Ethan gasped. He rubbed his eyes and stared at the clock again. How could it be? He had just sat down to have his supper. He clearly recalled looking at his digital clock, which had just struck 7 p.m. His plate was still on the table, untouched. The clock now read 8 p.m.

Ethan gingerly touched the food on his plate. It was cold.

Again.

He failed to understand how each day, he would sit down for supper and suddenly, the clock would have gone ahead by an hour.

At first, he thought it was his clock – the batteries must be malfunctioning. The new batteries, however, did not make any difference.

Ethan began questioning himself. Was he going insane?

His cold food, however, seemed to calm him. It was the only other evidence he had of the lost hour.

Ethan suddenly realized he had something in his clenched fist. He placed it on the table and straightened it out.

A smiling photo of him and his best friend, Vance.

Vance and Ethan had known each other for the longest time. Five years back, the drunk duo had crashed Vance’s car into a tree. Ehan had blacked out instantly. When he had finally opened his eyes, he was on a hospital bed with his right leg in a cast. Upon his constant nagging, the nurses had told him that he had been out cold for a week and Vance had died on the spot.

Ethan hadn’t had the strength to visit Vance’s parents or any relatives.

Ethan blinked. He didn’t own this photo. In fact, he had never seen it. As he stared at the photo, he suddenly realized it wasn’t an old picture. This picture was recent. Ethan’s face in the photo was scarred. He didn’t have these scars before the accident. Vance’s face, however, did not have any marks. A handsome, clean-shaved image of how Vance would have looked like if he were still alive.

An icy hand closed its fingers around Ethan’s heart.

Ethan shuddered.

“It can’t be,” he said out aloud, “Vance’s dead. Everyone said so.”

The icy grip tightened, as, with horror, Ethan noticed the background.

It was his house.

He had bought this house a year after Vance’s death.

With shaking hands, he turned the photo around. At the back, in neat, cursive writing, were the words, “One hour at a time ….”

Ethan gulped.

If this was someone’s stupid idea of a prank, it wasn’t funny.

He wondered who could prank him like this.

Did the lost hour have something to do with this?

Ethan took a deep breath as he remembered Vance’s spy camera in his cupboard. He had borrowed it a day before the fatal accident and had locked it up ever since.

The spy cam could come in handy. If he was losing an hour every evening, he may be losing more hours during the day without realizing.

His meal forgotten, Ethan ran to his room to dig up among his locked items. His heart skipped a beat as he realized the spy cam was missing. All of Vance’s other belongings were still in the drawer. Where on earth could it have gone?

Ethan suddenly felt a prick on the back of his neck. He straightened up and turned around. As his eyes skimmed through the room, something on his bedside table caught his eye. His confusion turned into dread.

Vance’s spy camera.

Ethan felt the room closing in on him. The camera hadn’t been on his table in the morning, he was sure of that. When had the camera been picked from a location that only he was aware of, and strategically placed in a position from where Ethan’s entire room could be seen?

Gathering all his courage, Ethan marched to the camera. He tried to rewind and look for any footage, but the memory seemed to have been wiped clean.

Ethan suddenly became aware of a sudden, familiar scent of cedarwood lingering in the air – unmistakably Vance’s scent, as though he were standing right next to Ethan.

Ethan gulped.

Was he losing sense of reality?

Vance was dead, everybody said so.

Ethan turned around on his heel.

There was nobody behind him.

He walked to his dining table and set up the camera.

******************************************************************************

The next evening, Ethan glanced at the camera from his dining table. He had just lost another hour. With trembling hands, he picked the camera, praying the footage had not been tampered with.

As he wound back the footage, his stomach twisted. There he was, sitting on his dining table as he clearly recalled. He watched as the Ethan in the recording calmly got up, walked to the door, and opened it, permitting a hooded figure to enter the house.

The figure, on impulse, directly walked to the hidden camera as Ethan shut the door. The Ethan in the recording did not show any signs of surprise, rather, he looked as if this was an ordinary occurrence.

The figure dropped his cloak as he looked directly into the camera, revealing his face.

Vance.