I screamed into air.
"Let me out. Let me out!" Everyone looked as if I were mad, but I wasn't. They didn't know. Sobs took a hold of me and I slumped to the ground, crying.
It all started on the 5th of April. The start of everything. Of course, it didn't strike me as unordinary because to me, and everyone else in this place. It was a new day.
For days I would do things exactly as I had done on the 5th of April, unaware I had replayed this routine again and again, as if part of some simulation.
Of course, you can only remain clueless for so long.
It started on the 5th of April, as usual, but it wasn't. I woke up groggy and dizzy, instead of refreshed like all the other days. Then everything hit me. All the 5th of April's I had lived through. The same routines. The same conversations. Over, and over, and over again.
I felt myself losing my grip on reality. Surely this was nothing but a lucid dream? It felt as if I had lived in this loop for years, no- decades.
I jumped frantically from my bed, scrambling to my study desk. A lone tear-calendar hung on the wall above my desk. 5𝘵𝘩 𝘰𝘧 𝘈𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘭, it read.
I tore off a page. 5𝘵𝘩 𝘰𝘧 𝘈𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘭, it read again.
The more pages I tore, the more insane I felt. Soon, there was nothing left to tear. All of the pages read the 5th of April.
I checked my phone. 5th of April.
The more I looked, the more I saw the number 5. It was everywhere.
For a day, I wandered the streets, crying, screaming. I was met with nothing but either confused or scared looks.
As I stared at the sky, a silent prayer to free of this hell, I noticed something. A glitch. As if the sky wasn't really the sky we knew, but a mirage. A false front, if you will.
My eyes then landed upon the tallest skyscraper there was. Hope blossomed in me as I strode towards it.
I didn't have a plan, but all I knew was when I found the person responsible for all of this, there would be hell to pay.
