In the darkness, I can still see it.

The distinct, unnatural line where the air shifted from kind to apathetic. Iridescent and misty, like a mirage. I remember the way my navigation systems began to crash after I crossed it, the way panic filled my lungs when I realized I was off course. The way every direction, even down, looked disorientingly identitical—with the same smoky gray clouds teeming with tired raindrops that refused to fall.

It must be a trick of the gods, I thought, my heart drumming an anxious rhythm in my chest. It must be a dream. Or maybe I was already dead, and I’d royally messed up a few too many times in life. Either way, I kept flying in circles, trying to radio other planes, praying for someone to pick up.

And then I woke up in a hospital bed, with a nurse I’d never seen before standing over my trembling face, telling me there had been an accident. She asked me for my name, and when I gave it to her, she softly gasped, asking me what on earth had happened to me.

See, my time in the Bermuda Triangle was unquestionably the longest ordeal of my life, but it definitely did not feel like two years. That just didn’t make sense. I couldn’t have been flying nonstop for two years without refueling the plane, for instance, and I should have acquired at least a few extra gray hairs or wrinkles in that amount of time, considering the stress I was under. But I look as if I haven’t aged a day.

I don’t know what to do with this information, or where to go from here. Needless to say, I will be resigning from my position as a pilot here, as they’ve already replaced my job. I think I’ll move somewhere nice, near the Pacific. Settle down, find a woman to marry, try to make up for the two years I’ve lost—

though I doubt I’ll ever be able to forget.