The routine was the same as usual. I walked the 3 miles distance from my house to the familiar place I would always go to. The sunlight basking on my skin, and I absorbed it like chlorophyll. Silent, but appreciative. This time, however, my contemplative serenity was interrupted again by a now familiar grey-scale filter that took over my vision. Staring through it was as if I was looking into a CRT screen and I was observing a dismal place I didn't want to be in. Then... it stopped. This pattern repeated enough where I actually recognized it as a pattern. The fact that my brain was clocking it as real instead of a fabricated scenario at this point worried me. Then, it happened as I started approaching the coffee shop door. I stared as the familiar gold doorknob started to morph into a monochrome shade... and I just stood there. The stoicism overtook my decision making, so I decided to open it and go inside anyway.

When I stepped inside, the floors and the ceilings didn't look right. The design was similar, but it felt like very minor details were changed all around me. The colors, just slightly faded. The alignment of the furniture, all slightly ajar. Even the familiar aroma of the coffee smelled slightly sour. It was like I stepped into a parallel dimension, but an even more negative one. So, I looked up and around me. I examined the situation. I realized that somehow, I wasn't there. But I was? That was the confusing part. It was like my body was there in the real shop, but my spirit was occupying a layer above the shop itself. For some reason I was observing through the eyes of my spirit, while still in my flesh.

When I realized that this wasn't the place of comfort I thought it was, in the mental state I was in, I just... laughed? I couldn't stop laughing? My body collapsed onto my knees and I laughed for a good 30 seconds until I couldn't continue. I stood up and looked around, perplexed. Then, I walked up and made an order anyway. The person didn't hear me. I walked in front of him and attempted to wave in annoyance, but he stared through me. Not at me. Through me. Since I was already in a very crazed mind-state, I couldn't handle the rejection and attempted to grab his shit to immediately snap his attention to me but... my hand went through his body like a ghost.

That's when I realized, somehow, I must have been lured here. But how? I had to find out. First, I placed my palm onto the floor and scanned the resonance of the energy emanating within the chamber to see if are any outsider interference contributing to whatever spell that has me bound here. There was no outside interference. Strange, but not unexpected as entities I have encountered before have some sort of ability to obfuscate their signature. This time, though, it was too thorough, too clean. That confused me.

So I attempted to trace the spell's lexiconic resonance, this tends to be definitive since every person has a unique lexeme fingerprint when they write that you can figure out with enough analysis. The result though, at the time, didn't make any sense to me. It was myself? How was that possible? I was aware that one's own lexeme fingerprint cannot be obfuscated by the inheritor of its mark, but I did not have any recollection or memory of doing something like this. So, I started thinking back. Was it anything I said? Any words I wrote down? Am I a dynamo that is generating reality distortion? Am I the only one affected? How do I know?

Once I realized I could be affecting the general reality around me unknowingly, I had to do something. I had to figure out a way to escape. If the disturbance was emanating from myself, it couldn't be caused by an outside force. There was no escape instead of realization. I didn't want to admit that, because this familiar flicker has been happening for so long but I never could figure out what it was from. I thought somebody was always just smarter than me. I was smarter than me. Once I realized that... the color came back. And I was sitting at my desk. Staring at my computer screen. Drinking a cup of coffee at 5AM. The mug was now cold, the coffee bitter. How long was I staring here? What happened?