Ground Hog Day

We’d just returned to our hotel room in Las Vegas from a fantastic trip to the Grand Canyon. It was February 2nd, and I was watching the movie Ground Hog Day in the hotel room. That’s the crazy film where Bill Murray plays a television reporter who goes to cover the big event when the groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, comes out of his burrow and predicts how long it will be before the end of winter.

Somehow, Murray gets caught in this never-ending time loop and is trapped, reliving the same day repeatedly.

Anyway, I started thinking that I’d play around with the idea of writing a short story with a similar idea. So, I began writing this ridiculous thing on the plane flight back to South Carolina.

I figured it was a terrific concept to play around with concerning our Matrix and the illusion of time sequences apparent within the parameters of such an artificial construct.

Luckily, or maybe not, you will now get to read the finished draft here on NoFakeNews. 🤣

October. Forever!

It was a brisk Halloween evening, the kind where the crisp air filled your lungs with a sense of nostalgia. Leaves drifted down from the trees, their orange and yellow hues catching the last rays of the sun. I had encountered the acquaintance of a strange old woman named Rathe, who had begun a deep, thought-provoking conversation with me.

“If you could choose between living a normal lifespan and dying in your 80s,” Rathe said, her voice a little too casual, “or reliving the same month for eternity, which would you pick?”

I blinked at her, caught off guard. This wasn’t a normal thing to ask a stranger. It was an oddly specific question that felt more like a riddle than anything meaningful. I thought about it for a moment, considering the weight of both options.

“Well,” I said, my mouth curling into a half-smile, “I think I’d pick the same month of October.”

Rathe’s eyes widened briefly, then her lips curved into an eerie-looking grin. “Are you sure about that?”

I nodded, feeling confident. The same month? I could do it. Sure, it might be strange at first, but I had always liked October—the way the world felt on the edge of change, the promise of something new, and the comfort of familiar holiday traditions on the horizon. What could be wrong with that?

“Yes,” I said. “October it is!”

The smile never left Rathe’s face. “Alright, then. Consider it done.”

I didn’t think much more about it. It was a silly, off-the-cuff response to a question that seemed like no big deal. That was until the next day when the sun rose again, casting the same golden glow across the same street, and the calendar flipped from October 31st to October 1st.

I froze. A strange chill ran down my spine as the realization hit. This wasn’t right. Something was off.

And then, after another 31 days passed, it was October 1st again.

My heart sank as the clock ticked forward, but only in circles, returning to that same month. No matter what I did, how far I walked, and how many people I spoke to, I found myself right back where I had begun: October 1st.

At first, I tried to shake it off. Maybe it was just a weird coincidence, some twist of fate that made the days repeat. But the second, third, and fourth repetitions made me uneasy. And then I realized this wasn’t a coincidence. This was it. I was trapped. I had chosen October to be my eternity, and now the month looped around me like an endless cycle, an inescapable prison of my own making.

I tried everything to break the loop. I woke up with a new resolve each time, convinced that if I changed something significant, the pattern would stop. I ran through the streets, hoping that somehow I could outrun time. I stayed home, thinking the comfort of my space would end the cyclic nightmare. But nothing changed.

The same faces appeared. The same conversations. The same breeze through the trees. Even the most minute details remained unchanged, no matter how often I relived them. I learned to dread the little things—the familiar warmth of the coffee shop on the corner, the sound of children laughing in the park, the same blue sky stretched endlessly above me.

As the days blurred into one, the weight of the curse became unbearable. I couldn’t even remember what it felt like to be free anymore. The illusion of choice I had once felt—the excitement of the “same month”—had evaporated. It was like a terrible joke. What once seemed like an endless adventure now felt like a long, suffocating nightmare.

I started to notice things I hadn’t before. Subtle shifts, strange nuances in the world around me that I hadn’t paid attention to. The cracks in the pavement seemed to grow wider every day, the shadows longer, and every gust of wind felt like it carried the weight of a thousand whispers. What had Rathe done? What kind of person would bait another into an eternal trap?

I confronted the old woman once, desperate for an answer. She didn’t apologize. Instead, she stood there, the faintest trace of pity in her eyes. “You asked for it,” she said, soft but insistent. “You chose the month, not the life.”

The betrayal stung. I hadn’t realized, at that moment, that the question Rathe had asked wasn’t about the choice of eternity—it was about the nature of existence itself. What if living forever wasn’t about time or experience but about living without change, without progression? I had chosen a month, but what I needed was life.

Every morning I woke, I hoped for something different. I searched for a way to break free, to undo what had been done. But every night, as the sun set, I found myself starting over and not looking forward to a never-ending amount of endless October months that painfully stretched on.

I lived for moments of clarity between the repetitions, where the sensation of time—the weight of each passing second—seemed to slip back into place, only to be crushed again by the never-ending cycle.

I cursed the day I had answered that question so flippantly, longing for an end that would never come. A curse had bound me; no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t escape it. It was an eternal October, and I was trapped within its chill, colors, and promises of change—a change that never came to fruition!

The worst part was that I could never return to that one moment with Rathe when the choice was still a question and the future was still unknown. That fleeting sense of possibility was lost forever.

I was left with nothing but October. Forever!

The Matrix Reloaded Yet Again

Get the E-book for $1.99

Watch The Book Trailer

Read it tonight as an Ebook

Just Published on Amazon Kindle

Readers’ Favorite Book Review

🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟

From the Authors:

What if everything we have been taught about history is wrong? What if something beyond the parameters of human comprehension intentionally obfuscates our collective perception of reality?

Click on the image below for more information!

We Need More People to Do Research!

Our book is written for the red pillers — those folks already awake. The Matrix Reloaded Yet Again is an essential starting point for readers who can do more extensive boots-on-the-ground research after reading our work.

— Chris Kelly, Melissa Reizer & John Reizer