Reality Glitch

Ethan Dawson woke up feeling… off. Not sick, not exhausted—just slightly misplaced, as if something about his body didn’t quite fit. He rubbed his eyes and sat up in bed, his fingers brushing against his nightstand.

Except, it wasn’t where it should have been.

Frowning, he looked around his room. The lamp on his desk, the chair by the window, even the door—everything had shifted. Not by much. Just an inch to the left.

Thinking it was just grogginess playing tricks on him, Ethan swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. His balance felt strange, like stepping off a moving walkway. He reached for the door handle but missed it on the first try.

Something was very, very wrong.

The Misaligned World

As Ethan walked into the hallway, the feeling of disorientation grew. His mother’s framed pictures were slightly askew, the dining table in the kitchen was just off-center, and when he poured himself a glass of water, the liquid seemed to hesitate before settling unnaturally in the glass.

“Did someone move all the furniture?” he called out.

His sister, Lucy, appeared from the living room, a deep crease between her brows. “I was just about to ask the same thing.” She gestured around her. “It’s like the whole house… shifted.”

Ethan’s stomach tightened. “It’s not just the house.”

They stepped outside and were met with an eerie sight. Their neighborhood looked almost normal—but not quite. Every tree, every car, even the cracks in the pavement had moved ever so slightly. It was barely noticeable unless you were looking for it, but once you saw it, you couldn’t unsee it.

And that wasn’t the worst part.

The people were acting strange.

The Glitch Intensifies

As Ethan and Lucy walked toward the center of town, they noticed people stumbling slightly as they walked, as if their own bodies hadn’t fully adjusted to the shift. Conversations were filled with hesitations, as though the words weren’t coming out in the right order.

“Morning,” Mr. Thompson, their neighbor, said as they passed.

Only, the way he said it was wrong. Stilted. Like a recording played at the wrong speed.

Ethan turned to Lucy. “Did you hear that?”

Before she could answer, a loud snap echoed from the street ahead. They rushed forward and saw a streetlight had bent at a sharp angle, as if it had suddenly remembered it was supposed to be somewhere else.

Then, the cracks started appearing.

The Fabric of Reality Unravels

It started with small distortions. A pigeon frozen in midair, its wings flapping in slow motion. A parked car flickering between two slightly different positions. People momentarily repeating their actions, as if stuck in a time loop.

And then, Ethan saw the sky split.

A thin, glowing fracture ran through the clouds, stretching across the horizon like a crack in glass. Behind it, he could see something else—something vast, shifting, and incomprehensible.

Lucy grabbed his arm. “Ethan, what’s happening?”

“I don’t know,” he whispered. “But I think we’re inside something that’s breaking.”

A Way Out

As the distortions worsened, Ethan and Lucy realized they had to find a way to fix it—or escape. The world around them was coming undone. Buildings warped in and out of shape, people flickered like bad TV signals, and the ground beneath their feet felt less and less solid.

That’s when they saw it.

A point of stability in the chaos—a small, untouched space in the middle of the town square. It was like the eye of a storm, a patch of reality that remained unchanged while everything else distorted around it.

“We need to get there,” Ethan said, pulling Lucy forward.

They ran, dodging objects that shifted unpredictably. The world crumbled behind them, entire sections of the street vanishing into a swirling void. With a final leap, they reached the stable ground.

And then—everything stopped.

The world froze, then reset.

The Reset

Ethan gasped as he found himself back in his bed, heart pounding. The clock on his nightstand blinked 6:59 AM.

He sat up quickly, looking around. Everything was back where it should be. The lamp, the door, the desk—all in their rightful places.

A dream?

Before he could convince himself, Lucy burst into his room, wild-eyed. “Ethan… did you just—?”

He nodded slowly. “Yeah.”

They looked at each other, the unspoken question lingering between them.

Had reality fixed itself? Or was it just waiting to break again?