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Maddie is a gal with a big personality and lots of love in her heart. She lived a pretty normal life up until now, though not without her fare share of struggles, but she always came out the other end stronger than ever.

After recovering from an eating disorder, she really thought she could conquer anything, that there wasn’t anything more that life could throw at her that she wouldn’t be able to get through.

And then her life was turned on its head when her brother Desmin started “hallucinating,” saying that the people around them aren’t real, and claiming that they were in a timeloop… he was the glue of the group, so when he started to “lose it,” everything started to fall apart.

The less everyone believed him, the angrier and more anxious his usually calm and sensible demeanour got. Much like his sister, Desmin is stubborn. He knew he was right, and would go to any lengths to prove it to them. Maddie thought he was going insane… but it did make her think. She’s usually not a particularly observant person, she’s a one-track-minded whirlwind, but this really caused her to start paying closer attention to her surroundings.

Ever since she left school and her parents went on a business trip, leaving her the house to herself, Maddie had only really had contact with the friend group. She didn’t have any other friends (the ones from school were all assholes that she ditched ages ago), but Desmin’s spiral made her realise something. She’s seen people around town, sure, but how long has it been since she… actually interacted with anyone outside of the friend group?

So she offers to take Hannah on a shopping trip to “clear their minds.” She knows that Desmin is probably just talking nonsense but…

She spends the entire trip checking store calendars (she can only find ones for 2007 — which is normal, right? It’s the year that they’re in and it’s not too close to next year so… it probably doesn’t mean anything.), seeing if there’s any of these “weird-looking ribbons” Desmin was talking about around, and talking to store employees.

Everything they say feels… off. Like they’re following a script. She supposed that it makes sense because they’re at work, but something about it still irked her. So she decided to go up to random strangers shopping. Surely they’d act normal, right?

It was all the same. They all speak exactly the same. No matter what she said, they all had the same few programmed reactions: politeness for if she was nice or a weirded out expression and annoyance for if she was being weird. Every single person acted like a carbon copy of each other.

Something was wrong. Horribly wrong.

She runs to find Hannah again, who had walked off to do her own shopping. She finds her looking up at a— exposed pipe? It’s outside of a random jewellery store, wrapped in a… pink ribbon. It looks exactly like what Desmin described. The edges (outlines) of it are thicker, almost like it’s drawn in a different artstyle. It just looks off to them in a way they can’t really explain.

Maddie and Hannah are both weirded out at this point, and ask the (all too similar) shop employee if they have anything they can stand on to reach up there. They give them a small ladder, which Hannah stands on to reach up to the ribbon and pull it down and—

The ribbon unravels for far longer than it should considering its length, and behind it, scorching hot black ooze bursts out of the pipe. It drips down onto Hannah’s face before she can get off the ladder, burning in a line down her face. She screams and Maddie pulls her off of it, taking her hand and running back to Maddie’s house. Not the hospital — how can they trust the nurses to be… human??

Nobody in the surrounding area is even looking as they run. It’s like they don’t even exist if they’re not acknowledged.

When was the last time that Maddie has interacted normally with another person outside of the friend group normally? Since— the beginning of the year. 2007.

Maddie can remember a time before it, of course. She graduated from highschool and it’s only midway through the year at this point, but there’s definitely something weird about the fact that all of this started smack bang when the year turned. Maybe Desmin had a point after all.

Oh no.

Maddie patches up Hannah as best as she can with her limited knowledge on burns. What even was that stuff? What was with the ribbons? Are they really in a timeloop? Is anyone even real? What is going on??

Hannah was injured but… okay. It’s not a life threatening burn, at least. The ooze burnt from the top of her forehead, down the side of her nose and to the bottom of her chin before dripping onto the carpet and burning a hole in it. Afterwards, the matter disappeared into nothingness. Hannah goes home frazzled, too freaked out to speak and just wanting some alone time to process this.

After she leaves, Maddie starts to panic. She feels the urge to throw up — no, no, it’s fine. Maybe she’s just hungry. She hasn’t eaten since breakfast and she’s still not very good at noticing her bodies hunger cues. She grabs a green apple off of the fruit basket on her kitchen bench and takes a bite—

Black ooze drips from inside the apple and burns her tongue. She immediately runs to the sink and spits it out, washing her mouth out until it’s irritated. She takes a look at the apple again: it doesn’t look right. Even ignoring the mysterious black liquid seeping seemingly endlessly from it, the apple’s texture is all wrong. It looks like it’s made out of jelly but is solid in her hand.

Looking closer at things, everything starts to look weird. The sunset from the window doesn’t reach into the room despite the blinds being open. It stops in place at the windowsill. Textures of things look off, like a misplaced texture, meant for a different item and put there instead.

Oh god.

Was this— is she— is any of this even real? She swears it was, before the start of the year. Nothing used to be like this. Desmin never used to be like that. They were just normal teenagers, what—