David blinked.

  The stairs were gone. The narrow, concrete staircase he had just descended—the one that had promised him a route, a way out—was no longer there. In its place stood an empty wall, the rough brickwork oddly smooth under his fingers, like a forgotten surface that hadn't been touched in years. The air here was different too—stale, like the last remnants of a cigarette in an ashtray.

  He turned back, but the corridor he'd just walked through... was gone. His mind wavered, a strange dizzying ripple washing over him. There was no longer any hallway, just an open expanse that stretched into... well, nothing he recognized. The walls themselves seemed to warp as he looked at them, bending and pulsing, as if the station was alive and breathing in sync with his confusion.

  Everything was wrong.

  The platform stretched in front of him, dimly lit by lights that looked ancient. The overhead fluorescent tubes buzzed erratically, the hum too loud, too distorted. The station was nothing like the one he knew. The metal railings were rusted and chipped. The signs, faded and yellowed with age, seemed from another time entirely.

  And the people. They didn’t belong here.

  Their clothing—stiff woolen suits, neatly pressed skirts, clunky shoes—looked out of place in the grim modernity of the 1990s. Their faces were blank, almost empty. There was no rushing, no real movement. Just... waiting. The whole station seemed to hang in a sort of stagnant pause, like the world itself had been trapped in amber.

  As David walked further, he realized that the air around him felt like it was alive with thoughts, not his own. The murmurs of the crowd, faint but audible, seemed to reflect something off-kilter, a collective undercurrent that didn’t match the time or place. He could hear their voices, but their words—they didn’t make sense.

  "Did you hear the news? Ronald Reagan won the election!" one woman whispered.

  "I swear, I can still feel the shock from last week," the other woman replied.

  A man nodded in agreement, his face expressionless, but his eyes strangely vacant. “The world is changing. The year of ’80 will be the one that shifts it all.”

  The chill in David’s spine crawled upward, his fingers tightening into fists. 1980? He hadn’t heard the announcement right, had he?

  He pressed his ear to a nearby speaker, its static crackling into the air like the buzz of an old radio.

  "Attention, all passengers," the voice said, somehow mechanical and personal all at once, as if it had been frozen in time. "This is a reminder that today is November 23rd, 1980. We are pleased to announce the continued expansion of the metro system. All passengers should proceed to their designated platforms and board promptly. Your journey will be smoother if you follow all instructions."

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  David froze.

  1980?

  His heart kicked against his ribs. The announcement continued, oblivious to his confusion. He didn’t know what to think. His mind was racing. How could it be 1980? He’d been running late to work in 1996. This was not just another glitch or a misplaced station.

  This was something else entirely.

  And yet, somehow, the thought of being late for his office, of the responsibilities he was supposed to attend to—none of that seemed important anymore. He didn’t care about the damn train. He didn’t even care about time.

  He needed answers.

  David looked around, his eyes darting from one strange, still face to another, trying to make sense of it all. Every movement felt off, disconnected. There was no sense of urgency, no rushing commuters. Just the eerie, frozen calm of a world that hadn’t moved in decades.

  The exits. He needed to find the exits.

  His feet moved on their own as he walked through the bizarre station, weaving past these strange figures, his mind scrambling for some explanation—some rational thought to tether him back to something real.

  He reached the main hallway, his pace quickening. The dim light overhead flickered again. Time felt warped here, stretched out like rubber. Could it really be 1980? Was this all some twisted trick of his mind? Some hallucination?

  As he approached the far end of the station, his hand brushed against a peeling sign. "EXIT," it said, but the letters looked like they had been scrawled on hastily, smeared in places like someone had tried to wipe away history itself.

  David stepped through the exit.

  The moment he crossed the threshold, the air shifted. It was warmer—sweeter, even. A quiet hum of cicadas in the background, the rustle of leaves that had no right to be there. He expected city traffic, wet sidewalks, the gray concrete sprawl of 1996. But what unfolded before him was a town stuck in amber, glowing with a kind of sunlit falseness.

  Red-brick buildings. Painted wooden signs. Barbershops with striped poles spinning in slow, hypnotic loops. The smell of fresh bread from a bakery that couldn’t possibly still exist.

  David stood still, his breath shallow, as if the wrong exhale might shatter the illusion. But it wasn’t an illusion. Not exactly.

  He knew this place.

  His mind couldn’t name it, but his body remembered the angles of the streets, the way the sun hit the cracked pavement at a certain hour. That fence on the corner—that was old Mr. Harren’s yard. The one who yelled at kids for touching his rosebushes. And that diner? That was where David’s father used to smoke in the afternoons, legs crossed, always on his third coffee.

  Déjà vu hit him like a gut punch.

  It wasn’t just the town. It was his town. Or—something pretending to be.

  He walked slowly, barely noticing how the people around him moved. They didn’t glance at him. Just went about their lives. A woman hung laundry while humming a tune he hadn’t heard since he was nine. A boy rode past on a red bicycle, his laughter echoing down the empty street like a ghost’s echo.

  David kept walking, heart thudding with a strange mix of fear and longing. This couldn’t be real. But it felt more real than anything he'd felt in years.

  Then, it hit him—something about the newspapers in the rack outside the corner store. The date, smeared but still legible.

  July 2nd, 1980.

  Not eighty. Eighty one.

  Time was not just broken here—it was stitched together like a bad patchwork quilt, full of holes and reused fabric. He should’ve panicked. Should’ve screamed. But instead, all he could feel was the ache of something long forgotten.

  He remembered riding that bike. The red one. It used to be his. He was sure of it.

  The boy had his face. Just smaller. Rounder. Still innocent.

  David stopped.

  His eyes followed the boy turning the corner, disappearing behind the same trees where he used to build forts with the neighbor kids. The sudden idea took hold of him—not like a thought, but like a pull.

  He had to see him. His younger self.

  He had to know if this place was a trick or something more. Something deeper.

  His feet moved forward again, not with urgency, but with the quiet, surreal certainty of a dream unfolding in real time. The past wasn’t behind him anymore. It was

  just around the corner.

  And if the child was there—then maybe the rest of it was too.