It is 2:22AM, January 3rd, 2021.
Adam Carter is sleeping poorly. In a semi-conscious state, he turns one direction. Shifts his limbs. Tosses another direction. Adjusts the angle of his back. Turns again. Sighs.
Seeking some comfort, he rolls towards his wife. A distant image flashes in his mind of the chicken pot pie she served for last night's dinner, a faint smile comes to his lips and he draws a deep breath through his nose, half-dreaming of its scent. His eyebrow reflexively arches as he catches the aroma of food, but dimly recognizes that it isn't dinner.
It's breakfast.
The realization perishes just as quickly, and his arm reaches to drape across the warmth and softness of his other half. It finds both softness and warmth but something is wrong and, quickly gathering his wits, he understands that this is not his wife.
He opens his eyes to find her in the dark but feels an immediate jolt of panic when he sees neither her, nor darkness. Lying there beside him in the bed is an arrangement of string lights, dotting and illuminating a mass of cotton, pulled and stretched to resemble some sort of cloud. Now fully gripped by confusion and fear, he quickly sits up and takes the thing in hand. At the bottom of the strange statue, there are words etched into its styrofoam base:
Barnard 33 (Horsehead Nebula)
In the eternity of a single second, Carter's mind races, scrambles to understand what is happening, where his wife could be, and what he is looking at. But before he's had enough time to read the inscription a second time, there is a flash of light from behind him. He cries out as he clumsily flips himself around, and now terror takes hold of his head and his heart. Standing before him - aimed at him - is a telescope. No one stands behind it, but instead, attached and staring at his horrified face through the eyepiece is an old and worn disposable Kodak camera. His mind spinning, his breath caught in his chest, tears of nameless dread and bewilderment now fill his eyes. But as they begin to blur his vision, he catches a glimpse of words, seemingly painted in the wall behind the telescope, each letter a different shade of yellow or gold:
BAD OPTICS
Unable to make sense of the bizarre state his world has been thrust into, unable to think at all, he involuntarily begins to scream but before any sound can escape his throat, there is another flash. Blinded now, for an immeasurably short instant he wonders dumbly if he is now dead. But as the color of his darkened bedroom rushes back in, chasing away the white void, he no longer sees the writing on the wall. The telescope and the ancient camera are gone. Feeling madness now beginning to seep into every recess of his mind, he whirls around without thinking, to check for the mass of lights. They are not there, but before any sense of relief can be found, it strikes him: neither is his wife. Suddenly, behind him, another sound. Sweat rushes to his pores, but before he can make a second attempt to scream, another sound:
"Adam?"
He turns once more, gasping, to see his wife standing in their bedroom doorway, holding a cup in one hand and a white plastic bag in the other. She looks at him strangely, concerned by his wild eyes and aghast expression.
"I had the strangest craving for Waffle House, I brought you some. Are you okay?"
The tears flood his eyes in earnest now, overwhelmed with emotions he cannot fathom. But before he's had a moment to collect a single thought, one more unexpected light appears in the corner of his eye. The fear rushes back in a wave, even after he has realized it is merely his phone. Forgetting his wife is there, he lunges for it and finds the screen unlocked, his Twitter app open to a tweet he had sent the previous night and a box in the center of the screen with text asking "Do you want to delete this Tweet?"
Two hours later, Carter's wife is asleep in bed. He sits alone at the dining room table, holding his head in trembling hands.
Tears pour from his bloodshot eyes, raining down into a box of cold hashbrowns.
