The Day I Went Missing in My Life.

I'm Moses, and two days of my life have gone missing.

I don't mean I slept in or lost hours — I mean I woke up in a hospital room with no recollection of what happened on Tuesday night until Thursday morning.

The first thing I remember is the hiss of oxygen and the measured, slow beep of a heart monitor. For one instant, I was home, maybe dreaming.

Then I was hit with a smell — antiseptic, cold, biting — and I knew where I was that I did not wish to be.

I'd had an IV in my arm. My head throbbed as if it'd been cleaved in two and re-welded back together without a schematic.

A nurse noticed that I was awake and smiled weakly.

"You're lucky," she said to me. "They scooped you up before the traffic did."

I blinked.

"Scooped me up where?"

"Along Route 17?" she replied. "Three a.m. No id, no wallet, phone clutched in your hand. You were out cold."

I tried to sit up but dizziness pushed me back.

"What's today's date?"

"It's Thursday," she answered, looking at me warily.

My phone was on the tray beside me. Thirty-seven missed calls -- all with the same number. A name I hadn't heard in years.

The last I knew was walking out of work Tuesday night. And then -- nothing.

A single, ominous text message: RUN.

My hands grew cold. I had no idea why or from what.

Something moved in the pocket of my hospital gown. I inserted my hand in it and produced a wrinkled piece of paper:

Don't trust the police.

I didn't say anything about the note to the nurse.

There was something about those four words — Don't trust the police — that made me feel it would be a death sentence to speak them aloud.

So, I shoved the paper back into my pocket and glared at my phone. Thirty-seven missed calls from one person — a name I hadn't spoken in five years: Kevin.

Kevin and I were like two peas in a pod. We lived on the same street, shared the same gangly teen years, and exchanged each other's worst secrets. But then something happened — something that I've never been able to articulate — that drove us apart. He vanished from my life, and I just assumed that was it.

Until now.

I called him.

He answered on the first ring.

"Moses? Where are you?" His tone was icy sharp, a command.

"In the hospital," I replied. "Route 17. They said—"

"Don't say that on the phone," he interrupted. "They'll be listening. Just… leave immediately. And for God's sake, don't talk to the police."

"Kevin, what is going on? Why—"

"You weren't supposed to live," he spat. And then the line went dead.

The words hurt worse than the headache.

Not to live?

My mind tried to scrape up memories from the vanished hours, but the only things that I could find were glimpses:

• A neon light at a gas station.

• Squealing tires.

• A black sport utility vehicle pulling up too close.

• A voice saying my name at night.

The rest was simply… static.

The doctor discharged me to return that afternoon. I walked out of the hospital into a gray windy day that made everything look colder than it was.

What I first noticed was a man in a black sweatshirt standing behind a car on the other side of the street, watching me.

When I turned on him, he cut around the car and disappeared.

It could have been nothing. But something within me knew it wasn't.

I did not head home right away.

Whatever function of mine — the function that had believed Kevin's voice more than the nurse's — told me to keep walking. I walked along side streets for nearly an hour, trying to talk myself into thinking I wasn't being followed.

It didn't work.

Every time that I glanced over my shoulder, I caught something moving. A shadow. A glimpse in the window of a shop. Always gone when I blinked.

When I finally worked myself up to return home, I did so in a rush — up the stairs, key in the door, lights on. Everything was the same at first.

Then I noticed my desk.

The top drawer was open. Not broken open, or ransacked — just… open.

Inside, everything was still the same: receipts, a few old bills, a dead pen. But the framed photo that always sat on top of my desk — the one of me as a kid in front of our old house — was gone.

Nothing else was touched.

I had gone to grab my laptop to check how much I had in the bank. The screen was slow, like it knew something.

Balance: $0.00.

I had spent all my cents.

They were all marked "Pending," all being sent to the same payment address that had no trace. Whoever they were, they'd not found me. They had arranged this.

The buzzing in my head grew stronger. I had to know.

I looked up my name on the internet, scrolling through the normal din — until one headline brought me up short.

LOCAL GIRL MISSING FOR TEN YEARS — FAMILY HOLDS VIGIL

It wasn't me in the newspaper.

But in the background of the picture — fuzzy, barely visible — was the same house from my missing school photo. My family's old house.

It had been sold years before.

I did not know the missing child. At least, I didn't think I did.

Now I knew where I was going next.

I had not returned to my hometown in over ten years.

Entering felt like driving backward through history — billboards faded, the highway narrowed, and the air thickened with that damp, loamy smell I recalled on summer afternoons as a child.

The house was still there. Different paint, new owners, but the same sagging porch and cracked driveway where I’d once learned to ride my bike.

I parked across the street and just… stared.

A woman watering her front yard next door paused, her smile flickering when she saw me. She turned off the hose without a word and went inside.

That happened more than once. An old neighbour with his dog crossed over to the other side of the street. A fellow I've called "Uncle" shut his blinds the instant our eyes had met.

It was like I was a ghost — one that they didn't want to acknowledge seeing.

I was about to step off when I saw a familiar face: Aaron, my old friend. The last I had seen of him, he was twelve and swore he would never speak to me again after a fight that I don't actually recall.

He looked older now — tired, suspicious. But when I called his name, he paused.

"Moses," he said slowly. "You came back."

"Something is going on here," I said. "Why is everyone acting like I'm a plague carrier?"

Aaron hesitated, glancing toward the house.

"You were gone before," he finally said. "When we were little kids. But you were too little to remember."

The words churned inside my chest.

"What do you mean, gone?"

A figure appeared between us before he could answer. A man walked by, shoving something into my coat pocket without even breaking stride.

I froze. Aaron's eyes went wide.

"Moses… don't go to them."

Glancing down, I saw it — a rumpled, crumpled paper map. One location circled in red, far out in the woods past town.

Under the circle was a date.

Tomorrow.

... To be continued... Episode 2.