The 13th Hour

sight.

Ever since he could remember, Ian had been able to tell exactly what would happen one minute before it did. It started as fleeting glimpses, small things like predicting a doorbell ring or knowing what a stranger would say. But as he got older, it became stronger, more precise—an uninvited gift that followed him like a shadow.

He'd tried to ignore it at first, to live as though he didn't have the curse of foresight hanging over him. But he couldn't help himself; it was impossible to tune out. He saw things happen before they did, like the punchline of a joke before the setup was finished, and it kept pulling him in, like a compulsion he couldn't resist. Soon, Ian could anticipate every event around him—his coworkers' conversations, the order of songs on the radio, even the smallest accidents. He once stopped a man from slipping on ice before the man even knew the ground was slick.

He hadn't thought of it as a curse until recently. But that was before it started escalating.

The knowledge began creeping closer, intruding on his mind even when he tried to suppress it. He started seeing things he didn't want to know. Last Thursday, he "saw" that his neighbor's cat would get hit by a car. A minute later, it happened exactly as he'd foreseen, the image burned into his mind before it even took place. His own reflection had begun to seem strange to him, haunted by secrets he hadn't asked for.

One night, alone in his apartment, Ian felt the familiar prickle at the back of his neck. A sense of something imminent, foreboding. His chest tightened as he waited for the vision, knowing there was no stopping it. The room faded, and an image sharpened in his mind: his phone, ringing. The caller ID was blank, an unknown number. Then, after a long pause, he heard a raspy voice.

"Sixty seconds, Ian," it whispered. "Do you know what will happen when the time is up?"

He snapped back to reality just as his phone buzzed to life on the table in front of him, displaying a call from an unknown number. His heart pounded as he reached for it, and he almost didn't pick it up. But the sense of dread was too strong, and he pressed accept, raising the phone to his ear.

"Hello?" His voice sounded smaller than he'd intended, carrying a tremor of fear.

Silence hung on the other end, thick and oppressive. Ian's breath caught in his throat as he waited, and then he heard it—the same rasping voice from his vision.

"Sixty seconds, Ian. The countdown has begun."

A chill slithered down his spine as the line went dead. He dropped the phone, staring at it as if it might come back to life on its own. He had only seconds, and somehow, he knew that whatever was coming would be unlike anything he'd seen before.

The silence in his apartment was overwhelming. He felt an urge to move, to escape, but he was rooted in place, waiting for whatever was meant to happen. And then he heard a soft scratching sound coming from the front door.

Cautiously, Ian approached, his heart pounding with each step. His vision was already drifting forward in time, and he caught a glimpse of the door handle turning, a sliver of darkness in the gap as the door opened...

But in that same flash, he saw a presence beyond the door. Not a person exactly, but a shadowy, shifting form. It leaned close to the opening, almost as if it could sense him standing on the other side. Then he was back in the present moment, staring at the door just as the handle began to turn, exactly as he'd foreseen.

Without thinking, he flung himself backward, stumbling into the living room as the door creaked open.

The door inched open, revealing the dim hallway beyond. But Ian's eyes stayed fixed on the darkness spilling through the doorway, something dense and foreboding that seemed to grow, expanding toward him like a living shadow. His skin prickled with cold dread, and he wanted to look away, but a morbid fascination held him in place.