When Zack opened his eyes, he walked out of the cabin as he heard noises in the distance. The sun was bright overhead. There were mountains to the east and many large birds flying off in the distance. He thought, Wait, what? Where did the mountains come from?

The surrounding area he was in had a flat topography. He remembered noticing the terrain when he first flew in. However now he saw a giant valley to the west. In the far distance he saw a small village with many chimneys turning out smoke.

He thought That's weird. Why would so many villagers be burning fires in the summer?

The large birds were congregating around the village. He looked behind him and noticed the cabin was situated at the edge of the forest. Peering into the forest Zack saw it is thick with trees and foliage. The forest was so thick with plant life he could only see about 20 feet in before darkness, vines, foliage, and trees obstructed his sight. He heard the strange noise again and looked back down the valley. His jaw fell slack as he saw the giant birds spitting fire onto the village buildings. He grabbed his binoculars, and audibly yelped as he realized those were not birds.

They were dragons. The chimneys were not producing smoke, the houses were on fire. Turns out that real flying ginormous dragons are extremely terrifying. That coupled with a new mountain, valley, and village on fire made Zacks stomach lurch in as he grabbed a nearby chair to steady himself. Zack had to shut his eyes and count to ten to get his mind to stop racing. Finally, he grabbed his binoculars to get closer view of the destruction, he zeroed in on the biggest dragon. It was chasing villagers out of the town square. Suddenly, it reeled back in midair almost as if in sudden thought. Then it slowly turned around and stared right back at him. It opened its giant maw revealing rows of large razor-sharp teeth and emitted a loud shrill noise.

Zack dropped the binoculars and ran. Zack panicked, that dragon was looking at me, it felt like it was looking into my soul. It was as if he was not a couple of miles away but right in front of me.

As Zack ran back to the cabin, he could hear the loud shrill noise being screamed at him repeatedly. Even though it sounded like it was getting closer he did not look back. He ran up the stairs to the porch tripped and launched himself headfirst into the closed door. Zack hit the floor next to the couch in a giant heap. He looked up disoriented and once again heard the loud shrill noise. The alarm on his phone was going off to wake him up.

Zack stared at his phone for a good minute before finally getting the presence of mind to shut it off. He looked around dazed and confused. It took him a second the sort out what was real. It was the kind of nap you wake up from and you’re not sure where you are and what the time or day it is. The crazy dragon dream was so realistic. Zack shuddered as he thought, that damn dragon was terrifying, looking into my soul felt so violating.

He yelled, "What the actual fuck is going on? Reality is already getting crazy enough as it is. I did not need his dreams freaking me out as well."

Even though he knew it was crazy, Zack went outside to ensure nothing had actually changed. To his relief no mountains, burning village, creepy forest, or fucking dragons peering into his soul. Just thinking about it gave him the chills. Even though Zach was able to get some sleep, between the dream and the reality of the last 48 hours craziness, his brain was still spinning at million miles an hour as he tried to process all that has been going on.

He felt a desperation kick in as anxiety washed over his body. He wondered is this what losing your mind felt like. Zack felt himself start to spiral in anxiety, I really need the damn Sat phone to work. I need to reach out to his family or anyone that could tell me what the hell was going on. When was the next plane going to come? Who was going to pick me up? Was another plane even coming for me at all? He took a moment to collect his mental wellbeing, took a few deep breaths and focused on what he could control.

Hesitantly, Zack picked up the Sat phone off the charger. And powered it up. Immediately it beeped and started looking for a signal. He set the phone down, went over to grab himself an early dinner to get his mind off the dragon. Getting tired of fish, Zack pulled out a can of Dinty Moore Stew. Put it in a pot on the stove and began to heat it up.

Zack was lost in thought about the day's events when he heard the beep of the stat phone. Apparently, it found a signal again. he raced over there to pick it up to make a phone call. He quickly dialed his home number. To reach out to his parents. He got back a message that all lines were busy. Zack reached out to the company that was supposed to fly him in and again, all lines are busy. He thought about calling Shelly, but decided against it as he was done with her. It is sad because she would have been the first person he called had she had not cheated on him.

Zack thought, I gotta focus. I can't be thinking about that right now. And then it occurred to him. I wonder if I can surf the Internet on this thing. It was kind of like a smartphone. Zack looked for a web browser. He found the tab and click the browser.

First. Zach went to CNN. To see what the national news had to say. Oddly CNN didn't report anything. Next, he went to the Star Tribune website. And of course, he hit their stupid paywall. Then he went to the Pioneer Press website. The stories were business as usual, reports on politics, sports, and local happenings. Zach went to several other local websites and bloggers that he knew. Most of them did not have any information regarding what was going on.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

One of his good friends in college had a blog. It was mostly to keep up with what was going on in the world in their group of friends. Rolling the dice, he pulled up that blog to see if his buddy had posted anything at all. There's a post that was only 24 hours old titled, “pop up text screens?” When he read the blog, it didn't make a lot of sense. His friend was going on about having these intermittent gray text screens pop up in front of his face with writing he couldn't describe. His friend always had been a bit of a conspiracy theorist. But for the most part, he seemed like a pretty sane, dude. Zach then googled the term gray text screens. He was shocked to see other conspiracy theory sites all were reporting people seeing these screens come in and out of their line of sight. The all said pretty much the same thing. The language was unreadable, the screens only stayed up a few moments at a time, and they stopped appearing 12 hours ago.

Zack looked up and saw that his Stew was boiling. He put the phone down, grabbed his stew off the stove and came back to the kitchen table. As he ate his food, Zack tried to call his parents and a couple of his friends again, and once again it said the lines were busy or could not connect. This time, Zack decided to send a text message to his mom. He wrote a brief message stating what has been going on, leaving out the crazy details of falling from the tree, timeline resetting, and dragons peering into his soul. But also saying that he was stuck up at the cabin up north in Manitoba. He did tell his mom about the plane and what he thought was the right hand of Donald. He asked his mom to give him a call. Zack left the number of the SAT phone and sent the message. Right after the phone confirmed the message was sent the phone beeped and reported no signal again.

It was coming up on 5:00pm.

Zack really had no idea what he'd do next. He had no idea when the plane would come and get him. He had no idea why this strange stuff was happening around him. So, Zach did what he always does. When he reached impasses in life and not sure what to do, he decided to go fishing. Zach grabbed his fishing gear and went down to the boat and took off across the lake. For the first hour, not only did he not catch a fish, but he also didn't see anything swimming in or on the lake. He didn’t see any evidence of life in or around the lake. Usually, he would see birds or animals on or near the lake. He began to wonder if he was going to have another weird experience like he did when he found his lure. He made the decision not to go back to that Bay. He chuckled to himself as he drove right past, not even willing to look at the bay or giant tree within. He didn't even want to know if that lure was still up in the tree.

Zack found a sunken island near the middle of the lake. The sunken island had bunch of weeds that just broke the water and decided to fish around it. He pulled out his number 5 maps and began to work the lake. Finally, after 10 minutes of steady casting, he finally got a hit and as he was reeling it in, the lure got hit again. This was the moment Zach had been waiting for a long time. His dad had told him stories about catching monster fish on this lake. Almost all of them started with a fish hitting the lure and a few moments later feeling another hit on the lure. When you felt the second hit it usually meant a much larger fish bit the smaller fish. His dad told him a story of the time that he caught a monster muskie when he was reeling in a 2 LB bass, and how he caught the bass and then muskie hit it and he fought the muskie for another 40 minutes before finally landing the fish. It was hanging in his dad’s den. As a kid Zack was simultaneously drawn to and terrified by the giant fish.

Zack was pretty excited to think that maybe he finally had a big fish worthy of bragging about. The fish dove to deeper water as he was worked his drag to make sure he did not lose the fish. The fish went to the right of the boat and seemed to be on a run. His drag screaming as line went out into the lake. As he fought the giant fish he worked it back towards the boat. About 30 yards out, he noticed his line was coming closer to the surface and a giant fish jumped out of the water. Zach stopped reeling. He stopped even tugging and dropped the front of the rod into the lake.

He thought, what the hell was that? as he moved to the back of the boat.

He had never seen a fish like that before. It was long and gold like a walleye. Except that it fins were so big they could have been mistaken for paddles. And you could see its teeth. Wait not teeth, fangs, you could see the fish's fangs. The fish was fucking terrifying. It had to be 30 lbs. But that wasn't nearly as scary as when it jumped out of the water a second time much closer to the boat. As it jumped out of the water, another much larger fish jumped after it. Grabbed that fish in midair in its jaws, fell back to the water and swam under the boat.

Zack wasn't sure if it was his fight or flight instinctual response or good old fashioned common sense, as top why he threw the threw rod and reel into the water. He went to the steering wheel and started the boat. Zack thought the other fish had to be well over 200 lbs and 8 feet long. The only fish he'd ever seen that come anywhere near that in fresh water were sturgeon. Only, sturgeon didn’t have big teeth or eat other fish. The first fish he saw weird, the second fish was terrifying. Suddenly he felt the boat lurch and heard a loud thud as something rammed the bottom of the boat.

Zack thought, oh hell no, I've seen enough horror movies and to know how this ends.

Zack hit the throttle and to get the heck out of here. As he drove away, the boat hit a big bump. He looked behind the boat and saw a red blood swirling in the water. Zack put the throttle down and cruised down the shoreline. He was about a 20-minute boat ride away from the cabin. He opened up the engine and flew across the lake. Luckily for Zach, the wind wasn't too bad, so we could race across the lake at full speed as he worked his way back towards the cabin.

As Zack made his way back, he glanced towards the store line, he saw a deer in the shallow drinking water. He glanced down at the speedometer to make sure he was keeping his speed. When he looked back up the deer was gone. All that remained was giant splashing waves and so much blood.

He wondered, What the fuck is in this lake all of a sudden? What just comes on shore and eats a deer? And how does it do it lightning fast? It reminded me of stories of alligators taking small animals off their shore at golf courses In Florida. Except that deer was full grown. Even though it was a warm summer day, Zach was shaking with nervousness.