I Was Missing for 13 Minutes. But to Me, It Was 13 Years.

I was 27 years old when I vanished.

Not into thin air. Not into the woods. I was in my living room.

One minute I was plugging in my phone. The next, I was waking up on the floor.

The clock said 2:13 p.m.
My call history showed my last outgoing call had ended at 2:00 p.m.

I’d been gone 13 minutes.

But I remembered everything that happened in between.

Because for me, it was 13 years.


---

It started with a sound—like thunder underwater. Then everything went white.

I remember floating, but not in space. It felt like I was drifting through someone else’s thoughts.

Then came the voices. Soft. Alien. Mechanical.

They weren’t talking to me. They were talking about me. Like scientists observing a failed experiment.

> “Subject unstable. Still anchored to original time axis.”



> “Initiate acceleration protocol.”



My body didn’t move. But my mind snapped forward like it was being pulled.


---

I lived a full life.

I remember waking in a strange town. It was always dusk. Always quiet.

There were others there too. Hundreds of us.

We didn’t age. We didn’t eat. We just… existed.

Most had accepted it. They didn’t talk about where they came from. Some didn’t even remember their own names.

I did.

Because I refused to forget.

I searched every day for a way out. For years. I counted every second.

I found a woman. Ellie. She remembered too. We shared stories. Held onto sanity together.

We fell in love. We planned a life we might never have.

Then, one day, she was gone. No trace. No goodbye.

I screamed so loud the sky cracked. And that’s when they took me back.


---

Waking up in my living room felt like being reborn into a dead body.

Everything was off. The room looked the same but colder. The walls had this hum.

I looked at my hands. Still young. But they shook like they’d lived lifetimes.

I checked my phone. 13 minutes had passed.

I aged 13 years.


---

I tried to explain. My family didn’t believe me. Why would they?

I knew things I shouldn’t. Predicted a stock market crash. Described scientific discoveries a year before they hit the news.

Every night, I heard that underwater thunder. Sometimes I saw glimpses of Ellie—reflected in mirrors or behind closed doors.

I wasn’t fully back.

Part of me was still there.


---

Doctors said it was a seizure.
A hallucination.
A psychological break.

But trauma doesn’t teach you how to speak a language you never studied. Or remember names of stars newly discovered.

Trauma doesn’t make you cry for someone who never existed—except in a world no one else remembers.


---

So I began writing. Everything I could recall from the lost years.

And as I wrote, more came back. Names. Numbers. Formulas.

A pattern.

A map.

I believe it’s a roadmap to wherever I went. Or where they pulled me from.


---

Last month, I received a postcard. It had no return address. Just one sentence:

> "It’s still dusk here. Come home. —E"



And now I hear the thunder again.

Louder than ever.

They’re coming.

Or maybe… I am.


---

Since the postcard arrived, time has been acting strange again.

I lose seconds. Minutes. Entire conversations vanish from memory. My reflection is sometimes delayed—as if the world around me is buffering.

I’ve set up cameras. Timers. Motion detectors. Every morning, I wake up five minutes earlier than I went to bed.

Something is rewriting my nights.


---

I’m not the only one.

I’ve found forums. Shadowy message boards filled with people like me—who’ve lost time, aged without explanation, seen people no one else remembers.

We call ourselves the Drifters.

Some say it’s a quantum glitch. Others think we’re subjects in some multidimensional experiment.

But I know the truth.

We’ve been chosen. Or maybe… broken.


---

Two days ago, I woke up with sand in my shoes. Not dirt. Beach sand.

I haven’t been near the ocean in years.

And worse… the sand matched exactly what I remember from the shoreline in that dusk-filled place. Smooth, cold, and oddly metallic.

They’re testing the boundaries.

Testing how long I’ll last before I go back on my own.


---

I’ve started packing.

Not because I’m scared.

But because deep down… I want to return.

Not for the mystery.

But for Ellie.

If there’s even a chance she’s still there… If she remembers me…

Then maybe I’m not as lost as I feel.


---

🌀 Written by James World
Where reality breaks, and memory becomes your only anchor.

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