The lukewarm coffee tasted the same as it had yesterday. And the day before. And the twenty-seven days preceding that. Dr. Silas Roderick took a slow, deliberate sip, the bitter liquid doing little to rouse him from the persistent fog that clung to his mornings. Outside his window, the insistent honking of a taxi echoed the one from yesterday, its impatient rhythm a jarring counterpoint to the monotonous tick-tock of his grandfather clock – a clock that had always kept perfect time, until now.

He glanced at the digital display on his microwave: 7:14 AM. The same time the delivery truck rumbled past his building, its brakes squealing in protest at the intersection below. A shiver, not of cold but of a profound, unsettling familiarity, traced its way down his spine.

He’d started keeping a journal, a desperate attempt to anchor himself to reality. Page after page was filled with the same observations, the same mundane details that had once been the unremarkable backdrop of his life but now screamed of a terrifying repetition. Andrew Thompkins’s stale joke about the office coffee machine. The headline in the morning paper about the mayor’s groundbreaking ceremony. Even the way a particular crack snaked across the ceiling of his lab seemed frozen in time.

Today, Tuesday the third, was supposed to be different. Today, he had an appointment with Dr. Eve Rodan. He’d finally succumbed to the gnawing fear that his sanity was unraveling. How else could he explain the relentless parade of identical moments?

He recounted the events of the past weeks to Dr. Rodan, his voice a strained whisper, laced with a desperate plea for understanding. She listened with a practiced calm, her expression a carefully neutral mask. “Dr. Roderick,” she said, her tone gentle but firm, “it sounds like you’re under a great deal of stress. Perhaps we can explore some relaxation techniques…”

But then, later in the session, as Silas described the peculiar placement of a framed print in her office – a print that had been slightly askew for the past several “days” – Dr. Rodan frowned. “That’s odd,” she murmured, adjusting it almost unconsciously. “I could have sworn Mrs. Gable mentioned it being crooked just yesterday.”

A flicker of something – disbelief? Recognition? – crossed her face when Silas’s next words echoed a comment she’d made about the temperamental coffee machine in the waiting room, a comment she was certain she’d only made during their last session.

For the first time in what felt like an eternity, a fragile seed of hope began to sprout within Silas’s chest. Maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t alone in this bewildering loop. Maybe Dr. Eve Rodan was starting to see the cracks in time too.