced with something more tentative. I poured myself a cup and stood on the outskirts of the group, listening.
"I could've sworn I sent that email this morning," Carla from accounting was saying, her brow furrowed. "I even saw it in my drafts. But when I checked just now, it was gone. I had to rewrite the whole thing. Probably just the system acting up again, but it's been happening more lately."
"I've noticed it too," said Greg, one of the IT guys. "Files disappearing, stuff out of place. I had a report that completely erased itself yesterday. Weird, right?"
There was a murmur of agreement, but no one looked particularly worried. If anything, they seemed more annoyed than unsettled, like the glitches were just another inconvenience in the endless grind of office life.
"Maybe this place is just falling apart," someone joked, taking a sip of their coffee. "First the flickering lights, now missing files. What's next? Ghosts in the elevator?"
The others laughed, but there was a strange undercurrent in the room. It was in the way people glanced at each other or quickly changed the subject when things got too weird. No one wanted to dwell on it, even though we all felt it. The unease, the nagging sensation that something was off—like we were all skating on thin ice, and none of us wanted to be the first to say it out loud.
I stood there, my fingers tightening around the warm coffee cup, trying to process the conversations around me. The laughter felt hollow. The words people said didn't match the look in their eyes—the brief flickers of worry that they quickly masked with jokes or dismissive comments.
They were feeling it too, I realized. The strange sense of disconnection, the missing time, the odd noises. It wasn't just me. But while they could laugh it off, could blame it on stress or bad sleep, I couldn't. Not anymore.
These weren't just glitches in the system, not some tech issue that could be explained away by an IT guy running a software update. It was deeper than that, stranger. There was something wrong with this place, with the very fabric of reality around us.
I wanted to say something, to ask if anyone else had seen the strange hallway in the elevator yesterday, but I stopped myself. What was I supposed to say? *Hey, does anyone else feel like reality is breaking apart?*
I didn't think anyone would take me seriously. Even worse, I didn't want to be *that guy*—the one who started rambling about how everything was wrong and nothing made sense. No one liked that guy.
So instead, I stayed quiet, watching as everyone went back to their desks, back to their routines, pretending everything was normal. But I could feel it. The cracks in the routine were growing. And I wasn't sure how much longer I could pretend like I didn't notice.
The rest of the day dragged on, but I was on edge the entire time. Every flicker of the lights, every misplaced object or stray sound, made my skin crawl. I kept waiting for something worse to happen, for the cracks to widen and reveal whatever was lurking beneath.
And I had a sinking feeling that it was only a matter of time before it did.
The afternoon meeting was one of those regular, soul-draining affairs where we all gathered in a stuffy conference room to discuss quarterly reports and progress updates. The fluorescent lights above buzzed incessantly, flickering in that same disjointed pattern that was becoming all too familiar. I sat near the back, trying to focus on the spreadsheet in front of me, but it was impossible to shake the growing sense of unease.
The room itself felt oppressive, the air thick, as though we were all trapped in a space that was slowly squeezing in on us. The table stretched on longer than it seemed physically capable of. My manager droned on about targets and projections, her voice blending into the hum of the lights, the tapping of keyboards, and the occasional click of a pen.
I glanced at the clock on the wall. Five minutes had passed since the meeting started. *Only five minutes?* It felt like I'd been sitting there for hours, sinking deeper into my chair as the monotony took hold. I glanced around the room, and everyone else seemed just as glazed over, staring at their laptops or scribbling notes without any real focus. The sense of time dragging, pulling, and stretching was suffocating.
And then, as I was staring at the clock, it happened.
The second hand stopped. It was subtle at first—a tiny hesitation, a small break in the smooth, ticking motion. But then it did something impossible. It ticked backward.
Five minutes.
I blinked, unsure of what I was seeing. The clock had just jumped back five minutes, erasing time in a way that made my stomach drop. I stared at it, my breath catching in my throat, but no one else seemed to notice. My manager continued speaking, her voice a dull, rhythmic drone, like an old machine grinding on without stopping.
I looked down at the papers in front of me. The report I had been working on had changed. The figures were different—wrong somehow. They weren't what I had just typed up before the meeting. It was as if the document had reverted to an earlier state, as though the work I'd done hadn't existed.
My pulse quickened. I tried to refocus, to steady myself, but the growing sensation that the world around me wasn't real—that it was glitching, breaking—kept creeping in. I stole a glance at the others seated around the table, hoping for some sign that they had noticed too, but everyone was absorbed in their work, oblivious to the cracks forming around us.
But then I saw it again—another impossibility.
Greg, sitting a few chairs down from me, was talking. I could see his lips moving, forming words, but no sound was coming out. The silence was deafening, like someone had muted the world for a moment. His mouth moved, but the rest of him stayed unnervingly still, like a glitching video stuck on a loop.
I looked away, my skin crawling, but it didn't stop. Across the table, Carla reached for her coffee mug, but her hand moved in jagged, unnatural motions, like her arm was skipping frames. It was as though reality was struggling to keep up, breaking into stuttering fragments of itself. My breath came in short, shallow bursts, and I could feel my heart racing, thudding loudly in my chest.
*This isn't happening. It can't be happening.*
I wiped my hands over my face, trying to ground myself, to pull my mind back to something tangible. But when I looked up, it was as if nothing had changed. The meeting continued. My manager droned on, her voice mechanical, devoid of any real emotion. The others sat there, typing away or staring blankly at the spreadsheets in front of them, as though nothing was wrong. As though the glitches, the distortions, didn't exist.
*Am I losing my mind?*
It felt like the walls of the room were closing in, suffocating me, the air growing thicker, heavier with each passing second. I wanted to scream, to shout for someone—anyone—to acknowledge what was happening, to tell me they saw it too. But I didn't. I couldn't.
I just sat there, paralyzed, as the meeting dragged on, time itself unraveling around me.
When the meeting finally ended, I felt like I'd barely survived it. My body was tense, every muscle on edge, as if I had been holding my breath for hours. The weight of the room—the impossible glitches, the disjointed movements—stayed with me, clinging like a second skin. I needed to get out of there, to escape the overwhelming sense that something was very, very wrong.
I pushed back my chair, gathering my papers with trembling hands, and made my way out of the conference room. The usual hum of the office—phones ringing, keys clattering, the low murmur of voices—seemed muted, distant, like I was hearing it from underwater. My mind was scrambled, disoriented, my thoughts swirling in a chaotic mess. I felt disconnected from everything around me, the usual routine now a hollow echo.
*Just a quick break,* I told myself. *Get to the bathroom. Clear your head.*
The fluorescent lights above flickered again, sending a stuttering pulse of shadows down the hallway as I walked. With each step, my shoes clicked against the polished floor, the sound unnervingly loud in the strange quiet that had settled over the office.
As I walked, the familiar corridors of the office seemed off, wrong in ways I couldn't immediately explain. The hallway stretched out in front of me, longer than it should've been, like a funhouse mirror distorting reality. The floor felt uneven beneath my feet, as if the ground was tilting slightly, making my steps falter. The walls seemed closer together too, pressing in on either side of me, squeezing the air from the space and adding to the growing sense of claustrophobia.
I stopped for a moment, rubbing my eyes, trying to shake the fog from my mind. The flickering lights above cast long, erratic shadows that danced in the corners of my vision. *It's just exhaustion,* I told myself, though the words felt hollow. *I just need to snap out of it.*
But the feeling of distortion clung to me, warping the world around me as I continued down the hallway. The air felt thick, like I was walking through molasses. My legs felt heavy, my movements sluggish, as though something was dragging me down. The hallway stretched even longer, seemingly endless, each step taking me farther away from the familiar, solid reality I had once known.
As I neared the window at the end of the hallway, something caught my eye. I turned my head, glancing through the glass—expecting to see the familiar parking lot, rows of cars, maybe a couple of my co-workers grabbing a smoke break outside.
But what I saw instead was impossible.
An endless, flat landscape stretched out before me, bathed in a cold, sterile light. The ground was a dull, featureless beige, no buildings or trees in sight, just an empty, barren expanse that went on and on, disappearing into a horizon that didn't seem to exist. The sky above was a sickly, artificial white, buzzing with the same oppressive energy as the fluorescent lights inside the building.
For a moment, I just stared, frozen, my mind struggling to make sense of what I was seeing. It didn't make sense. It couldn't make sense.
I blinked, hard.
When I opened my eyes again, the parking lot was back. The rows of cars, the cracked pavement, the familiar gray sky overhead—all of it normal again, as if nothing had changed.
But my heart was pounding in my chest, my breath coming in shallow gasps. I stumbled back from the window, my pulse racing. *What the hell was that?*
I didn't have an answer. All I knew was that whatever was happening, whatever I had just seen—it wasn't a trick of the mind. Something had shifted. Something was breaking.
By the time I reached the bathroom door, the air had changed. It was subtle at first—a slight shift in the weight of the atmosphere, like walking into a room where the windows had been shut for too long. Each step I took seemed to echo, not in the crisp, sterile way sounds bounced off the office tiles, but in a dull, distorted way, like the space around me was absorbing the noise, warping it. The familiar hallway lights flickered one last time before I pushed open the door.
I was expecting the same, dingy bathroom—the white tiles, the harsh overhead fluorescent lights, maybe a hand dryer blowing somewhere in the background. But the second I stepped inside, everything shifted.
The moment I crossed the threshold, the world around me…changed. There was no other way to describe it.
The bathroom was gone.
Instead of tiled floors and stalls, I found myself in an impossibly large, empty expanse. The smell of stale, recycled air hit me immediately, and a faint buzzing filled the space, louder now—like the lights overhead were alive, their hum burrowing into my mind.
I stumbled forward, my breath caught in my throat. My hands reached out, trying to find something familiar to hold onto, but there was nothing. The floor beneath me was the same dull beige as the walls, and those walls... they stretched on in every direction, featureless and unending. Everything was uniform, maddeningly so, as if someone had taken the most soulless office design and stretched it into infinity.
The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting harsh, sterile light that didn't feel quite real. It was too bright, too cold. And the sound—the droning hum that filled the space—was so much louder now, so persistent, pressing against my temples like it was trying to drill its way inside.
I tried to make sense of what I was seeing, but my mind was blank with confusion. This wasn't the office. It wasn't even a different part of the building. This was... somewhere else. The walls were wrong—too high, too far apart, yet at the same time suffocating, as if they were closing in on me without moving. My feet shuffled on the rough, thin carpet beneath me, and the sheer vastness of it made me feel like a speck lost in a desert of blandness.
I turned in a slow circle, hoping, praying to see a door, an exit, anything that made sense.
Nothing.
No doors. No windows. No signs of life. Just endless hallways that stretched beyond my line of sight, their harsh fluorescent glow receding into an oppressive, colorless void. I took a step forward, my heartbeat thudding in my ears, and immediately regretted it.
The walls didn't move, but somehow, the space seemed to shift, like I had stepped deeper into its grasp without even realizing it. I couldn't tell where I had come from. I turned again, trying to orient myself, but there was no way to tell which direction I had entered from. Where the bathroom door should've been—where I had just walked through—there was now only another endless stretch of beige, blending into the same mind-numbing, monotonous design that surrounded me.
My pulse quickened, and a wave of nausea hit me as I tried to comprehend the impossible. My mind raced, grasping for some explanation, some logical reason for where I was, but there was nothing to hold onto.
The space was too big, too open, yet at the same time, I felt suffocated. The air felt thick, heavy in my lungs, and my movements were sluggish, like the atmosphere itself was slowing me down, resisting my attempts to move.
I spun around again, desperation creeping in. *Where's the door?* I wanted to scream, but the words lodged in my throat, swallowed by the oppressive quiet.
I took another step, and the floor beneath me felt unnervingly soft, like the world itself was unsteady. My heart hammered in my chest. Panic surged, but I forced myself to breathe, to think. I needed to get out of here, but I had no idea where *here* even was.
The silence closed in, broken only by the maddening hum of the lights overhead. My footsteps echoed back at me, sounding wrong, distorted, as if I wasn't the only one walking through this place. But every time I looked around, I was alone.
I stood frozen for a moment, staring at the empty walls, the flickering lights overhead buzzing like an insect in my ear. This couldn't be real. My brain scrambled for a rational explanation—a nightmare, stress, exhaustion—but nothing clicked. The air felt too stale, too *present* around me. The hum of the lights was too loud, vibrating in my skull. I wasn't dreaming. This was real.
I turned on my heel, scanning the walls, the floor, the ceiling—searching desperately for a door, a window, something that could lead me out of this nightmare. But there was nothing. Just more beige. Just more endless, sterile walls.
My breath caught in my throat as the rising tide of panic began to choke me. *Retrace your steps*, I told myself. *You walked in. There has to be a way back.*
I started walking again, each step a little quicker than the last, trying to remember the exact path I took when I left the meeting room. My footsteps sounded hollow, echoing in ways that made the space feel even larger and emptier. But as I moved, something strange happened. The hallways…shifted. It was subtle at first—a corner that seemed slightly farther away than I remembered, a turn that appeared where it shouldn't have been.
I tried to retrace my steps, but the space was wrong. It wasn't just the disorientation of a strange room. It was as if the walls themselves were bending, moving behind my back.
*No... no... it was just a bathroom. It was supposed to be right here,* I muttered to myself, my voice shaky.
I stopped, turned, and stared down the long, oppressive corridor. The space looked the same as every other hallway in this bland, beige maze.
My legs wobbled beneath me as the truth hit me like a punch to the gut: I wasn't in the office anymore. I was somewhere else. Somewhere *wrong*. There was no going back—no door, no office, no co-workers, nothing. I was trapped.
A cold sweat broke out along my neck, dripping down my back as my pulse thundered in my ears. I couldn't find my way back, and every direction seemed to lead deeper into the labyrinth. My footsteps quickened, almost jogging now, but the more I moved, the more the space seemed to shift and warp, like it was alive, breathing.
I stopped and spun around, trying to find any sign of where I'd come from—*anything* to anchor me. But it was all the same. Every hallway identical. Beige, buzzing lights. Flat, oppressive air. The panic rose faster now, constricting my chest, making it hard to breathe.
There was nothing. No sound, no people, no signs of life—just me and the endless hum of those fluorescent lights. I was alone. Truly, completely alone. The weight of it settled over me like a lead blanket. I stumbled forward again, my heart racing, gasping for air.
Where the hell was I? How had this happened?
I reached out and pressed my hand against the nearest wall. It was cold, too smooth. Unnatural. My hand trembled as I pulled it back.
"Hello?" I called out, my voice cracking in the silence. It echoed back to me, distorted, as if the space itself was mocking me.
*No one's here*, I thought. *I'm trapped. There's no way out.*
My mind swirled with fear, every thought louder than the next. What if I was stuck here forever? What if this was it—the rest of my life, wandering these endless, empty halls?
I forced myself to keep moving, my mind racing. My pulse thundered in my ears, but I knew I couldn't stand here forever. Panic would eat me alive if I didn't do something. *Pick a direction. Just walk.* It didn't matter which way; everything looked the same. Beige walls, buzzing lights, empty halls that stretched on infinitely.
I started walking, each step deliberate, slow. My eyes scanned the space ahead, looking for any sign of something—*anything*—that might lead me out. But the farther I went, the more the hallway repeated itself. No doors, no windows, just endless, blank corridors twisting into each other.
The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed louder the longer I walked, creating a constant, oppressive hum that vibrated in my skull. It was disorienting, like the world itself was breaking down around me. Every step I took, it felt like I was sinking deeper into the unknown. There was no point of reference, no way to tell how far I'd come or where I was going.
After what felt like an eternity of wandering, I started to get the sense that I wasn't alone. There was no one around—no co-workers, no voices, just me and the empty space. But the air had shifted. There was a pressure to it, something subtle but undeniable. I couldn't shake the feeling that eyes were on me, watching, waiting.
I stopped in my tracks, straining to listen. Nothing. Just the hum of the lights and the soft, rhythmic sound of my own breathing. My skin prickled, the hair on the back of my neck standing up. *It's just paranoia,* I tried to convince myself, but I couldn't shake the creeping sensation of being followed.
I glanced over my shoulder, half expecting to see someone standing behind me. But there was no one—just the empty, endless hallway stretching into the distance.
That's when I heard it—a faint, distant shuffle. The sound was almost imperceptible, like something moving in the far-off recesses of the endless maze. I froze, my heart slamming against my ribs. I strained to listen again, but the noise had already faded into the oppressive silence. The hallway was empty, but I couldn't shake the feeling that something was there, lurking just out of sight. Watching. Waiting.
My breath came in short gasps as I fought the urge to run. *Stay calm,* I told myself. *Don't panic.* But deep down, I knew—whatever was here with me wasn't friendly. It was waiting for me to slip up, to let my guard down.
I stared down the long, featureless corridor ahead, my heart pounding in my chest. Every instinct screamed at me to turn around, to find some way back to where I came from, but I knew deep down that was impossible now. I wasn't in the office anymore. I wasn't in the world I knew.
There was no way out—not from here.
I swallowed hard, forcing my feet to move again, taking slow, cautious steps into the unknown. Whatever was out there, lurking in the shadows of this endless, sterile labyrinth, I'd have to face it eventually.
But for now, all I could do was keep walking, hoping I'd find answers—or at least a way to survive.
The lights buzzed overhead, the hum growing louder, pressing in on my mind as I ventured deeper into the maze. And somewhere, far off in the distance, I swore I heard that shuffle again—closer this time.