Stuck in an Island with Twelve Beautiful Women

Jude exhaled. "That's what you called it, right? The shift?"

The man leaned forward slightly. "It's more than that."

Jude waited, but he didn't elaborate.

Instead, the woman who had let him in spoke. "We've all felt it. That sense that something isn't right. That the world around us is… changing."

Jude frowned. "Changing how?"

She exchanged a glance with the man.

Then, she pulled something from her pocket and slid it across the table toward him.

A photograph.

Jude hesitated before picking it up.

His breath caught.

It was the same photograph he had in his apartment. The boy standing near the lake. The one that had been in the wooden box for years.

His hands tightened around the edges of the photo. "Where did you get this?"

The man watched him carefully. "That's what we're trying to figure out."

Jude's pulse pounded in his ears. None of this made sense. This was his photo. His past. And yet, here it was, sitting in front of him in a place he had never been, among people he had never met.

Something was happening.

Something big.

And Jude wasn't sure he was ready for the answers.

Jude's grip on the photograph tightened as he tried to steady his breathing. The air in the dimly lit room felt heavier now, pressing against his chest with an invisible weight. Everyone's eyes were on him, waiting, expecting something he wasn't sure he could give. He swallowed, his throat dry.

"Where did you get this?" His voice was barely more than a whisper, but in the silence of the room, it might as well have been a shout.

The man sitting at the far end of the table—his presence calm but commanding—tapped a finger against the wooden surface. "That's what we want to ask you, Jude."

His mind raced. That photograph had been in his possession for years, hidden away in a wooden box among things he barely touched. It wasn't something he'd shown anyone. It wasn't something that could have ended up here by accident.

"This is a joke," Jude said, though even as the words left his lips, he knew they were hollow. There was no humor in the faces surrounding him.

The woman who had greeted him at the door took a step closer, her gaze firm yet not unkind. "It isn't."

Jude shook his head. "Then explain it. Because unless one of you broke into my apartment and took this—"

"We didn't," the man interjected smoothly.

"Then how the hell do you have it?"

Silence stretched between them like an invisible barrier.

The woman glanced at the others before speaking. "Because we've all had this happen. Objects from our lives, memories we thought belonged only to us—appearing elsewhere. Pieces of ourselves turning up in places they shouldn't be."

Jude stared at her. "That doesn't make any sense."

She nodded as if she agreed. "No, it doesn't. But it keeps happening."

His stomach twisted. None of this should be real. And yet, deep down, something inside him was telling him that it was. That it had been real for a long time, and he was only just starting to notice.

The man at the end of the table leaned forward. "Jude, do you ever feel like things around you change when you're not looking?"

Jude frowned. "What?"

"Like something is slightly… off. A detail that wasn't there before. A memory that feels too sharp or too faded. A shift that you can't quite explain."

A cold chill ran down his spine.

He had noticed.

Small things. Street signs that seemed different. Buildings that weren't where he thought they were. Conversations that felt like they had been rewritten. They were moments he had always dismissed as bad memory or exhaustion. He had never given them much thought.

Until now.

Jude exhaled slowly. "What are you saying?"

The man's expression darkened slightly. "That the world isn't as stable as we think it is."

A sharp laugh left Jude's throat before he could stop it. "That's crazy."

The woman didn't flinch. "Is it?"

Jude rubbed a hand over his face. "Even if that were true, even if things were changing, why? What's causing it?"

The man sat back in his chair. "That's what we're trying to find out."

Jude looked down at the photograph again. His own face stared back at him, frozen in time beside the lake. He could still remember the day it was taken—the feel of the grass beneath his feet, the distant sound of water lapping against the shore.

But now, something about it felt wrong.

The memory was too sharp, too vivid, like it had been placed in his mind rather than lived.

He clenched his jaw. "What do you expect me to do?"

The woman studied him. "Stay. Learn. See for yourself."

A part of him wanted to walk out. To go home and pretend none of this had happened. But another part—the part that had brought him here in the first place—knew he couldn't do that. He needed answers.

Jude exhaled. "Fine."

The tension in the room shifted. No one looked surprised. They had known he would stay.

The man nodded approvingly. "Good."

Jude had no idea what he had just agreed to.

Jude sat in the dimly lit room, the photograph still clutched in his hands. The air was thick with silence, each second stretching as if the world itself had slowed down. The others in the room were watching him, waiting for something. An answer, a reaction—he wasn't sure. He could still hear the last words spoken, echoing in his head.

*"Stay. Learn. See for yourself."*

He should have walked away. None of this made sense. The logical part of his mind screamed at him to leave, to step back into the familiar world where things didn't shift without reason, where memories didn't feel misplaced. But his body remained still, as if something unseen held him in place.

The woman who had spoken before moved closer, pulling out a chair across from him. Her movements were slow, deliberate, as if not wanting to startle him. "Jude," she said softly. "We know this is overwhelming. But you're not alone in this."