My phone is ringing, which matches the ringing in my head. I crack open an eye and see an empty bottle of schnapps on my nightstand, and my bottle of pills is open. Was I drinking last night? When I turn over, my whole body is stiff and sore. The ringing hasn't stopped.

Rolling over, I fumble for my phone on the nightstand and squint at the call display. The police? What day is it? I rub my eyes and try to make sense of my life. It feels like I lost time. The bottle of schnapps coupled with my pills would account for that, maybe, but the ringing in my ears is the same as after an overly loud concert, not a night of binge drinking alone.

"Hello?" I mumble into the phone once I answer.

"Emmerson Pollock?"

"Yes," I say.

The officer on the other end of the line lets out a sigh. "It's Sherriff Shoreditch. Were you working at the Millick gas station at the edge of town tonight?"

I blink and stare into the darkness from my bed. When I look down, I realize I'm wearing the same clothes as earlier today. Did I skip work to drink? It's been years since I've fucked up this badly.

"Um," I say, unable to form a coherent thought. "I'm not sure? I'm feeling a bit disoriented."

There's a long pause on the other end of the phoneline. "What's the last thing you remember?"

I rub my forehead and try to gather my thoughts. "No, I—I went to work." Half formed thoughts are on the edges of my consciousness, but I can't quite grasp them. "Is everything... Is everything alright?"

"There's been a gas explosion at the station. Quite a mess. You were gone by then?"

"Um, I guess?" I swallow the cotton balls in my throat. A gas explosion? I lift the collar of my shirt to my nose, and I suck in a sharp breath. "Did I do it?"

"No!" Sherriff Shoreditch chuckles. "Faulty pipe. No one's fault, but we were concerned you might have been caught in the crossfire. Glad we were able to touch base."

"Oh," I say, and I run my hand along the top of my head, drawing my elastic out of my hair. I don't normally sleep with my hair up. "Will I need a new job?"

"I suspect so, yes," he says. "That station won't be functioning for quite a while."

Jobs weren't hard to come by in Cape Beatrice, but I'd liked working at the remote gas station at the edge of town. The owner had worried I'd be nervous with the isolation and late hours, but it had given me the perfect chance to stay on top of my schoolwork, and I'd never felt unsafe. In fact, there'd always been this strange sense that someone was watching over me. Weird, but true.

Now the gas station was destroyed.

"The things is," I hedge, "I don't remember much about tonight."

"How about I pop over there in the morning and we can have a chat?" Sherriff Shoreditch says. "See if we can clear up your recollections?"

Should be a short conversation since I can't remember anything. That had been happening to me a worrying amount lately. Gaps in my memory. Missing time.

"Sure," I say.

"Get some sleep," he says, "I'm sure you'll feel like yourself again in the morning."

When I went to the doctor on campus about my memory loss, she told me stress could create these holes, but that doesn't feel accurate. With school and bills, I'm under a lot of pressure, sure, but I'm managing. As someone who aged out in the foster care system, I don't have a lot of support in place, but I'm doing okay. She prescribed some pills and told me to make sure I was getting enough rest. A campus doctor who might be worse than my family doctor was.

Cape Beatrice isn't a popular college to attend, but it has my nursing program, and I got a partial scholarship—more than anyone else offered me. Impossible to turn down. But ever since I arrived over a year ago now, I haven't felt like myself.

I can't explain the change in me to my school therapist. Every test comes back negative, every conversation with my therapist circles. Something is off, but I can't figure out what switch has been thrown. My academics are good, and I can hold down a job, but at the edges of my consciousness is a strange hyper awareness of my environment and the people around me. As though part of me is waiting for something around the corner, just out of reach.

It's maddening—the gaps in time, the itching in my blood, the certainty that if I could just look a little harder whatever I'm missing would be right there. The pills help, and I grab the bottle off the nightstand and take another one. I'm not sure when I had my last one, but it's not like I haven't doubled up before.

That's my final thought before I drift back to sleep, and when I wake to a knock on my dorm room, I rub my eyes before stumbling to answer.

"Sherriff Shoreditch," I say.

"Can I enter?" he asks.

I glance behind me at my messy room, and based on my history with the police, I know I could deny him entry. He can't cross the threshold without a warrant or my permission. Or at least that's what it was like where I was raised. Maybe it's different here. 

"Yes," I say, and I move aside to let him in. Instead of going all the way into the room, he holds my dorm door, forcing me to step back in the tiny room to give him additional space. He's a big guy. Like a lot of the people with Shoreditch as a last name, he's almost freakishly tall and broad.

A few months ago, I considered myself lucky to get a single room. Now, I sort of wish my best friend, Hailey was here. My relationship with law enforcement has been rocky, to say the least. Once I got into high school, I vowed to turn things around, and I had, mostly.

But whatever happened last night, coupled with these time slips, concerns me. When I was a kid, oddities dogged my heels, but once I hit puberty, the strange occurrences came grinding to a halt. Life felt easier, but it's been infinitely harder since I got to this town, but I can't afford to leave.

The sheriff takes up a good amount of space in the room before he shuts the door, almost as though he's shutting it around something, which is strange. Then he digs a notebook out of his back pocket and a pen.

"Take me through what you remember about last night."

I perch on the edge of my bed, and I tell him about arriving to work, the handful of customers, and then the black hole of my memory. What I don't tell him is that when I try to grasp the memory, it feels liquid-y, as if I could wipe away the wetness, and there'd be some clarity beyond that. Makes me sound unstable, and I'm familiar with what happens after that claim as well. Nothing good.

"Uh huh," he says to me, "carry on." And when he glances up, his lips are still moving but no sound is audible.

"What are you—" I hesitate because I hate these moments where reality feels altered. "What did you say?"

"Nothing," he says, and he gazes at me under his lashes while he reads through his notes. "Talking to myself. Making sure I've got everything."

Something shifts behind him in the shadows of my room, and I blink to clear it. Sunshine peaks through my curtains, but I suddenly realize how dark my room is. Crossing to the window, I throw open the curtains, and the sheriff shields his face.

When I peer behind him, there's nothing, but my heart is thumping, still so sure I saw something there.

"Seems like I've got what I came here for," he says, and he opens the door and stands back. He stares at his notes for a beat and then looks at me. "Any questions?"

"So it was..." I fumble for anything that makes sense. "An accident?"

"A safety issue," he says. "Nothing you could have prevented. An error at the senior management level."

"No one was hurt?" Normally, I'm the only employee, but since I can't even remember my shift from about the halfway point until I woke up in my bed, it's hard to be sure.

He hesitates. "Why would anyone be hurt?"

"Oh, I just—" I shake my head. "Silly question, I guess."

But the wariness to the way he asks, as though he's fishing for something he hasn't directly asked, is curious. Was someone hurt?

From across the room, the sheriff stares at me, and the strangest sensation almost takes hold, shimmering on the edges of my consciousness.

"If anyone asks, you left work early. Didn't see anything. Heard it was a gas leak. An accident. Keep your distance from the site. Get a new job."

His voice is melodic, and my body is drawn to the tone, longs to follow directions. I can feel my eyes widen, and I nod.

"Humans," he mutters before drawing my door shut behind him.

Humans?

Well, that was odd. These Shoreditches are everywhere.