THE ASCENSION SYSTEM

CHAPTER 5

I burst through the front door, my breath ragged, my heart hammering against my ribs. The street outside is bathed in the orange glow of the setting sun, but something is wrong—terribly wrong. The houses stretch in impossible ways, their angles distorted, as if reality itself is struggling to hold form. The air crackles with an energy I don’t understand.

I stagger forward, rubbing my eyes. Maybe it's just my mind playing tricks on me. Maybe exhaustion has finally caught up. But then I see it—the old oak tree in Mr. Peterson’s yard, the one I climbed a thousand times as a kid, flickering like a bad signal on a TV screen.

Panic tightens my chest.

“Hey! Hey, Mr. Peterson!” I call out, spotting him on his porch, rocking back and forth in his favorite chair.

He turns toward me, but his face is wrong. His eyes are unfocused, his mouth slightly open as if caught in some kind of trance. A second later, he vanishes, his entire body dissolving into thin air.

I stumble backward, my knees nearly buckling. “No, no, no… this isn’t real. This can’t be real.”

The street is alive with contradictions. The old bakery on the corner still has the sign from when I was ten. Mrs. Holloway’s house is back to its original brick before she repainted it white last summer. It’s as if pieces of the past and present are colliding, fighting for dominance.

I spot a group of people down the road, their silhouettes sharp against the burning horizon. Relief washes over me. Maybe they can tell me what the hell is happening.

I move toward them, but something is off. The moment they notice me, their eyes widen. A woman grabs her child and pulls him close, whispering frantically to a man beside her. A young guy in a hoodie takes a step back.

One of them, a burly man in his forties, squares his shoulders. “You shouldn’t be here,” he growls.

I swallow hard. “What?”

“This place isn’t safe for you,” the woman hisses. “Leave. Now.”

“Wait. Please, just tell me what’s going on. I—”

A sharp, searing pain rips through my skull, and I drop to my knees, clutching my head. A flood of fragmented images crashes over me—memories that don’t belong to me, people I don’t recognize. Shadows stretching, warping. A voice whispering my name in a language I don’t understand.

Then it’s gone. The pain, the visions, all of it.

I look up, gasping for breath. The group is gone. The street is empty.

My pulse pounds in my ears as I stagger to my feet, my whole body trembling. I force my legs to move, pushing forward, searching for something—anything—that makes sense.

I turn a corner and freeze.

My own house stands before me.

But I just left it.

And yet, there it is, unchanged. The front door is slightly ajar, light spilling from inside. I take a slow step toward it. The air grows colder. My breath comes out in misty puffs, though the night is still warm.

I push the door open.

Inside, the house is… wrong. The furniture is the same, but the colors are off. The walls are a shade darker than I remember. The smell of fresh-baked cookies lingers in the air—Mom’s recipe—but she hasn’t baked in years.

And then I hear it.

A chair scraped against the kitchen tile.

I move cautiously, my footsteps silent. I peer around the corner.

Someone is sitting at the kitchen table.

It’s me.

I stagger backward, my stomach twisting into knots. My double lifts his head, meeting my gaze with an expression so familiar it makes my skin crawl. His eyes are darker than mine, his features slightly distorted, as if he were a version of me from a place that shouldn’t exist.

“Finally,” he says, his voice a perfect match to mine. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

My mouth is dry, my thoughts a jumbled mess. “What… what the hell is this?”

He leans forward, resting his elbows on the table, studying me. “You’re waking up. But you don’t understand yet, do you?”

My hands clench into fists. “Understand what?”

He tilts his head. “That you don’t belong here anymore.”

The air thickens around me, pressing against my skin like invisible hands. The walls seem to pulse. My doppelgänger smiles—a slow, knowing curve of his lips.

“I need to get out of here,” I whisper to myself, stepping back toward the door.

His smile fades. “You can’t run from this. Not anymore.”

I bolt. I don’t look back. My feet pound against the floor, my breath coming in ragged gasps. The moment I burst outside, the world shifts again.

The sky is no longer the soft blue of twilight. It’s black. Not the black of night—but an emptiness, a void stretching beyond comprehension. The stars are gone. The moon is absent.

I spin in place, desperate to anchor myself to something real. But my house, the street, everything is vanishing, dissolving like smoke in the wind.

My hands shake. My heartbeat is deafening.

Then, from the darkness, a voice—low and commanding.

“You were never meant to remember.”

A force slams into me, and the world shatters.