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Welcome to A Bedtime Story. I’m Matthew Mitchell, and before we get started, a quick apology for last week’s unplanned re-runs. I was extremely sick, and just couldn’t make my recording schedule happen. So, I decided to re-run the original Tales of Veridia series from season 1, which was the inspiration for season 2’s new multi-part format. But now we’re back with a new series! Tonight’s story is titled The Box of Stolen Seconds, Part 1 of this week’s series: The Inventory of Impossible Things.

Julian was the kind of person who could lose a remote control in a room with no furniture. It was a talent, really, though not one that paid the bills. When his Uncle Arthur passed away and left him a detached garage in the suburbs of Ohio, Julian assumed he was inheriting a collection of rusted lawnmowers and maybe a half-used bag of mulch. Instead, he found a structure that seemed significantly larger on the inside than the outside, filled with crates that hummed at a frequency usually reserved for bees or suspicious microwave ovens.

He stood in the center of the garage, squinting through the dust motes. The air smelled of oil and ancient library books. Maya, his roommate and the only person he trusted not to laugh at him when he panicked, stood by the door with her arms crossed.

“Julian,” Maya said, her voice echoing strangely. “The lease on our apartment is up in three weeks. We need to find out if there is anything in here we can sell, or if we are just going to live in this creepy garage.”

“It’s not creepy,” Julian replied, though he was currently looking at a jar that appeared to contain a miniature thunderstorm. “It is just eclectic. Uncle Arthur was a travel agent for people who didn’t exist.”

He reached for a small, wooden box tucked away on a high shelf. It was plain, unvarnished, and had no hinges. When Julian touched the lid, the wood felt warm, almost like it had a pulse. He pulled it down and set it on a workbench.

“What is that?” Maya asked, stepping closer despite herself.

“It says Time Jar,” Julian whispered, reading a faint pencil scribble on the side. “Specifically, it says Five Minutes of a Tuesday.”

He pried the lid open. There was no sound, but a sudden, sharp gust of wind blew past them, smelling of wet pavement and fresh coffee. Julian blinked. He looked at his watch. A moment ago, it had been two in the afternoon. Now, the hands on his watch were at 2:05. The sun outside had shifted just enough to change the shadows on the garage floor.

“Did you just see that?” Maya asked, her eyes wide.

“I think I just spent five minutes of my life in half a second,” Julian said.

He looked back into the box. It was empty, but he felt a strange sense of alertness, as if he had just woken up from a very long nap. Over the next hour, Julian and Maya realized that the garage was not a storage unit; it was a warehouse for physical anomalies. There were jars of captured echoes, mirrors that showed you who you would be in ten years if you had decided to become a professional kite flier, and umbrellas that only worked when it was sunny.

“We can’t sell this stuff to normal people,” Maya argued, holding a compass that pointed toward the nearest person who was currently lying about their age. “It’s dangerous. People can’t handle having an extra five minutes of a Tuesday. They already don’t know what to do with the time they have.”

“Think about the market, though,” Julian said, his witty side starting to override his common sense. “People pay for convenience. What is more convenient than skipping the five minutes you spend waiting for the bus? Or the five minutes you spend listening to your boss talk about his weekend? This is a gold mine.”

He grabbed a handful of empty jars from a nearby crate. He realized that if the box could release time, it could likely capture it. He spent the rest of the afternoon running around the garage, capturing the moments of silence between Maya’s complaints. He labeled them Moments of Peace and stacked them neatly.

By the time the sun began to dip low in the sky, the garage was glowing with the soft light of a dozen different impossible objects. Julian felt a surge of excitement. He had spent his whole life feeling like he was falling behind, but now he had a way to catch up. He didn’t notice that the shadows in the corners of the garage were beginning to move independently of the light. He didn’t see the way the Time Jar was beginning to vibrate, drawing in more than just the seconds Julian intended to catch.

“Let’s set up a sign tomorrow,” Julian suggested, his mind racing. “The Impossible Garage Sale. We will only take cash and we won’t give receipts. It will be perfect.”

Maya looked at the jars of stolen seconds and sighed. “This is going to end with us being chased by a temporal police force, isn’t it?”

“Probably,” Julian admitted. “But at least we will have the time to run away.”

As they locked the garage door, the humming sound grew louder. Inside the darkness of the shed, the box of stolen seconds sat on the workbench, its lid slightly ajar, waiting for the next person to come looking for a shortcut.