Something was wrong. The day seemed to be happening out of sequence.
This morning when he looked in the mirror preparing to shave he discovered that his face was already shaved. He stared at his reflection in disbelief, unable to grasp how he could have already shaved and forget he had done so.
Picking up his toothbrush he ran his thumb over the bristles and discovered they were wet. He tongued his teeth and they felt freshly brushed.
He could not recollect brushing his teeth and yet they had indeed been brushed.
Walking downstairs he mulled to himself the possibility that age was beginning to have it's way with his mind, that something in his brain was degrading at a fast clip.
"Can't be possible," He muttered under his breath. "I'm only 38. This is insane."
Opening the kitchen cupboard he discovered his coffee mug was missing. With slight trepidation he turned toward the area of the counter where the coffee pot was. A foot or so away from the coffee pot was his cup, half-full of coffee.
He looked about the small kitchen. Everything else seemed to be exactly as it should be. Then he noticed the dish rack. The small plate he used to place his usual breakfast sandwich on before placing it in the microwave was standing up between two of the rubber-coated dish separators in the rack, as if he had already used the dish and washed it.
Tonguing his teeth it occurred to him that must be why he had brushed his teeth, because he had already eaten.
Why the hell could he not recall any of that?
Grabbing his coat off the back of the chair he made for the front door. "Did I get the coat out of the closet and put it on the back of the chair? Maybe I just left it there when I got home last night."
He walked out of his house and down the short walkway towards the driveway. His car was there as it should be. He breathed a sigh of relief, but then noticed last night's snowfall had been cleaned off and the ice had been scrapped off the windshield. He walked around the car slowly, as if expecting to find...something, something that might explain how the snow and ice had been cleaned off his car.
Sitting in the car he went to start it up, but before he could put the key in the ignition he realized the car was running - and he had his seatbelt on.
With both hands gripping the wheel he sat back and looked into the rearview mirror. He saw the upper half of his face as he did every morning just before he pulled out of his driveway, but before he could put the car in reverse a car horn was honked behind him. Looking through the windshield he saw that he was stopped at an intersection, and the car behind him was alerting him to the fact that the light was green.
He shot through the intersection and pulled over into the first driveway he saw - no way should he be behind the wheel of a car in this condition - what condition?
Putting the car into park he looked again into the rearview mirror expecting to see something...different. Something that might indicate he was not himself. But what he saw was what he saw every morning.
He looked around inside his car. Nothing was different in the car. In the passenger seat sat his laptop bag, and in the back seat was the rolled-up blueprints for the HVAC job he had been working on.
Someone suddenly tapped on his driver's side window. Recovering quickly from the jarring noise he turned and looked out the window at one of his coworkers, Lewis, the kid who had joined the company two months ago. Then he turned his head forward and looked out the windshield. He was parked in his assigned parking spot in the company parking lot.
He gripped the steering wheel tightly and began to tremble.
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