The alarm clock blared, its shrill tone slicing through the stillness of the morning. Ethan groaned and slapped at it, silencing the familiar racket. He stared at the ceiling, a strange heaviness weighing on his chest. Outside, the sun rose in a pale orange haze, spilling soft light through his window. It was a view he'd seen countless times before, but today, it felt... different.
Not different. The same.
Ethan swung his legs out of bed, the cool touch of the floor grounding him in the moment. A tired sigh escaped his lips, one that matched the weariness in his soul. His morning unfolded like clockwork: brushing his teeth, brewing coffee, scanning the newspaper. The headlines—about a local festival and a political scandal—were exactly what he remembered reading yesterday.
No. It wasn't just yesterday. It was every day.
He froze mid-sip, staring blankly at the coffee in his mug. A prickling unease ran up his spine. This wasn't normal. The sunlight streaming through his window cast the same long shadows it always did, the same chatter drifted in from the street outside, and every face he passed on his morning walk seemed to greet him with a maddening familiarity.
This was his life now: an endless, unchanging routine.
Determined to shake the sense of déjà vu, Ethan tried to break free from the monotony. That afternoon, he skipped work for the first time in years and hopped on a bus to nowhere, his heart pounding with a mix of rebellion and desperation. He wandered through unfamiliar streets, ate food from a restaurant he'd never been to, and even struck up a conversation with a stranger on a park bench.
But as the day melted into night, he felt it again—that pull. It was subtle at first, like a whisper in the back of his mind, growing louder with each passing moment.
He woke the next morning to the blare of the alarm clock. The same sun rose over the same horizon. The same routine stared him in the face.
Frustration boiled over. Ethan knocked the alarm clock to the floor, its metallic clang echoing in the room. He stormed outside, shouting into the empty street. He tried running in the opposite direction of his usual route, smashing a window in his frustration, and even deliberately skipping meals. Nothing worked.
One evening, as the pull of the reset loomed again, Ethan collapsed onto his bed, his mind a storm of questions. "What's happening to me?" he whispered into the darkness. His voice trembled, lost in the emptiness of his room.
And then, something changed.
The next morning, as he passed the same newspaper stand, he noticed something new: a flicker in the corner of his vision. It was subtle, almost imperceptible, like a shadow shifting where no shadow should be. He turned sharply, heart racing, but the street was empty.
Later that day, while staring at the coffee swirling in his mug, he felt it again—a faint hum, as though the air itself vibrated with unseen energy.
Ethan began noticing more anomalies. The ticking of his wall clock skipped a beat. A stranger's face seemed to blur for a fraction of a second. The radio crackled with a voice speaking a language he couldn't recognize, even though the station had always been local.
Something—or someone—was watching him.
His frustration was slowly giving way to curiosity. The loop was no longer just a trap. It was a puzzle, and Ethan was determined to solve it.
As he drifted off to sleep that night, a new feeling stirred within him. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, he felt the faintest glimmer of hope.