Short Stories

The Missing Hour

The clock's bell tolled the hour—its somber echo reverberating through the dim-lit room like the last breath of a dying soul. Evelyn Hart stirred from the fragile realm of sleep, her heart galloping in her chest as though it sought to flee from some unseen predator lurking just beyond her vision. The pulse of the city, which normally hummed its unceasing song of life beyond the window, felt alien, its rhythm stilted, as if it too were aware of some momentary fracture in time. Outside, the night stretched, cold and indifferent.

Her gaze, clouded by a waking fog, landed on the antique clock that sat atop the dresser—a relic of another age, a thing of carved mahogany and brass that seemed too deliberate, too fixed in a world that moved with such unstoppable force. Its hands pointed steadfastly to 1:13 a.m. Evelyn blinked, her thoughts scattering like leaves before a gale. Just moments ago, the hour had been midnight—hadn't it? Surely, it had been.

Her mind, once sharp, now felt as though it were encased in thick fog, each thought muffled and distant. She rubbed her temples in an attempt to ward off the confusion that clung to her like a cloak. There was something wrong, something at the edge of her memory, but it was impossible to reach.

And then, her senses, once dulled by slumber, sharpened in a sudden, alarming clarity. The faint, acrid scent of iron clung to her fingertips. She froze. The world around her seemed to hold its breath as she brought her hands closer to her face. Blood. The word whispered through her thoughts, and in its wake came a rising tide of terror.

Evelyn bolted upright, the motion jarring, as though her body were no longer hers. The panic began to claw at her throat, but she fought it down with a fierceness that surprised even herself. Her coat—a heavy woolen thing, an old piece, long worn and frayed—hung across the back of a chair, the hem stained with an unmistakable streak of crimson. Her chest tightened. She had not left the house—had she?

A deep, gnawing sense of wrongness clung to her like a second skin. No. It wasn't possible. She tried to steady her breathing, her thoughts unraveling as she grabbed the coat and stepped into the night.

The chill of the air sliced through her thin dress, a reminder that something darker than the weather had descended upon her. Her boots clicked against the frostbitten pavement, each step a tremor in the silence. The city, which had once been her constant companion, now seemed like an adversary, its every shadow a secret too grim to uncover. The streetlights flickered—dim, uncertain—and cast long, spindly shadows that whispered of things best left unsaid.

Her thoughts swam in a murky pool of confusion, and yet there was something, some thread of a memory, pulling at the edges of her mind. A darkened alley, a flash of movement, the sound of hurried footsteps—so close, so near, but when she reached for them, they scattered like dust before the wind. The more she strained, the more the scene blurred, its outlines dissolving into a haze.

It was when she turned the corner that she saw it. The alley before her was thick with shadows, suffocating and oppressive. The acrid stench of garbage mingled with something fouler, something metallic—a coppery tang that settled deep in her throat, causing bile to rise. She staggered back, her vision faltering. And then, like a nightmare made flesh, it appeared before her.

A man's body. His form was twisted in a grotesque mask of terror, his face forever locked in the scream that had frozen his soul. Blood pooled beneath him, dark and viscous, a stark contrast to the moonlight that bathed the alley in an almost ethereal glow. The pool spread like a halo around him, an awful crown for a king of nothing. Evelyn's breath caught in her throat, and the world spun with dizzying speed.

But even as the sirens of distant authorities began their mournful wail, a peculiar, twisted dread settled in her chest, an unsettling sense of inevitability that made her blood run cold.