He got up from the futon, righted the paint bottle, and looked intently at the living room clock on the yellow, east wall of his apartment. He extended a hand towards the fifty-first second dot and pressed. It was a button.

Everything went silent. Except for the rhythmic ticking of the large black clock, all was still. It reminded Ebinson of the time when he had fallen off of his navy blue bike, time seeming to stop right before rushing up as he hit the pavement. Now everything started happening. The futon fell out from under him; the clock twisted. He was falling!

When Mr. Ebinson shook himself alert. Darkness had engulfed him. The futon was beside him. He felt as exhausted as if he had just ran a mile. But no time had passed. The room in which Mr. Ebinson stood felt very large. A musty smell seemed to smother him like a paper with too much paint. In a far corner a dim light flickered on. Walls of rough-hewn stone towered into darkness. Ebinson drew out his key-chain flashlight to see what the sputtering bulb failed to illuminate. With new light shed on the room, he could know what its shadows held.

He recognized some of his surroundings as implements of his former career. The space was filled with charred boxes and machinery. On the side nearest to him, he could see electronics and screens lined up and mounted to the wall. There were things concealed under a white cloth which bore no burns or markings except for an emblem of one blue ring with an ocher clock inside of it. There was no one around, and the room had not the slightest hint of a door or any opening. 

Mr. Ebinson was, as always, casual, never showing any sign of anxiety, but his mind bounced about the day’s events. It reminded him of the abstract painting that hung next to that mysterious clock he’d previously thought harmless. Now he walked resolute and straight for one of the concealed objects beneath the white sheets. He tugged on the cover. It fell noiselessly to the ground. The object he’d revealed was a metal platform with three chrome pinnacles rising from its edges and arching into a canopy. In the center of the platform was a yellow sticker that read, “STAND HERE.” This was cutting edge equipment Ebinson thought as he watched a green light gush from the points of the three chrome pinnacles. A whoosh and a furious burst of now fiery light poured from the tips of the machine. Then black. The last thing Mr. Ebinson saw before vanishing again were words scrawled in red on a paper taped to the side of that strange machine, “1974, Mission Blink failed. The devouring light…” 

He was back in his apartment. His futon had returned as well and he was on it. The black clock read three a.m., still ticking innocently. An entire week and a day had gone by in seconds. That is how it had begun…