[Original Content] Shift

Most of the time, the changes were harmless. A shift in colour as she drove down a long stretch of road, or a lone streetlight blinking out as she approached. When she was younger she had blamed her memory, had simply told everyone she met that her memory was awful. It was based on what should have been a logical assumption, she knew, but as she grew older the changes became more noticeable. 

She began to blame her eyesight, but that too had been proven wrong time and time again. Still she searched for a logical reason behind the strange flickers in her life, for why the house that had always been red was suddenly blue, for the meetings she had arranged for six, that everyone else insisted were for four, for the conversations that had apparently never happened.

She had spent hours online, scouring the web for someone, anyone else experiencing what she was living through. Every time she thought she was getting closer, she hit rituals with candles and mirrors, and self-imposed placebo effects.

There had to be other people like her, she knew that on some level. There were others searching the same desperate claims as her, being put off by the same scathing jokes, but she had no way of figuring them out, no way of finding the ones she wanted.

She was alone.

There was one more option, another possible conclusion, but she did her best not to think about that one too often. It was entirely possible she was losing her mind. Had been losing it for years, in fact. Maybe she'd never had it to begin with.

Most of the time the changes were harmless. Sometimes, though, they were not.

Sometimes the ground moved and she was on the edge of the cliff, instead of the safe distance she had planned. Sometimes she would throw a playful punch that slipped into painful territory. She moved forward and back, side to side, up and down, and sometimes, she suspected, she moved minutes.

Eventually she would lose a day or a week, and then her careful charade of years would come crashing down around her. Her life would play out in a white, padded room.

What would happen, she wondered, if she glitched out of the cell? Would they believe her then? Maybe a few years in a cell would be worth it to prove her point, in the end.

She had spent her whole life shifting: on dark roads in the night, on bright, sunny beaches, on trains in foreign countries.

Maybe the next shift would be her last.

She was going insane.

She was losing her mind.

One more shift would do it, would end it. One more step.

All she had to do was stand on the edge and wait.

And wait.