The street with no sound

I cut through a side street on my way home. Halfway down, I pulled out my phone to check the time. That’s when I realized my surroundings were… wrong.

Not silent, exactly. Muted. Like someone had turned the volume down on the whole city. My footsteps barely registered, the hum of the streetlights thinned to nothing. I tapped my headphones — noise cancelling wasn’t even enabled. But it felt like it.

At the far end of the street, a man stood under a lamp. Too still. Watching. I reached for my phone camera, but the app froze on a black screen. No error, no crash — just… nothing. By the time I switched apps, he was gone.

Back on the main road, the sounds of the city were normal again. When I played the video later, there was only silence.

Log note:

[08/18/2021 21:13]  
DEVICE: phone mic recorded silence, ~20 sec  
OBS: figure under streetlight, unresponsive, vanished when camera froze  
STATUS: anomaly linked to device, not environment    

They don’t need to bend reality. Just the devices we rely on to sense it. That’s enough to make us question what’s real.