Before the Bell Rings

Ethan woke up with a start.

For a moment, a wave of dizziness crashed over him. His pulse pounded in his ears. The room spun. His vision swimming before finally clearing. It took a moment to register that he wasn’t in his bed, nor in his room.

He was sitting at a desk in a classroom. His fingers were curled around a pencil, hovered over an open notebook scribbled with words in his own handwriting that he didn’t remember writing.

He didn’t remember how he got there.

The fluorescent lights flickered overhead, humming faintly. All around him, the sound of shuffling papers, the occasional coughs, and the steady scratch of pencils gliding across papers filled the air. A glance around the room showed his classmates scribbling notes, chewing gums, some discreetly texting with their phone hidden under their desks. A student in the front row dropped a book before bending down to pick it up.

What class was this?

Ethan blinked as he tried to orient himself. It was his school, that much was obvious. He recognized the walls, the rows of desks, the boy a few rows away dressed in the same black hoodie he always donned. But something felt off. Like a piece of puzzle jammed in the place it didn’t belong.

“Ethan?” A voice jolted him out of his thoughts.

His head snapped up, finding his history teacher, Mr. Wilson, staring at him expectantly. The weights of some of the other students’ stares settled on him.

He swallowed, his mouth felt dry. “Uh—sorry. What was the question?”

A few people chuckled under their breath. Mr. Wilson gave him a disapproving look and a sigh before waving him off and turning his attention to the other students.

“Anyone else?” Mr. Wilson called. “C’mon, don’t be shy! I promise, answering a question in class won’t end up on your permanent record. That’s what tattoos are for.”

The class gave a few polite chuckles, but Ethan barely heard them. He exhaled, relief washing over him—but then his eyes flicked to the clock.

11:15 AM.

Unease coiled in the pit of his stomach. Nothing about it felt right. The last thing he remembered was going to bed. Lying under his cover, lights off, his phone in hand, struggling to keep his eyes open until sleep finally took over him. And now—this.

Ethan shifted in his seat, glancing around the classroom. No one else seemed to notice the strangeness he was feeling, the eeriness simmering underneath his skin, almost like a whisper he couldn’t quite hear.

Then the school bell rang, its sharp and high-pitch sound cutting through the air.

His vision blurred around the edges, and the room flickered until his vision went black.

***

Ethan woke up again.

He was in another classroom—a different one. The walls were the wrong color, an off-white instead of pale blue. Blank walls replaced the history posters, and a teacher—his English teacher, Mrs. Davis—droned on at the front of the classroom about something he couldn’t process. Something about Shakespeare... but that wasn’t right. They weren’t supposed to go over the book until Wednesday.

What day was it?

On his desk, his notebook was once again open. It was a different class and a different subject, yet his handwriting filled the pages with notes he didn’t remember taking.

He forced himself to breathe. There must be a logical explanation for this. Maybe he was tired, or maybe he spaced out. That was all.

Someone nudged his arm. He glanced to his right to find Ryan, his best friend since third grade, staring at him. Ryan leaned in, whispering, “Dude, are you okay? You spaced out there for a while.”

Ethan blinked. He wanted to say something, anything, but the words were stuck in his throat. He forced a nod and a small smile instead.

Ryan gave him an odd look, but he didn’t push.

Ethan scanned the classroom. The students here—he recognized them. Sophie, scribbling diligently in her notebook two seats in front of him. Josephine, sitting in the front row, dropping a book to the floor and bending to pick it up. Jake, drumming his pencil against the desk. Noah, nodding off in the back. It was definitely his English class.

But how did he get there?

The last thing he remembered was—the bell.

He clutched his pen tighter, his skin clammy from sweat. Did he fall asleep? That seemed to be the only possible explanation, but that made little sense. He wouldn’t have moved classrooms in his sleep. Yet there was no memory of him leaving his transporting from his last class, or sitting down, or opening his notebook.

His mind raced. A gap. A whole two-hour gap. No memory. No sense. It was then that the clock caught his eyes.

1:25 PM.

Panic tightened around his throat. It wasn’t right. The last time he checked the time, it was 11:15, which meant that there was a two-hour gap in his memory.

He shut his eyes, forcing himself to think, to focus. That was fine. He could play along. He would get through the class, act normal, and—

The school bell rang.

***

Ethan opened his eyes.

He was no longer in the classroom. The world was in motion around him. His sneakers scraped against the linoleum floors. Rows and rows of lockers lined the walls on either side. Students moved around him—talking, laughing, shoving their books into their lockers.

Someone bumped into his shoulder when he stopped walking. A boy, in a pair of jeans and a blue shirt, frowned at him as he walked past. “Dude, watch it.”

His friend, Matthew, stopped walking a few steps ahead of him, turning around with a frown on his face. “Ethan, you okay?”

Ethan nodded absently, but as Matthew chattered about something he didn’t quite catch, his eyes darted around the hallway frantically, trying to grasp how he ended up there.

He tried to remember, to piece together the last thing he did, anything to fill in the gaps in between his memories, but it was like his brain was skipping pages in a book, omitting a whole section like a story with missing pages.

Something was wrong. Something was seriously—

The bell rang.

***

Ethan woke up. Again.

His head jerked up, and his eyes were instantly assaulted by the harsh fluorescent lights above. He covered his eyes, blinking to clear his vision before taking in his surroundings. He was in the cafeteria now.

Plastic trays clattered; chairs scuffed against the floor. A cacophony of people talking, laughter, and occasional shout from across the room filled the air, lingering along with the scent of greasy pizza and overcooked vegetables.

His friends, Ryan and Noah, were laughing.

“Man,” Noah grinned at him. “That was hilarious.”

Ethan frowned. “What was?”

Ryan gave him a strange look. “The joke you were just telling us.”

What joke? Ethan wanted to ask, but he forced a smile instead. “Oh, yeah.”

Ryan, Noah and Matthew continued to prattle on in the background, but Ethan could only focus on what had been happening. He had been losing his memories, that was for sure. But what could possibly explain that? What could be happening? Was there something wrong with his brain that could be causing this memory loss?

Matthew’s voice shattered his train of thoughts. “Ethan?”

Ethan blinked. “Huh?”

Matthew rolled his eyes. “I was just asking how you think you did on the math quiz.”

“Oh.” Ethan almost sagged with relief. He remembered this quiz. “I think I did fine.”

Ryan groaned. “I envy you. I did so bad. If my math grade drops any lower, it’s gonna be eligible for deep-sea exploration.”

This time, Ethan laughed along with his friends, and for a moment, it felt like everything was going to be alright. Maybe the memory loss wasn’t real, perhaps it had all been a strange dream. Perhaps he had eaten something bad that had caused him to hallucinate, but now he was recovering.

But then the bell rang.

***

The world jolted into focus midair.

A rush of movement, a ball hurtling toward his face the moment he opened his eyes. A sharp gasp. A voice, urgent and frantic—

“Watch out!” Someone yelled, their voice echoing from across the room before something struck his head, hard.

Pain bloomed across his forehead, spreading a dull ache that accompanied the ringing filling his ears. His head jerked back with the momentum, the force sending him stumbling back until he hit the ground.

Footsteps pounded against the ground before someone crouched down beside him. “Oh, shit—are you okay?”

A pair of hands gripped his shoulders, steadying him. It took a moment for his vision to adjust, and he found himself staring into the face of a stranger—a boy around his age, winded and alert, studying him with concern.

Ethan nodded, disoriented.

The boy shook his head, exasperation on his face. “You should watch it, dude.”

Ethan swallowed; his thoughts sluggish as his mind tried to make sense of everything. His heartbeat thudded in his ears, not just from the hit, but also from the knot forming in his core.

For a moment, he’d believed that everything had been a bad dream, a sickness he was recovering from, and that things had gone back to normal. But to find out it wasn’t—

The bell rang.

***

Ethan opened his eyes.

His temple throbbed with a dull ache. But before he could find out more, a loud thump sounded from a few rows over. Ethan flinched at the sudden noise, his heartbeat stuttering. He turned toward the source to find Josephine three rows in front of him bending over to retrieve her book from the floor.

An eerie sense of déjà vu crept over him.

He had seen this before—heard this before. She had dropped that exact book before, twice, in different classes and different times that felt like a dream now.

The fluorescent lights overhead hummed, and the teacher’s voice droned on and filled the classroom, but Ethan barely heard any of it. His hands tightened around the edge of the desk, taking in shallow breaths. Slowly, he turned toward the window.

The sky outside was a washed-out shade of gray, turning the window glass into a mirror. His reflection stared back at him, and what he saw made his gut twisted. The faint outline of a bruise had begun to form along his temple, right where the ball had hit him.

He sucked in a breath. His fingers grazed the sore spot, and his reflection on the window mimicked the movement, staring back with the same confusion he was feeling, the same growing sense of dread.

The sound of knuckles drumming against wood drew his attention. The teacher was staring at the class expectantly, an unanswered problem written on the whiteboard.

“Would anyone like to give it a try?” he asked, eyes scanning the room. “C’mon, don’t be shy! I promise, answering a question in class won’t end up on your permanent record. That’s what tattoos are for.”

What the…?

Now it hardly felt like a coincidence. He knew he’d heard it before, and everything in him was screaming that something wasn’t right, but no one else seemed to notice.

What was going on?

The bell rang.

***

Ethan jerked, stomach flipping as if he just fell from a great height.

He was sitting in another classroom. Physics, judging from the posters and charts decorating the walls and the formulas half-written on the board. There was no transition, no warning this time. He was here one moment and there the next. Two pieces of papers were laid out on the table in front of him; one filled with questions, and the other one blank. His fingers were gripping a pencil, poised over the answer sheet.

“You have thirty minutes,” the teacher announced at the front of the room. “I know this quiz is very sudden, but that’s why it’s called a pop quiz. Don’t worry, it won’t end up on your permanent record. That’s what tattoos are for.”

Students all around the classroom groaned.

The teacher chuckled. He stared at his watch, his mouth moving as he counted silently. “You may begin now.”

His breathing started to quicken. He didn’t remember moving to this class, didn’t remember picking up the pencil, didn’t remember anything.

His breath came short and fast.

This wasn’t real. This wasn’t real. This wasn’t—

The school bell rang. Again.

His own handwriting filled the previously blank pages, but he didn’t remember answering any of the questions posed in the test.

Ethan’s mouth dropped open.

A familiar voice pulled him back into the present. “How did you do?”

Ethan turned toward the voice. Ryan was sitting behind him, stretching his hands over his head, yawning.

“Uh, fine.”

Ryan groaned. “I envy you. I did so bad. If my grade drops any lower, it’s—”

The bell rang.

***

“—gonna be eligible for deep-sea exploration.”

What?

Ethan’s breath hitched. No, no, no.

His surroundings had changed. The desks, the whiteboard, and the teacher were gone, and instead of walls, lockers sprawled along both sides of the corridor. Laughter sounded around him, and Ethan turned his head around sharply to find Noah and Matthew—who hadn’t been there before—laughing at a groaning Ryan like nothing was wrong, like Ryan had just delivered a punchline to a joke he had started here—except he hadn’t.

Ethan remembered it clear as day, Ryan saying the first part of the sentence in the physics classroom right after a pop quiz. But the transition—it had been instant, seamless, almost like an unedited cut in a movie. Like time had skipped forward only for him.

The air felt too thick and pressing against his skin. The world around him tilted and warped—the hallways stretching on and on like an endless tunnel, doorways twisted and contorted into unnatural shapes.

He squeezed his eyes shut. Breathe. Just breathe.

A hand gripped his shoulder. “Dude, are you okay? You spaced out there for a while.”

Ethan turned, but Ryan was gone.

He was in the cafeteria now. Trays clanged against each other; voices overlapped in a muddled chorus that drowned the room in a blur of noise. Something was wrong.

He stumbled back, accidentally knocking into someone, then suddenly—

A door slammed shut. The sound twisted into the piercing shriek of sneakers scraping against the gym floor.

He took a step forward, slowly, hesitantly, and then—

He was on a stairwell, taking another step up the stairs as his hand grazed the railing. A shove on his back sent him bumping into someone, who turned around and scowled at him. “Dude, watch it.”

Ethan opened his mouth to apologize, but when he turned, he found himself in the hallway again, lockers stretching and compressing like warped mirrors in a funhouse. The fluorescent lights flickered overhead, warping the shadows along the hallway into strange, distorted shapes.

Ethan’s vision swam as the walls melted into each other, colors smearing together into a swirling kaleidoscope of blues, yellows, and deep reds, while faces moving in every direction in the hallway smudged together like a wet painting. The sounds of footsteps and lockers slamming became thunderous, the laughters a shrill, piercing sound, and the distant chatter melted into a single, deafening roar. The floor underneath his feet tilted, pulling him forward and under, wobbling his knees from under him.

His chest tightened, his breath coming in short, uneven gasps as his heart pounded, hammering against his ribs—too fast, too loud. He pressed a hand to his chest like it would hold him together, but the spiral didn’t stop.

The edge of his vision darkened, creating a vignette, melting inward, pressing in, suffocating and consuming, turning everything beyond it into a hazy blur.

The bell rang.

Blackness overtook him.

***

Darkness. Silence.

Then—

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

Ethan startled awake, his heart hammering. His sheets are a tangled mess around his legs, the early morning light filtered through the blinds, casting the room in a soft glow, and his alarm was shrieking from the nightstand. His breath stuttered as he dragged a hand through his hair, chest heaving rapidly.

It was just a dream.

A shaky exhale escaped him. He was in his bed; his real bed. His posters were plastered on the wall, backpack hanging behind his door, phone clutched in his hand the way it was when he went to bed last night. Everything seemed normal.

It was just a dream. He repeated it in his head like it was a mantra, blinking rapidly to clear his vision. But then—

He flinched as his head throbbed, wincing when his brush against his temple and finding it tender. He cast aside his sheet and took a few steps toward the mirror near his closet, leaning in as he peered at his reflection.

His face looked pale, his eyes bloodshot, but that wasn’t what made his insides plummeted. There was a faint, purplish bruise on his temple, right where he got hit in gym class—in his dream.

But—how? That shouldn’t be possible. It was just a dream... wasn’t it?

A note on his desk caught his attention, laid on top of his notebook and sprawled textbooks. It wasn’t there last night when he went to bed. Frowning, he stepped closer and went to pick it up.

The handwriting on the note was his own.

“You are watching yourself live.”

The words glared up at him, hollow and absolute.

His breath caught. His fingers curled around the paper, its weight pressing down on him like a stone.

Then—

The bell rang, its piercing cry cutting through the silence like a knife.

His vision blurred. His knees faltered beneath him. The world crumbled into a dizzying blur.

And then—

Everything went black.