The Train That Stops At 7:13

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1:00streaked with the leeched colors of dawn behind ragged clouds. The center of rain lingered in the air, mingled with diesel and scorched coffee grounds. I shuffled onto the dim platform, following the comfortable choreography of habit, phone and pocket, larnored around my neck, coffee cooling in one gloved hand. The platform held the same cast of face as an upturned collar here, and not its gaff they're shivering and stamping feet for warmth, steam rushing from our mouths as we waited. My footsteps rang hollow on the all boards, those over what planks are creeped only in the early hours before the real crowd arrived. Despite a night's half-sleep, edge with uneasy dreams, I took my place under the hissing lamplett. The lopsided bench by the timetable was already occupied by the same elderly woman knitting something unidentifiable and faded pink. Next to her, a cluster of school children jostled and shattered, laughed a muffled by headphones and overstuffed rucksacks. ominous eagles caught overhead, their coal shop was glass, echoing over the counter piz on wires. Announcements warbled overhead, barely decipherable of the wind. The next train arriving at platform 1 is the 7-9 service to central, following as the 7-15 aggression town.

2:01No mention of a 7-13. I let my eyes drift across the crowd. The man with a laptop back, still leafing through spreadsheets at this ungodly iron. A couple of matching windbreakers hands in twine like a habit. The ticket collector shulled us hunched against the chill, doing the rounds with practice indifference. Everything in its place, the comfort of ordinary repetition. Cradling my liqueur and take away cup, I made my way over to the battered old stamping machine that had stood half forgotten, next to the ticket office window since before I was born. I slid my weekly punch card in, feeling the love of stiff resistance, and then drew it out to check the familiar roving smudges. I did this every day, a nervous tick of commuting life. The clock above the main office showed 7-11, its rusted hands ticking unevenly. I constant the train boards, half wondering if one day I'd surprise myself by leaving early, catch in a 7, line with the other ambitious souls. But I lingered, as ever, waiting for the 7-15 a train I have missed, I think three times in 12 years. It was a running joke, that I cut a fine. As a rumble grew along the tracks, the crutch shuffled forward, drawn into the familiar ballet of positioning for seats.

3:03When the 7-15 arrived, a shutter ran through the platform. I followed the tide, climbing aboard, and claiming my usual place by the window, slipping my shoulder back onto the seat. The carriage filled with a steady firm of conversations, the clicks of phones, the warm hiss from the air vents. I sipped my coffee, letting the heat and fell through my chest, and watched as platform scene slayed away into mist. Only then did I notice something odd. As I tucked my punch card back into my wallet, brow furrowed and habit, I saw a new mark. There, nestled neatly between Tuesday and Thursday's entrance, was a crisp, deep blue stamp, 7-13 platform one. I held it to the window, tilting it to the grey light. No smudge, no error it was as precise as every other official marking the edge is perfectly square. I blinked and stared. There was no 7 to routine trained, and there had never been. Was this a missprint, an old setting on the die, or some tired mistake from a rushed hand? Frowning, I was about to mention it to the woman settling beside me when a man brushed by, stopping halfway down the aisle. He missed her usual learn, to do. He asked, I broke worked in a tone so casual it might have been a joke.

4:03His voice was oddly familiar, fell irregular, perhaps, but in that moment I could not recall his name. The question rattled me, though, out of all proportion. I shook my head mutely, unable to muster words. He merely shrugged and pushed along, lost in the flow of passengers. The train lurched out into the chill, cutting through fog and field. I sat at my seat as we clattered through the crossing, a stack of ordinary mornings suddenly its cue. The 7-13 stump hulsed at the corner of my vision, an impossible detail wedged into the mechanical heart of routine. An unvoiced and easily slid through me, called as the mist from and passed the window, whispering in the machinery of my day. Looking back, I think that was the first time routine truly failed me the first flutter of a meality, so slight I almost missed it. Almost. Asterisk, asterisk, asterisk. Before the oddness of that Wednesday, my life might have seemed by any reasonable observation profoundly and contentedly normal. I lived alone in a compact, drafty second floor flat, a short breastwalk from the station. My mornings had a structure that bordered on the sacred, wicket six, five cattle on, radio humming low, a dry piece of toast balanced in one hand

5:04while dressing in the other. My kitchen table was always cluttered with small relics of these rituals a half finished crossword, yesterday's commuter daily a chip mug waiting for its next rinse. Curtains opened just enough to peer out to the street below, never enough to let in the full judgement of the morning. My work, for better or worse, was unremarkable. Five days a week, I manned a desk tucked away in a record room of the council office on Cross Street. My duties were the cataloging, filing, an occasional retrieval of forms ranging from parking appeals to outdated by laws to birth notices yellowing at the coroners. The jobs to me that I have always been, I suppose, a collector of minor details, someone who finds quite comfort in indexes and for notes, the evidences of lies ticking away according to plan. The station was the anchor point to all this order. It was not picturesque or particularly historic just a low jumble of worthed brick, a battered metal canopy, and two platforms with chipped yellow warning paint. The regulars were almost as much fixtures as the building it took. Though a serial, the ticket collector, a trickulent, wide-bellied, with his thick grey mustache reliably speckled in crumbs.

6:04June, who ran a tiny coffee stand, remembered everyone's drink by sight and pressed a whole pastries into the palms of the worn-out or downtrodden. There was also Steph, a part-time university student who filled in as a platform attendant, and his entire demeanor suggested a perennial hangover, offset by an teamed optimism. Each morning, I followed the same foot bath, dodging bicycle racks and puddles, nodding greetings to faces, and never quite named. Skull children congregated on the benches, slumping their backpacks and dreaming away at the screens. Sometimes dogs appeared, parot by unseeing hands, to sniff at lost mittens, dropped on the steps. The whistle of a departing train became the tankieber for us all, the rhythm of the play's circumscrewed our lives. The seventh-poutine train and my slightly neurotic dance to catch it became something of a motif in my week. If I was early, I'd linger for one more sip of burnt coffee, feel the boards creak as I ambled a lawn, watching the regulars filter past. If I was late, I'd ash, heart pounding, past the raised eyebrows cereal, who modded threats about closing the gates. I'd sometimes arrive as I had the same spectacled man, both as I was catching breathless laughter

7:04as the train hissed open its doors, a petty rivalry for the last window-seed. My home life was boss, but felt safe and overgrown by a plant in the bathroom, a coat of groaning under a tangle of scarves, Tuesday night dinners over soup and lawn novels, dust swirling in slant-wise afternoon light. My friends teased me about my arc of brain to the tendons such a recall, without quite meaning to, the last five years of plot from side construction work or where and exactly, the digital signage had been replaced over the ticket machines. Now and again, I indulged the urge to scan the official timetables, noting discrepancies or typos regarding holiday services. I had even begun, more as a lock than an obsession, to keep a mental note of the platform clocks, testing the margins of the mechanical drift. Sometimes, it'd stay a minute longer, watching the faces of staff, how many cups had jeans hold. Did cereal ever smile, even if only when stamping a child's day pass. Sometimes, visiting the council archive, I'd inadvertently cross-referenced station happenings with ten bulletins, comparing for notes and missing details with a mild, pleasant satisfaction. In all this, my wall was circumscribed by patterns

8:04so complete, so entrenched, that I existed almost entirely in their security. I took solace in a hundrum repetition was not dullness, but a kind of reassurance or boundary against chaos. If anything troubled as boundaries, I imagined I would spot at the smallest shift of the fuel, the faintest anomaly in the data. In retrospect, perhaps I was primed for the anomaly that eventually came. Because of all the commuters, I was the one for overbending over posted notices, wandering with an old vending machine had come and who put up the new no-loadering sign. I was the sort to notice a station cloth that ticked a minute fast, a familiar attendant missing on a Wednesday morning, a new stamp on a punch card where none should be. Of course, I put fun at myself for this told friends, I was born old, destined to spot meaningless errors in people work or train schedules. They laughed, called me Inspector Closer, and assured me the world would keep spinning without another complaint to transport. I always agreed, but privately, wondered if it was the small discrepancies that kept the greater mysteries of life at bay. It was a life safe inside routine, each day as much like the last as drops of cool rain pattering on the platform roof.

9:05The ordinary world, I believed, was perfectly sealed until the extraordinary punched a hole in the pattern at 7.13. Asterisk Asterisk Asterisk. At Amika Insurance, your time and peace of mind matter. Bundle your auto and home coverage with us and enjoy savings that make life a little easier. As a mutual insurance company, we're built for our customers. We prioritize your needs and are here for you when you need us. Amika, empathy is our best policy. Visit amika.com and get a quote today. Hello, it is Ryan. And we could all use an extra bright spot in our day, couldn't we? Just to make up for things like sitting in traffic, doing the dishes, counting your steps, you know, all the mundane stuff. That is why I'm such a big fan of Chamba Casino. Chamba Casino has all your favorite social casino style games that you can play for free anytime, anywhere with daily bonuses. So sign up now at chambacasino.com.

10:06That's chambacasino.com. No purchase necessary VGW group void for prohibited by law 21 plus terms and conditions apply. In the days that followed the first odd marking, the sensible part of my mind has showed me it was nothing a minor clerical glitch, most likely. Still, the punch card with its improbable 7, 13 pressed me like a pebble in my shoe. The next Wednesday, I made a proud of how to watch carefully documenting everything. I stood as ever on the platform as a sky brightened, coffee steaming and a chill. I paid particular attention to the Tanai announcement. The next train at platform 1 is the 7, 9 service to central, then the 7, 15 to Grisham town. Not a word about 7, 13. I drifted toward the metal stomp machine, slid my new weaker card in, and pressed the lever with deliberate force. The card slept up Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, all perfectly marked. But on Wednesday, again, clear as it could be, 7, 13 platform 1. I ran my finger over the raised letters. The cold paper betrayed nothing of the impossibility. I checked the main time tip opposed it inside the ticket office window.

11:06The staff sheet listed 7, 9, 7, 15, 7, 27, but never 7, 13. Yet, each week, only on Wednesday's the stamp appeared. A home, a rifleed through last month's receipts. My bank statement load the Wednesday 7, 13 in-bond slash plat from 1 purchase. Even my oyster logs a history of journeys, digital and cold showed an entry for the exact impossible time. I switched to old foam photos, thinking perhaps they'd been schedule change I'd missed. It image after image, no mention of 7, 13. No train departing at that iron, always a gap between 7, 9 and 7, 15. I started probing the station staff for clues. Cyril looked at me as if I'd asked for the number of the last moon landing. No 7, 13, he grunted, barely glancing up from his daily express. It never been, not in my day. Steph, on the lace shift, simply offered a lopsided grin. Maybe once, ages ago, or was it the 7, 14, must be mixing it up. Even among the commuters, the memory of any odd train was vagabest. Richard, the young man with the laptop,

12:06wrinkled his breath awfully. I thought the triiled midweek express before lockdown might have been at this sort of time, but I never saw it. Triars, I might, when I thought back to my own activities on recent Wednesdays, the interval between 7, 10 and 7, 15 grew muddy. I remembered arriving at the station, stamping the card, and then what? My next clear recollection was stunned in alongside the rest as the 7, 15 slayed interview. A faint wooleness began to fill the gaps and almost physical sensation of lost time. I reached again for my records. The punch card never failed, every Wednesday at 7, 13. On other days, never. The receipts matched. The Oster logs perfectly machine printed, offered the same evidence impossible, unnegiable. Each time I asked about it, nothing quite lined up. There was no train, no posted schedule, no photo. Yet, the evidence for my own hand and from the indifferent machines kept circling back to the vanished minute. The effect was subtle at first, more in itch than a womaned. I found my mind returning to the audited during idle moments at lunch, in the quiet office, allowing alone in a cooling bath.

13:06Why was the anomaly tied only to Wednesdays? If it were a mechanical fault, surely the error would be random. But always only midweek. The dissonance between physical evidence and the living memory of the station's routine grouchapa. The ordinary, so tightly wound, had started to unravel at the edge. I began to feel strangely watched by something not quite malice, not quite indifference turning its gaze for the briefest instant each Wednesday at 7.13. I told myself, again and again, that it was nothing. But the next week, and the next, I checked down every time the pattern repeated. Unexplained, unbreakable. A rhythm of absence carving out its head in place. Asterisk, asterisk, asterisk. The days stretched with attention I couldn't quite name. If the anomaly was a curiosity before, it now became my waking-fought-to-question bell-lodge just beneath the skin. I said about treating it like a puzzle. Untoosed in night, I laid out my clothes and assembled my tools, notebook, camera, a travel clock from my bedside table. That next morning, I rose before dawn, determined to catch a pattern or its absence in the act. My steps to the station,

14:06usually half in dream, were sharp that morning. I kept one eye on the clock at the kitchen, marked each minute passing aloud, and must had my plan like an incantation. As I arrived at the platform, the air was heavier than usual, still muggy, the lamps flickering in the thickening mist. With deliberate care, I set my phone to record audio, balanced the clock in plain sight beside my seat, and snapped a photograph of both every minute. Once again, when's this stamp machine produced its work, 713 to platform one. It almost seemed to settle deeper into the card than the others, an indelible groove. I spoke aloud to myself into the recorded date time, what I was wearing. The station announcements rolled out their usual litany, 79715. Children shouted as cool-picks thudded, but when I pulled a staff member aside at this time, the trainee, a nervy young woman named Brianna, she only shrugged. I've heard people joke about a ghost train or whatever, she said. Might have been a line years ago, nothing in the current roaders. The older ticket-club behind the glass didn't even look up, simply waving me away with a practiced, apologetic smile. In a staff-break room,

15:06their daily reports built in left-hanging, plain sight caught my eye. Among arrivals, and departures crawled, and blue pen was 713 on time, listed just above the 715. When I asked another clerk if I could see the logs, they brushed me off, just a holding number, love, probably unused. My suspicion grew. I requested public train logs from the local authority. At first, a click in a press-shirt and tight-smile-seemed helpful computer-clicking and a fast fingers. But when I asked to see details of the 713, her tone-turned-blend, is a clerical placeholder, nothing more. She slid the printout costs with entire columns blacked out. When I press, she only repeated, no 713 train operates here, have a nice day. I sky out at the town archives for hints local news, community boards, even faded microfiche. Now and then, the 713 flickered at the edges, commuted a confusion after midweek time table change, the Wednesday train not listed passengers complain. But no concrete detail. The trace was always faint, disguised as error or old rumor. I redoubled my focus.

16:06I arrived every Wednesday before 7-0, positioning myself at various spots on the platform, setting up my recording devices and noting every surrounding detail. A 713 approach, something strange, always happened. The air seemed to compress the sounds quieted. Time felt thick, viscous as if the world itself inhaled, then held its breath. Clocks on the platform, and my phone would tick in and out of step, sometimes jumping forward and tiny, irritating skips. The regular commuter's faces I could recite by route became slightly blurred in the corner of my vision, restless and instinct. In those brief minutes, no unusual train ever appeared by the eye or ear, just to peculiarly hushing over the eye and rays. But when I checked the punch card, whether or not I visited the station at all the 713 stamp stared up, inescapable. I searched social media for others who had noticed. Most threats dissolved into jokes, the 713 is for which is one replied, followed by just the spectral Victorians. But in a half dead forum for trainficionados, a doc, anonymous comment called my attention. Don't try to board it, that's for those who have nowhere else to be. I read that line a dozen

17:06times. I start scrubbing through security footage posted online glitches, compression artifacts, and a precisely 713, a sudden fuzzing of the feet. With shivers crawling up my arm, I caught, in a few crucial seconds, chipped moving along the path from a bloat column of shadowy passengers, marching single file. Their faces were smeared, unidentifiable, and none match the familiar crowd. Fuel bunnies, across-checked recent missing persons built-ins from the town Gazette. Names matched, more than once a commuter last seen at the station, never captured on the official train manifest, vanishing on a Wednesday. As my investigation deepened, my sense of isolation grew. My co-workers rolled their eyes you and your little mysteries. Friends half-listened, they were storied over beers, but no one believed. Even those are trusted seen to rationalize poking fun, or dismissing my evidence upright. Still, each week the punch-card confirmed what I alone seemed bad to track. I knew then, with a certainty deeper than reason, that I was called in something stranger

18:06than a clerical quirk. Wednesday mornings became a vigil. I resolved to confirm whatever, or whoever, ghosted the timetable at 713. Osterisk, Osterisk, Osterisk, Osterisk, Osterisk, Osterisk, Osterisk, Osterisk, Osterisk, Osterisk, Osterisk, Osterisk, Osterisk, Osterisk, Osterisk, Osterisk, Osterisk, Osterisk, Osterisk, Osterisk, Osterisk, Osterisk, Osterisk, Osterisk, Osterisk, Osterisk, Osterisk, Osterisk, Osterisk, Osterisk, Osterisk, Osterisk, to let sleeping logs lie, not everything that Sloss needs rescuing, I can't help you, I'm sorry. When I pressed him for more, he only added, with a look I could not quite interpret, you were not the first, it wouldn't end well. On my dorm at that night, I found an envelope at no return address. My name was scrawled in an tidy script. I opened it and trembling, to reveal a jumble of yellowed, heavily reductive pages of photocopers of ovaryal,

19:08authority memos and debriefs, spudgery handwriting in the margins. In increases with photographs, a trained carriage number partially visible shot on bat of film dated to the late 70s. The incident report inside was mostly blacked out, but some fragments could still be read. Service cone 137, 713 run, 1 day, 12 November. The malfunctioned passenger list in complete 15 and accounted for. The station witness, name, redacted. I note at the bottom re witness statements see attached, family name, Alanson. My stomach turned. Alanson. My own surname. I stared at that line, paralyzed, trying to summon any childhood story of family anecdote about a trained incident. There was none. My parents never not once spoke of any such event. A port over the notes piecing together rumour and silence. Official letters marked case closed contradicted memos demanding follow-ups. Everything about the event was scrub, sanitized. The original passenger list listed depend in notification after half the names, but never explained why. The survivors too seemed to vanish from record within years.

20:11The borders between past and present wavered in my mind. I remembered the blurred faces from the security footage shadows lost at the platform edge. I began to feel uncertain within myself, as if the anomalous minute now vibrated inside my own memory. Was it a systemic flaw, a mass oversight? Had something been buried left or rot or to fester, generation after generation? Was I being drawn in by error or by intent? For the first time, I wondered was this about a train or about the town's own way of safely forgetting? And what, precisely, was I meant to witness if my own name, my own memory, had somehow been claimed by this invisible register? The weight of unreality pressed hard, and I became aware for the first time of just how brittle my world had always been. Asterisk Asterisk Asterisk. If there was to be a solution, I was determined to find it at the intersection of evidence and pattern. The following week, I took my search to new depths, borrowing through digital logs, public archives, and the brittle, neglected paper trail buried in the council's back rooms. My eyes burned from day spent scrolling through spreadsheets, cross referencing departures with missing persons registers from three decades.

21:14I began using a fitness watch, setting it to track a pulse and step count every minute on Wednesday mornings. I wore a chest-mounted camera switched on at seven, zero sharp, and left it running through to seven-twenty. My notes grew neurotic, tracking air temperature, wind speed, the color of the sky at seven-ten. Each Wednesday, I filed my findings away, waiting to spot any drift any deviation from routine. Patterns emerged. I'm after rising number of last scene entries pin-pointed to the station, always at or around seven, the teen on midwick mornings. The names and faces receded into obstruction, but their absence the void left behind bristled a black static. In some arc-heft interviews, the rare survivor of a missing commuter with mumble, they took the wrong train it wasn't on the board. None could describe the moment itself, and those who tried gruescattered and certain. Even more chilling was this, each time a name entered the ring of the mystery that is, when linked in any official way to the seven-thirteen-eight-two would receive from record. Files would become corrupted, names wrong, date-blood into a legibility. My own record grew patchy. The public transport card, the receipts, the stamp logs they all began

22:15to reflect the anomaly as of tracking my involvement. I found newspaper entries about the sudden spike in lost commuter inquiries, always following the same pattern, plus scene station, Wednesday, details missing. And, after several months, those references two disappeared digital archives through Wyatt, paperclips left holding empty sleeves. It became clear that something, or someone, was determined to erase the evidence as quickly as it arose. But technical flaws could not explain the aching, physical pull those minutes exerted, the way memory itself was twisted. My strongest suspicion grew, the seven, the teen interval was neither holy fabrication on nor understood. It felt like a phantom's own a minute carved out by intentional forgetting, by grief, or by whatever self-protective force kept the tan secret sealed. Every attempt to resolve it only made it more entrenched, more arcane. But the evidence told me this, the force maintaining seven-thirteen anomaly bureaucratic, waffle, or supernatural was active. It was not merely the work of files of the accident of machine, it moved at the edge of our perception, opening for some and denying others. Each new clue drew me closer. I wrote it myself.

23:41I would confront the heart of the mystery, whatever it cost to memory to self, or to the safety of routine, asterisk, asterisk, asterisk. Determined now to face the thing head on, I prepared for my final Wednesday vigil with a rigour that bordered in the manic. The night before, I laid out my jacket, wore it every device with a fresh battery. I jotted reminders on my hands, stay awake, don't follow, anchor yourself. In my pocket, I placed my oldest punch card, wore an anneally-faded, a talisman from the beginning of my search. A 545 AM, I was already at the station. The fog clung low to the gravel, broken only by the burn of lamps in the intermittent flash of bicycle lights. I set up three cameras, one strapped my chest, one shooting time lapse on a tripod, one watching from the platform's fire near the disused fence. Each device displayed a

24:45synchronized clock. I scribbled a physical note and pinned it to my sleeve, you are real, you are here, don't bored. As the crowd gathered, they are settled into its usual hum the crackling speakers, the shuffle and cough of the half asleep. At 7.9, the first train exhaled and departed, pulling with it most of the early brodes and schoolchildren. I stood my ground and hailing the oily cold, fighting the urge to check my phone out to blink too long last I miss something crucial. 7.Welfth. The platform emptied and not quite fell. Conversations faded out. My recording devices all ticked forward in unity there was nowhere to look beforeward. A thickness gathered in my hair like walking through water. At 7.13, change arrived. The world grew muted. My ears rang as I submerged and even the distant goals fell silent. The blow of the light stalled from gold to a dusty yellow. Frozen on the platform, I watched as, beyond the veil of mist, shades go less than the track. I translate into view. Not an ordinary commuter model, but a ghostly hybrid did to exterior new and glimmering infractments. Its windows obscure by streaks of dirt, let us half-layed on the side.

25:47Each window flickered, as if illuminated from behind by shuttered landings. Inside, passengers lined up half-scene, faces blurred, eyes downcast, movements and possibly slow as if performed underwater. They filed onto the platform, their shadows stretching across sturdy tiles. Something about their forums waived every few steps, a detailed would slip, a hat furnished, hair color changed, a hand flickered into transparency before returning. I saw men and women, old and young, all with the same distant expression. As a following script, they boarded to train in single file, their bodies moving with a strange, ritualistic deliberation. Then, on the last step, I saw my own face. Not a childhood memory, not imagination. I saw myself among them, not as I appeared now, but subtly younger, gaze hollowed, features trembling between familiarity and strangeness. For a nauseating instant, I thought of photos where you glimpsed movement in the background that you only recognised later, I was there all along. Behind the last step, a conductor materialised in the platform. He was taller than any man I'd ever seen, his uniform at mode at wool and jacket with old insignia, polished brass buttons, leather gloves wider than chalk. He turned,

26:50fixing me with eyes that were impossibly ancient. Without a word, he extended a faded green ticket, the destination and time perfectly clear, final departure, 7, 13 wins. My name was printed at the bottom. I tried to step back, stammering, I'm not part of this, I don't belong. But my feet tangled with themselves have drawn toward the open door. The other commuters familiar faces now lost, batterished from the missing persons, less looked through me, through the conductor, and back at the train. For one breath a second, I felt myself dissolving, identity spilling away over the yellow safety line. My only anchor was the note on my sleeve. You are real, stay. With all my will, I pressed a fingernail into the skin beneath the paper, clutching my punch card and tell the corners dug into my palm. The pressure brought me back, just as the train doors shuddered closed. The conductor's eyes lingered with an unblinking gravity a final offer or warning. The train pulled way without a sound, vanishing as the colour bled back into the world as if time itself excaled. The station resumed its rhythm. The usual handful of commuters waited restless for the 715. The announcements crackled to life, muddled and

27:52unchanged. I checked my devices. The camera feeds had gone static at 713, blank frames and disperse with low rumbles. My watch now reads 720, the bluff from clock showed 715. Those around me showed no sign of what had passed. When I asked if anything unusual had happened, they blinked with polite confusion or ripple of awkwardness before returning to their phones and papers. Back at home, I reviewed the footage. A few seconds jumped cut, followed by a corrupted hum, the time codes basming for a minute. My phone's log listed a 713 punched on the travel app, even though by every clock, the interval should have been impossible to lock. The evidence had shifted once more never absent, never truly proven. Yet the cost was immediate. My reflection no longer seemed quite my own. Something inside me felt frayed as if the division between past and present between witness and participant had thinner versibly. Asterisk Asterisk Asterisk. But weeks after the confrontation unfolded as a strange half-life. I moved through each days if behind glass. Practical memory grocery lists, birthdays, the arrangement of my own possessions

28:52remained intact. But other details grew indistinct. I'd encounter colleagues who looked at me oddly as if hissed hitting over my name, friends grew hissed and in their greetings. Second guess in the store is the thought we shared. My punch card, renewed every Monday, came stamp with 713 platform one for every Wednesday regardless of where I'd spent the morning. The mic would not fade even if I skipped the station entirely. When I tried to reset my travel account, the entry for the 713 remained stubborn and touchable in the digital ledger. Tech support responded blindly to their own logs, when checked, was suddenly missing entire dates. Try refreshing, they'd suggest there must be a sink issue. The anomaly was too slippery to pin down and too persistent to ignore. I walked the town following stores that seemed to slip just out of reach. Another missing person last seen at the station, Wednesday 7th, well they, M. The posters, the police interviews, all featured gaps, witnesses recall nothing unusual. Station staff show no discrepancy in schedule. Reports filed by authorities with vanish replaced a week later by new forms, the details drifting

29:53off into rationalization. Trying to present my findings to police logs, footage, notes I was met with polite disinterest, sometimes genuine confusion. There's no 713 service, officials repeated, eyes glazing over after a minute. If my persistence sported on mania, theirs bordered on oblivion. Files disappear, memory faded. Even the simple act of mentioning the interval at a community meeting produced a shifting silence, people blinked to change the subject, spoke instead about litter or new fencing. I saw it then, a collective refusal deeper than bureaucracy a consensus stitch from the fabric of willful forgetting. In my own world, the access had shifted. Everything ordinary was suddenly cast in a skeptical light. What else had I miss? Was routine ever safety, or merely a barrier built of ignorance, shielding us from persistent holes beneath. But I kept writing, maintained comprehensive notes of every Wednesday in as much detail as my mind would allow. Some interest grew faint then blurred, but I persisted. Perhaps, I thought, if not for myself then for someone yet to step into the gap I'd seen a mark in the ledger, a name in the loss register, hoping not to vanish completely from the rolling arc of memory. Asteroisk Asteroisk Asteroisk.

30:56On an ordinary seaming Wednesday, months after I first noticed the anomaly, I found myself again passing the station. The sky was lower and motionless to part from in to save for a scattering of stray newspapers in the far off rattle of bin cars. Idly, I glanced into the station office. The lupus stacked square in its metal prey late open in the visitor's desk. I ran a finger down the columns, 797, 15, but between them, in a hand different than the others stood the 713 entry. Today, for the very first time, I bore a new note witness accounted for, not to be restamped. A chill prickled along my neck. I looked up through the windows half glare and at the edge of the platform, with a misclon in faint sheets saw small crowd of shadowy figures. They were gathered loosely, just beyond the reach of my focus, but among them, domestically, stood a figure holding something up for inspection. The figure stands, the cut of their coat familiar, horribly sir. I saw my own shape there, blurred at the edges like an old photograph, an ancient punch-cut held in one waver in hand. The group scene to watch me as I passed, I felt, for a moment, although I was observed not only from a cost of platform but from across

31:56some deeper boundary yet in touch. The station-cock, glowing above the turnt style, flicked suddenly from 712 to 715 without passing for 713 at all. I paused there, my hand hovering over the old stamping machine uncertain. The world resumed its rush behind me, commuters talking, coffee steaming, trains moving, when they're carrying on. But nothing, not even the ordinary, felt as certain as it once had. That miniaturious and returned, marked and guarded was still there somewhere. Perhaps it was finished. I perhaps my own name, my own memory was just another layer, one more ghost in the vanishing timetable, waiting for someone else to notice and not forget. At Amika Insurance, we know it's not just about where you're going. But who you go with? That's why we work even harder to protect what matters most.

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