Here Before

The continuous ticking of the clock and the nonstop ringing of the the telephone as it went unanswered kept distracting him from his thoughts. The place looked all too familiar and Mark knew he had seen it before but he just could not place his finger on the circumstances surrounding his first encounter with this large open reception room. 

Mark turned around to look at his friend, Trevor. Surely if Mark had been here before, Trevor would have too, as he has never left Mark’s side since they first met in second grade, 14 years ago. They have spent all their time together, at school, sports and even being together when either of their parents went shopping. Trevor’s astonished face, with his mouth wide open, made Mark heave a sigh of relief as it signaled that he too had the same question in his mind, or so Mark thought. Mark’s relief was short lived and brought to an abrupt end as he saw Trevor’s grin of astonishment widen into a smile followed by a loud, air-piercing exclamation of how he had never seen such a place in his entire life. 

Trevor, being a fine arts undergraduate student at the local university’s school of arts, had been taken aback by the exquisite attention to detail in the room. Unexpected in an enterprise’s reception and waiting area, the interior decoration was extremely high end. It took him back to his uncle Ben’s house, which was covered in sheer opulence. His uncle Ben was a multimillionaire serial entrepreneur, who made a living by creating and growing startups and then finally selling them off at a huge profit. This was how he could afford such a life. All these thoughts rushing into Trevor’s head had been the cause of his scream of surprise. 

This was exactly how Mark felt except he wasn’t sure what this room and it’s fine intricate details reminded him of.  His head swung low as he tried to remember where he had come across such elegance and he was in for yet another surprise. The gold crest imprinted on the soft beige carpet that lay beneath their feet was not new to him either. He had seen it before, somewhere. “What is happening to me?”, he thought to himself as he pondered on the idea of reincarnation and the possibility of a past life. 

Had he worked here in his previous life? Did he even have a previous life? Even more interesting, maybe his wife in the previous life worked here and he would occasionally visit her to bring her lunch or he would at times attend her work events. He was not sure, but what he was sure of was that none of the articles in this room seemed new to him. He had barely finished entertaining these thoughts that he noticed something yet more intriguing. There was a pair of blue suede cloth couches, a few paces away from them. Opposite them was another pair of couches, this time light brown leather and besides them, a pair of elegantly carved, cushioned wooden chairs. All set out just as he remembered it. Confused and desperately seeking an answer, he explained his predicament to a very skeptical Trevor, who instead told Mark to prove himself. Mark stood for a while, trying to devise a way to prove his claims.

Without a single idea in his head, Mark decided to go over the car magazine on the glass table right in between the two pairs of couches while he looked for an idea of corroborating his claims. “What magazine? What glass table?”, asked a perplexed Trevor, as from their vantage point, nothing of that sort was visible to them. In a brief lightbulb moment, Mark realized that this was his proof as he asked Trevor to confirm his assertion.  

Barely lifting his feet as he walked slowly towards the couches, Trevor was contemplating on the possibility of his friend being a psychic. He was so deep in thought that he did not notice himself get to the table, pick the magazine up and walked back and he only got back to reality at the voice of Mark exclaiming “See, I told you so!” Happy that he had been right but still unsure how he knew all this, Mark rhetorically enquired from the lady who had entered the building at about the same time as them, how he knew all this. The lady, indifferent, just shrugged her shoulders and looked aside, seemingly uninterested in the conversation. 

Mark turned to his friend Trevor, who still stupefied, could not believe what had happened in the past few minutes since they entered this building. Just then, a deep yet feminine voice bellowed from behind Mark, “So you have never been here before, yet you know everything in here?” It was the lady behind him and he answered her with an innocent “yes”, before she said “okay”, shrugged her shoulders and looked aside again. Mark extended his hand, placed it on Trevor’s shoulder and shivers ran throughout his friend’s trembling body. It had started to be a fun game for Mark and he confirmed from his friend that since they came in, they both had not taken even a second to look up, which Trevor concurred to. Mark then went on to describe the ornate patterns on the ceiling and the elaborate wall design. Both of which proved all too accurate. 

Something else seemed to correlate with Mark’s memories. Not just were the designs and furniture familiar, he had come to notice he could remember the sequence of events too. Was this an extended déjà vu? He asked himself as he figured everything that had happened since they entered this building was exactly as he remembered. The elevator beeped once and it’s large doors with a mirror finish began to slide open, Mark awaited to see if he was right. A woman in an elegant red dress would walk out first, followed by two men in suits, engaged in a sort of business discussion. The woman would stop to greet the receptionist as the men walk past towards the main exit door. Just as Mark had hoped, the three people followed the exact paths he had laid out for them. 

He looked to his left at the man who would have his money gobbled up by the vending machine and get nothing out of the machine. This took place as he watched and was narrating to his friend how this man would then go and get a second note to feed into the machine. The man did just that and as he returned, Mark remembered there had to be a loud voice from an unknown source transcending barriers between the realms of reality and dreams. Then it struck him. The voice had been from his mother as she woke him up from the dream. 

Finally, things made a little sense. He had walked into the building he dreamt of, just the previous night. A part of the mystery had been solved but it was still mind boggling how he had dreamt of a place he had never seen before. Still more confusing was how he had dreamt of how the people were dressed and their specific actions. To this day, it remains a mystery and Mark asks himself if he had a brush with the world of the supernatural.