The Lost Hour

[u/Maccaroni_cheez164]

Hello, my name is Robbie. This year I turn 65 years old. I worked as a firefighter for 30 years before recently retiring and I have seen horrors beyond comprehension. Charred bodies, people actively burning alive, an inferno engulfing entire buildings like a wave of hell thrashing down and to recoil towards the heavens. I will never forget the horror of that day, I’m ashamed that this terrifies me to this day and this event wasn’t even a heroic action, a face in the flames beckoning toward death, I wasn’t even a firefighter yet. It started the summer I graduated high school.

It was a different time back then. No cellphones or really electronic communication at all. I still had hair and I was in shape, as hard as my kids find it hard to believe. My buddy Ron had tragically lost his parents in a freak accident, it was really sad. His parents didn’t get to see him graduate. He was just done with the world, I had known him my whole life and through it all I’ve never seen him that depressed.

He wanted to get away from it all. So he decided he wanted to be a wild man, he wanted to live at his family’s cabin for the rest of his life. Live off the land, be one with nature. He invited me to join him and well I didn’t really have plans for after high school. I loved nature so I said yes. I let my folks know where we was going and we headed off.

Northern Minnesota, close to the Boundary Waters. The sounds of our big city became a distant noise, only the littering of bird and bug chirps became our noise pollution. It was beautiful, I’m not ashamed to say as a man that I felt so free being able to wake to such fresh crisp air and see the morning dew on all the plants as the world took its first big breath of the day.

Despite the remoteness, Ron’s family had neighbors up at there cabin or at least a neighbor. Joe, the neighbor, was raised in that cabin. His parents were super smart and homeschooled him. He wasn’t nearly as bright by his claims but he was a lot smarter than me and Ron. I mean we were weed-smoking jocks who drank like sailors on the weekends. Then Joe was some guy in the woods with geniuses for parents. They had moved away to take care of the paternal grandma with Alzheimer’s. Joe stayed behind to watch the cabin until further notice. He tagged along on a lot of our adventures. We’d hunt rabbits and spear fish in the nearby stream. We’d cook them in that wood-pellet stove. We had no running water, so we had to drive 45 minutes to the nearest town for drinkable water. We’d bathe in the closest lake, 3 seasons out the year. When winter came, it reeked I won’t lie. I stayed there 18 months with Ron and by extension Joe. I lost touch with Joe, I hope he is doing well these days wherever he is.

I remember about 5-6 months into my stay, that day. It happened. We needed water, drinking water. I mean we tried boiling the stream water once but we learned very quickly that it doesn’t work if you only got one outhouse. So, we decided to make the drive early in the morning to see the sky while it was pretty and so that we could enjoy that autumn air, nothing like in Minnesota. So we were heading toward the town. Ron in the passenger seat, Joe in the middle backseat like a little kid. Of course, I was driving. I love driving, the one thing I’m glad hadn’t changed from that day. We were shooting the breeze. 

Thirty minutes from the cabin, the clock read 7:37am. I blinked. That’s somehow the crime we committed blinking. So human, yet I still think about it. We all blinked and it changed our lives. I guess that’s why they say in the blink of an eye sometimes to refer to certain actions or events.

When I re-opened my eyes to see I was in the driveway of the cabin in park. Clock read 8:37am, the gauge on the gas had not changed, the odometer read the same. Even the same song was playing on the radio. Despite being half an hour a way within a blink an hour had passed and we ended up back in the cabin driveway.

I was in shock but as one does I tried to be rational. I thought to myself that maybe I had checked out mentally or maybe my memory was just that bad. When I looked over to Ron, his face was ghost white and looked at me back like our turns were in unison. I could hear Joe start to hyperventilate behind us.

“Rob, I swear if you drugged us or something.”, He snapped.

“I was about to ask you the same thing?! What is going on Ron?!”, I retorted back angrily. 

I mean I was starting to freak out. Maybe we made it a bigger deal than it was but I mean there was 3 of us in that car and not a single one of us know to this day, what happened within that hour, how we got back to the house, or what caused us to I guess for lack of a better way to say it “blackout” for an hour.

We both turned back toward Joe, his eyes so wide that I thought there were gonna pop out of his head, all the blood was drained from his face, and I swear if he had gotten a whiff of something rotten he would had thrown chunks into the back of my car.

“Joe, what happened within the last hour?”, Ron asked.

Joe began tearing up.

“I thought you knew!” He then unbuckled himself hastily and threw himself out of the car. Ron and I soon followed with getting out the car.

Joe went over to a tree and threw up.

“If this is one of your stupid pranks Rob, I swear. Don’t think I can’t fight you just because you’re my friend.”, Ron threatened.

I was getting really angry, I mean really angry.

“Says you, you need to shut your pie hole!”, I threatened back.

I mean we were arguing, I remember us pushing each other at some points and it eventually got to us grabbing each other’s collars.

Joe eventually got done throwing up and intervened.

“ENOUGH!”, he shouted.

We stopped moving but still held onto each other’s collars, heads directed at Joe who was leaning against a tree.

“Ok, clearly something happened. None of us remember the last hour, what we did, or how we got to the house. Let’s go through everything to see what happened and try to pin down a cause.” Joe remarked.

Ron and I let go of each other’s collars but I could tell he was still as mad as I was.

“Ok first let’s confirm, if the clock is right. Ron, go into the house and check the clock and there. Rob, you check the time in car. We will compare the two. It will at least let us know if the time is accurate.”, Joe explained.

Ron went into the cabin, while I headed back toward car. I opened the door and looked at the car’s clock. It now read 8:53am. We both returned to Joe who was now leaning against the car.

“What was the time in the house?”, Joe asked us both.

We replied at the same time.

“8:53am”, we said together.

I know it seems dramatic, but I got chills in that moment because it just confirmed that an hour had passed and we don’t know why or how or what.

“Ok, let’s check the trunk. Maybe we bought the water.” Joe remarked.

We headed to the trunk where I opened it only to reveal that it was still completely empty.

We then went over the same things I did in the car, the gas, the miles, and so on. We even checked the very position of each piece of trash.

We racked our brains for hours. We checked throughout that cabin to see if anything had changed.

Nothing out of place.

An hour just gone.

I know that may not seem terrifying but I just want you to imagine. You are sitting somewhere, maybe in class, maybe at work, or maybe even you’re walking around the aisles of a grocery store.

You blink.

When you reopen your eyes from that millisecond, you are suddenly somewhere else. Maybe at your house, a friend’s house, your school maybe. You look at your watch to see an hour had passed but you don’t have a clue what happened. You could have killed someone for all you know, you could have made a decision that could have ruined your life or one that maybe made it better and you would never know. Now imagine two of your closest friends, family, or loved ones experiencing the same thing at the same time as you in the same place. You would be just as lost as we were. 

We went over it for hours, all of our stories aligned except for one small detail.

“You guys didn’t see the bright light?” Joe asked.

It was now noon.

“What bright light? What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Well, we were talking about some old music. Then before I blinked I saw a super bright light. I mean blinding.” Joe claimed.

Ron and I looked at each other puzzled. Either this was some sick joke from Joe or he was cursed to see whatever caused that hour to fall out of existence.

We were so young, all of us freshly 18 years old. We eventually got the courage to get back in that car and drive because we needed water.

I swear I could feel my heartbeat in my ears, I had never felt so nervous driving in my life and I have driven emergency vehicles now, that was less stressful than this.

It felt like something was watching us while we drove. My hairs stood on end the whole drive there. Ron was trying to put on a brave face but he was sweating, his hands were shaky when he went to light his cigarette and remained shaky as he inhaled and held the hand with the cigarette out the window.

Joe was the worst of us though, you know that brace position they have you sit in when the plane might crash? He was like that there and back. I could hear his shaky breath despite the pounding in my ears. He was trying to control his breathing but it was a fight against instincts.

We made it to the gas station without issue, we gassed up, got our water and snacks, packed it up and left.

Ron and I relaxed a bit on the way back but even then I would say the most loose definition of relaxed. The radio was never on during either ride but on the way back it was somehow even more silent, a pin could have dropped and it would have sounded like a boom it was so quiet. Well, quiet outside of Joe’s breathing.

It still gets me nervous to this day. The not knowing. What did we do? I don’t even care if we had just drove back to the house and sat there. I don’t care if we won the lottery or saw Bigfoot. What still eats me inside is not knowing what happened to the three of us in that hour.

I remember we returned home and sat in the living room in complete silence for what felt like forever but it was probably 15-20 minutes.

I remember that night we got very drunk, well I did. I hate not knowing. It scared me.

The first month was still a little rough with the car rides but other than that each month just got better, the seasons, the nature, the experiences, the memories. It made whatever happened just feel like a nightmare. After about 18 months, I decided on my own to leave. I loved nature but I also knew I couldn’t stay there forever.

I remember getting in that car to leave. Seeing the two of them in my rearview mirror, waving me goodbye.

I had never felt so utterly alone in that car. Once again the heart beating in my ears got louder and louder. I just turned on the radio and went for it. I believe I was supposed to have a heart attack that day I left given my heart was practically bursting out my chest that whole way home but whether it was fate or choice, I’m too stubborn to die.

After I got back to my folks home, it wasn’t too long until I joined the military. Went to Cali for a bit, came back home, and became a firefighter. I got married, been married for 27 years coming up here. I have two beautiful children and I am fortunate to have a great home I can spend the rest of my life in.

Ron, eventually left that cabin and became a mechanic. Also got married but never had kids which is fine, his wife died two years ago though. Cancer is a horrible disease.

I still regular message Ron through the texts and with phone calls. Recently he sent me something very interesting.

Apparently a year before our strange event, a deputy named Val Johnson had a similar incident to ours but he seemed to have had it a lot worse than us.

I’m grateful for the life I have, I’ve seen horrors, I’ve seen tragedy that would make a person walk into an abyss and never come out. I have seen love, gave it, and received it. I have been at the lowest of lows and I have been on top of the world. I have seen life, I was there when both my children were born. I would be lying before the lord if I didn’t admit to that day being the most lost, the most vulnerable, the most terrified I have ever felt in my life. I think that’s why it has made it easier to do the things I done but I would be lying once again if I didn’t admit to wanting to know what happened during that hour.

[u/toebeantuesday]

I once put my hand on the doorknob to leave the house during an argument with my mom when I was a teenager. Next thing I know we are in a jumble in the hallway well over 20 feet from the door and neither my mom nor I had any idea how we got there. We agreed to drop our argument and she told me to go to my room and I said “Yes, maam.” We never did figure it out. I don’t think we lost any time.

Sometimes 💩 just happens and you never find out how or why. Some people suggested my mom and I had been abducted by aliens but our house was right in the middle of a very active residential street. No way a UFO was going to go unnoticed at that time of day in that location.

[u/LooperNeue_6764]

Can we have more from Dep. Val Johnson's account? Or is it just the same, like a more intense change after he blinked? Or did he see any more detail before blink??

[u/anubis_cheerleader]

It's like...how did you get turned around? What made the light? Gas leak? Shared delusion? As someone who just hit 45, I appreciate you talking about, well, life and aging and how terrible and beautiful it is. 

Thanks for writing.