⏳Free Chapter | The Day That Broke Time
Enter the eerie world of my Where Time Can't Exist series with this free flashback chapter from book 2, The Day That Broke Time.
I’m sharing this flashback chapter from The Day That Broke Time because it captures the atmosphere, emotion, and haunting history at the heart of the story, without giving away the full mystery.
If you feel a chill after reading, you can dive into the full book right here:
The Day That Broke Time All books in the series are also available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Indigo, Fable, Apple books, select libraries and more. For your convenience!
Flashback Chapter: She Opened The Door
The moment Beck leaves Burrington, the town does not react the way it was meant to.
There is no release, no collective exhale, no sense of completion, only a subtle shift in pressure that moves through the streets like a wrong answer settling into place. Something loosens; not gently, not kindly and the air itself seems to hesitate, as though it is waiting for instructions that never come. For the first time in a very long while, time does not hold still, but it does not resume cleanly either, stuttering forward in uneven increments that leave the town slightly out of alignment with itself.
Shadows begin to lag behind the bodies that cast them, stretching just a fraction longer than they should before snapping back into place, and then doing it again, each delay a quiet reminder that the rules Burrington once obeyed are no longer intact. The ground remembers weight it no longer carries. The buildings remember voices that are no longer contained within their walls.
The dead feel it first.
They experience it as sensation, arriving without warning and without permission, flooding into forms that have long since forgotten what it meant to feel anything at all. Cold returns, sharp and immediate, followed by pressure, the ache of gravity reclaiming them in pieces. Some register hunger, not for food but for more-more movement, more presence, more of whatever this new state promises them. Others recoil, panic blooming fast and uncontrolled as they realize that whatever boundary once held them in place has shifted, and they are no longer certain where they end.
Hope spreads faster than fear.
It moves through the town in whispers that don’t belong to mouths, ideas that surface fully formed and feel like memories rather than suggestions. Outside is closer now. The edges of Burrington soften, roads subtly lengthening where they once ended too soon, buildings repeating themselves in ways that feel intentional until they don’t. A house appears where another should be, identical down to the smallest detail, and then disappears again when no one is looking directly at it.
Time resumes, but unevenly, and with it comes the dangerous illusion of forward motion.
Some spirits feel the pull immediately, a quiet encouragement that presses at the edges of their awareness, urging them not toward freedom exactly, but toward movement, toward the idea that staying still is no longer required. It does not speak. It does not announce itself. It simply exists as a suggestion that feels inexplicably personal, tailored to each restless thought, each lingering regret.
Memory begins to shift.
Events that were once fixed lose their certainty, rearranging themselves in subtle ways that feel less like rewriting and more like reinterpretation. The dead remember differently now, not because the past has changed, but because the present has stopped insisting on a single version of it. Faces blur and sharpen in unfamiliar combinations. Names drift, then settle, then drift again. The massacre remains, immovable in its emotional weight, but its details soften and warp, opening just enough space for something else to slip through.
The town feels it too, this creeping instability, the sense that it is no longer fully sealed, no longer capable of containing what it was built to hold. Burrington was never meant to be an ending. It was meant to be a barrier, a place where time could be bent just enough to keep something from spilling outward.
Now, with Beck gone, the barrier has thinned.
The air hums with a low, restless energy, and somewhere deep within the town’s bones, something stirs; not awake, not asleep, but attentive in a way that suggests patience has finally been rewarded. The curse does not announce itself as free, because freedom implies intent, implies choice.
This is something else entirely.
This is hunger.
And Burrington, no longer closed, has begun to open.
At first, no one understands what has changed, only that something has.
The streets remain where they were, the buildings standing in their familiar places, but the space between them no longer behaves as it once did. Distances stretch without warning, a walk that should take seconds pulling into minutes, then snapping back again as if embarrassed by its own excess. Corners feel uncertain, less like turns and more like decisions, and the town seems to hesitate each time someone approaches its edges, unsure whether to allow the movement or resist it.
The dead test this new instability cautiously, drifting a little farther from their usual haunts, lingering in places they were once unable to reach, and when nothing stops them, when no unseen pressure forces them back into place, the realization spreads quickly. The town is no longer enforcing its boundaries. Whatever rules once governed their movement have loosened, leaving behind something dangerously close to possibility.
Sensation continues to return in fragments.
A woman who died in winter feels the cold again and weeps without understanding why. A man who starved remembers the ache before he remembers his name. Others feel warmth where none should exist, phantom sunlight brushing against forms that no longer cast proper shadows, and the confusion that follows is sharp enough to fracture what little stability remains. Some cling to the familiarity of pain, grounding themselves in it, while others recoil, terrified by the return of a body they had already learned to exist without.
The whispers grow louder, though they still do not have voices.
They travel through thought instead, slipping between memories, embedding themselves in moments of hesitation, repeating the same simple idea in countless variations. You don’t have to stay. There is more than this. The suggestion feels comforting rather than threatening, persuasive rather than forceful, and its restraint makes it difficult to resist. It never lies outright. It only emphasizes what is missing.
Hope sharpens into momentum.
The dead begin to move with more confidence now, drifting toward roads that were once symbolic rather than functional, pathways that led nowhere and now seem to stretch just a little farther with each attempt. Some spirits vanish briefly, pulled thin by the effort, only to reappear moments later closer to the town’s edge, unsettled but encouraged. Others are less careful, pushing too hard, too fast, and dissolving into fragments of memory that take longer to reassemble.
Time watches this unfold without intervening.
It continues its uneven march, moments overlapping or repeating in ways that feel accidental but aren’t entirely random. A bell tolls twice without being rung. A door closes before it opens. Shadows detach briefly from their sources, drifting like thoughts unmoored from their origin, before snapping back with a violence that leaves the air trembling.
Memory grows increasingly unreliable.
Stories once shared between the dead begin to change, details shifting as they pass from one to another, emotions intensifying even as facts blur. The idea of outside evolves with each retelling, less a place and more a promise, and the massacre itself begins to feel like something that happened on the way to something else, rather than the defining moment it once was. That reframing is subtle, almost imperceptible, but it carries weight.
The town resists, in its own way.
It tightens certain paths, collapses others, attempting to preserve the shape it was given, but the effort is clumsy now, reactive rather than authoritative. Burrington was designed to contain, not to adapt, and the strain shows in the way buildings repeat where they shouldn’t, in the way doors lead to rooms that feel slightly wrong, as though they belong to a different version of the house.
Something presses gently against the edges of all this, never revealing itself, never demanding attention, only encouraging continuation. It does not hurry them. It does not force them. It simply waits, confident that movement, once permitted, will not easily be undone.
The dead are no longer contained by the town.
And the town is beginning to understand that it was never meant to hold forever.
As movement becomes possible, stillness becomes dangerous.
The dead who remain where they were begin to feel it first, a subtle pressure building in places that once felt neutral, the sense that staying put now requires effort rather than obedience. Familiar corners grow restless. Rooms that once held them gently begin to feel tight, impatient, as though the town itself is urging them onward, no longer interested in maintaining the careful balance it once enforced.
Some spirits resist, clinging to the locations that defined them, afraid that motion will scatter what little coherence they have left. They anchor themselves to doorframes, to stairwells, to the outlines of furniture that remembers their weight, and for a time this works. But the town does not reward loyalty anymore. Walls hum faintly with strain. Floors forget their own dimensions. A house that once held three rooms now holds four, then two, then something in between.
Roads continue to lengthen, not smoothly, but in increments that feel stitched together from mismatched memories. A stretch of pavement repeats itself twice before reaching the edge of town. A bridge leads back to its own beginning. Some spirits wander for what feels like hours, only to realize they have been circling the same block, the scenery rearranging itself just enough to disguise the repetition. Others reach places that should not exist at all, open land where buildings once stood, empty lots humming with absence.
The dead begin to remember differently still.
They recall moments that never happened to them, fragments borrowed from one another without permission, griefs that feel authentic despite lacking origin. A child remembers dying alone and then remembers being held. A man remembers running and then remembers standing still. These contradictions coexist without conflict, layered on top of one another like transparencies that refuse to settle into a single image.
With memory destabilized, identity follows.
Names lose their permanence, slipping away mid-thought or returning altered, softened, sharpened, wrong in subtle ways that feel difficult to correct. Faces blur at the edges, expressions lingering longer than the features that formed them, and recognition becomes unreliable, based more on emotion than on certainty. The dead stop asking who they were and begin asking where they are supposed to go.
The whispers adapt.
They no longer speak of outside as a destination, but as a condition, something that can be entered gradually, through persistence rather than permission. They suggest that motion itself is the key, that the act of trying is enough to thin whatever barrier remains. The idea spreads easily now, taking root in the restless, in those already fraying at the edges, in those who feel the hunger most sharply.
Time grows less patient.
Moments collapse into one another without warning, sequences losing their order, effects arriving before causes. A scream echoes before the fear that produces it. Footsteps sound after the path has already been abandoned. The massacre resurfaces in pieces, not as a single event but as a series of overlapping impressions, each one intruding briefly before dissolving again, its emotional weight intact even as its details scatter.
The town strains under this repetition, under the constant revisiting of what it was built to hold in place.
Burrington was meant to be static, a fixed point where time could be folded without tearing, where the dead could exist without leaking outward. But now the fold has weakened, and the tension it once absorbed bleeds into the structure itself. Buildings groan softly. Windows reflect scenes that do not align with the streets outside them. Mirrors hesitate before returning an image, as though unsure which version to offer.
Still, whatever presses at the edges does not intervene directly.
It remains patient, encouraging continuation without urgency, allowing the town to do most of the work itself. Every step taken, every boundary tested, every memory rewritten brings Burrington closer to a state it was never designed to reach.
The dead feel it instinctively now. The town is no longer an end.
It is a passage. The moment the town becomes a passage, it stops recognizing itself.
Burrington begins to lose its sense of center, the quiet gravity that once kept everything aligned around a single, unchanging truth. Streets that once curved inward now seem to pull outward instead, subtly reorienting themselves toward exits that were never meant to exist. The town no longer knows where it ends, and that uncertainty seeps into every structure, every boundary that once mattered.
The dead follow the change instinctively.
They drift with more urgency now, less cautious, drawn by a feeling that has sharpened from suggestion into need. Some reach the edges of Burrington and feel resistance; not a wall, not a barrier, but a thinning, like fabric worn nearly transparent by repeated strain. Pressing against it leaves them stretched, distorted, their forms flickering between coherence and dissolution, but the pain does not deter them. It confirms what the whispers promised: the town can be pushed.
Not all who try return intact.
Those who force themselves too far unravel, fragments of memory scattering into the air like ash, their presence lingering even after the shape that held them dissolves. The fragments don’t vanish. They cling to the town, embedding themselves into walls, into roads, into the spaces between moments, adding weight to a place already struggling to contain itself. The town grows dense with unresolved impressions, layers of half-presence stacking atop one another.
Time fractures further under the strain.
Entire sequences repeat without warning, not loops exactly, but overlaps, moments intruding on one another with no regard for order. A street exists in morning light and evening shadow simultaneously. A building stands intact and collapses at once, its state shifting depending on who observes it and when. The massacre resurfaces again and again, not as memory, but as pressure, its emotional residue saturating the town until it becomes difficult to tell where it ends and everything else begins.
Hope begins to sour.
What once felt like possibility sharpens into desperation, and movement becomes compulsive rather than exploratory. The dead push outward not because they believe they will succeed, but because remaining feels intolerable, because stillness now carries the threat of erasure. Panic spreads unevenly, colliding with hope and producing something volatile, something that accelerates the collapse rather than slowing it.
The town attempts one last act of containment.
Paths close abruptly. Buildings seal themselves without warning. Familiar routes dissolve into dead ends or fold back on themselves in disorienting spirals. For brief moments, it almost works, the dead forced to pause, to reassess, to cling to what remains. But the effort is unsustainable. Burrington was never designed to fight its own unmaking, and the strain shows in the way the air trembles, in the way the ground seems uncertain of its own solidity.
Memory rewrites itself faster now.
Stories once anchored to specific places detach, roaming freely, merging with others, altering themselves through repetition. The dead no longer agree on what Burrington was, only on what it failed to be. The idea of containment fades, replaced by a growing awareness that the town served a purpose it can no longer fulfill.
Whatever presses at the edges grows closer, not by advancing, but by allowing.
Allowing the dead to try again.
Allowing the town to stretch beyond its limits.
Allowing time to fray where it was once folded neatly out of sight.
Burrington does not collapse all at once.
It opens. And in doing so, it abandons the last illusion that it was ever meant to remain closed.
Once the town opens, it cannot remember how to close.
There is no single moment that marks the failure, no dramatic rupture or audible break, only a gradual surrender as Burrington stops resisting the shape it is being pressed into. The boundaries that once held firm lose their definition, no longer sharp enough to cut or block, thinning instead into suggestions that can be ignored through persistence alone. The town becomes porous, its edges breathing in and out with a rhythm that does not belong to it.
The dead move freely now, no longer testing the limits but inhabiting them, slipping into the stretched spaces where containment once existed. Some dissolve partially as they travel, their forms flickering between coherence and absence, but even this no longer feels like failure. It feels transitional. Like shedding something unnecessary in order to move forward.
Time ceases its uneven pretense and gives in to fracture.
Moments stack without hierarchy, the past pressing uninvited into the present, the future bleeding backward in faint impressions that leave the air vibrating with anticipation. A street remembers footsteps that have not yet been taken. A door waits to be opened by someone who has not arrived. The massacre no longer belongs to a single moment, it exists everywhere, saturating the town with a constant, underlying pressure that pushes outward rather than inward. Memory no longer anchors anything.
It moves independently now, drifting from one spirit to another, embedding itself into structures, into roads, into the negative space between buildings. The town forgets which memories were meant to stay and which were meant to be buried, and in that forgetting, it loses the ability to distinguish between containment and release. Everything becomes shareable. Everything becomes mobile.
The whispers fade, not because they are finished, but because they are no longer necessary.
Movement sustains itself. The idea has taken root deeply enough that encouragement is no longer required. The dead understand now, without being told, that the town is not an endpoint, that it has become a threshold, and thresholds exist to be crossed.
Burrington’s design unravels quietly.
The purpose it was built to serve dissolves as the forces it once absorbed begin to pass through instead, unfiltered and increasingly unrestrained. The town does not collapse into ruin; it persists, eerily intact, its failure hidden beneath familiar shapes and repeating structures. From a distance, it would still look like a town. From within, it no longer functions as one. What was once held has begun to travel.
Not all at once.
Not cleanly.
But inevitably.
The containment has failed, not through destruction, but through permission-the simple, irreversible allowance of motion where stillness once ruled. Burrington no longer decides who stays and who cannot leave. It no longer defines the limits of what it holds.
The town is open.
And what was never meant to be released is no longer willing to wait.
🖤 Want more from the world of Burrington?
Character studies, lore, and early reveals on the blog: https://mindsndesign.blogspot.com/
Exclusive deleted scenes, spoilers, and bonuses on Patreon: https://patreon.com/Makitia
Behind-the-scenes glimpses and writing updates on Instagram: Instagram
This isn’t just a story… it’s a whole world unraveling. Welcome to it.
Comments
Post a Comment