My Story Before Me

I am very bored, I am done with my work, I am done watching TV, I have no idea where I am even bringing this thought to be completely honest. I might as well just go for a walk and see where I will end up. As I get out of my house I notice the beautiful blue sky, the amazing breeze, the-the... who am I kidding it was a Tuesday and there was nobody on sight, not even a goddamn pigeon, but, oh well, I moved on with my stroll. Well, I walked so far that my playlist ended and I was in front of a library- I had also stepped on shit, but that is not as important. It never occurred to me to check the time, because I am obviously such an intellectual, but not only that, not even crossed my mind to check where I was, but hey, it was Tuesday, it was dark, and I found myself in front of a library, I was wilding. Something pushed me to go inside and once I was, the first thing I noticed was that there was no one at the front desk, and then, that there were hella books, GODDAMN! My highschool library had nothing on this one. As I moved towards the front desk, this old Gandalf-looking man came out of the shadows like it was a movie scene, except that by shadows I mean his sleeping corner. You can't work at a place and blatantly sleep at the front, the old man was slick. But anyway, he got real up close to me and I was just thinking, "can you back up please bro you got that, just woke up and my mouth stank smell", but I didn't say it, of course, I just said, "yo". As I expected, the first thing he noticed about me... the shit on my shoe. I was never really one to care too much about first impressions with people I knew I wasn't gonna see again in my life, so we just stared at each other for a couple of seconds until he pointed to the bathroom and I instantly knew what he meant so I went clean my shoe and pee, I had been holding it for a while.

Once I came out of the washroom I saw the old man playing a game of chess against himself, and what I was thinking was, "how bored do you have to be like, damn, at least play online against a bot or something, I mean I don't even know if he can use a computer-" and my thought was interrupted by what I saw next. The opposite pieces were moving by themselves, and I was just watching in shock, what broke me out of this trance was ol' Gandalf's really low voice saying,

"If you want to read something go to the back we got tons of ages 2-10 at the very back, I'm sure you would be interested, if you want to play, sit down and be quiet, I'm almost done with this."

So many questions just flooded my mind, but the biggest one was, "How and why does this man who looks 200 and is probably 400 speak like he 20?" I mean then I was just like, "What is he almost done with, the game, the opponent? The man was looking at the pieces move by themselves and acting like it was a Sunday stroll on the park." To be honest, I wanted to go home, I had checked the clock and apparently, it was 10 pm, I had work the next day and I was a bit tired, yet, something called me to stay, so I did. However; I did not play against the old man, I was for sure going to fall asleep in front of him because chess was just not my thing.

"I'll go check the back," I said. In reality, I just wanted to find a nice place to rest and chill and well, maybe, perhaps find where the hell I was would be nice; if I didn't feel like going to work tomorrow I could just call in sick, go home and do God knows what.

I was checking every book I saw, adventure, fantasy, drama, horror, romance, poetry, this that and even the dictionary, at some point my body was in autopilot moving by itself. In this state, I eventually knocked a book off its shelf and the sound woke me up really quickly. At the same time, I could hear the old man shushing me from the front desk and for some reason, I felt some type of relief to know that he was still there. As I was picking up the book I had knocked down, it opened to a random page and it was blank, I wasn't surprised at first until I flipped through it and saw that it was all blank. I had seen something like this before, something about a book called, "Everything Men Know About Women", made sense except for the fact that I was holding on my hands was called, "My Life" and it made me sad like nothing before. I was just thinking about someone literally sitting down and thinking this was their life, and then... I put it down and moved on, I was half asleep and confused at how the fuck was the old man not sleeping yet, grandpas out there, no offence to you all but if y'all not sleeping after 10 pm you can consider yourself a 20-year-old, I was thirty so the rule didn't apply. I sat down and slept, couldn't care less, I expected the old man would wake me up at some point through the night but I slept and rested for as long as I could.

To my surprise, I woke up at the library, at the same spot I was at with a blanket covering me and rays of sunshine hitting through the tinted windows, it was the first time I had noticed the glass was tinted. I got up, the blanket was old, older than the old man probably, and on that topic, this legend was still there playing chess against himself. I could barely read my colleague's email without switching tabs and doing something else but this man was INVESTED in this. He probably spent all night playing. I walked up to him to see if he would say anything but he ignored me, so I thanked him for letting me stay and I walked towards the exit and as I was walking out I could have sworn I heard him say something among the words, "And so your story begins." This just left me more confuse and way more baffled than I already was.

A few weeks passed and my life continued, I kept doing the same stuff day after day and eventually somewhere along the way I picked up a gardening hobby, not sure when or how but it was the little ray of sunshine in my dying night. Once again I found myself lost, this time on a Friday evening and I had ensured that my playlist was long enough but to my surprise, I ended up at the exact same library I once was at just a couple of weeks prior. The few memories I had made came rushing back and I remembered... absolutely nothing, can't even lie, just a Gandalf-looking old man and some cool game set of chess. I decided to go inside again and see if the old relic was still inside playing the same game of chess against his ghosts or imaginary friends or whatever and to my surprise, dadararaaa- he was, of course, he was. He was playing as the black pieces this time for a change tho so that was something I am sure the ladies that gossiped at the corner of my street would go on for hours and hours making all types of stories up. Like he suffered a great change in his life and now he is portraying it by switching sides or, he suffered from a brain hemorrhage, bled out, somehow came back to life and now decided to take a bit of risk in life. I don't know, I'm not as good as they are ok? All I knew is that once again I felt some type of comfort at seeing the dedicated warrior, lord of the emptiest library in the world, twice I had come here already and somehow there was no one on sight except for ol' Jack here (at this point I had to give him a name of my own as he would not give me his actual name).

"GRANDPAAA! ELLO!" I yelled as I was walking towards the desk where the old man played chess.

"shhhhh, I know you are excited to read but don't gotta lemme know." Said the old man

"Old man what is your name? You never let me know."

"You never asked me, Sherlock." He answered, in quite a sassy manner. "My name is Marcus"

It wasn't bad, Marcus was after all the name that people gave to babies of old, people destined to be born already at 60, no offence. I liked the sassiness he showed tho, reminded me of my grandpa, I had great times with him and all.

"I will be at the back Marcus, maybe I will play you a game of chess if I can finish all the books in this library." He chuckled a bit.

As I went to the back once again I stumbled upon a book that seemed quite intriguing, named "Your Life." Something clicked in my memory but I couldn't quite figure out what. The book had only two or three chapters in it, the rest of the book was empty. I figured reading it wouldn't hurt, after all, it was only about 15 pages. The first chapter described the early life of a child, sad moments, funny moments, happy and such. It kind of reminded me of my own. WAIT, IT WAS ME, THE BOOK WAS BOUT ME. Everything matched, from my first steps to the last time I came to the library, it recorded me stepping on dog poop, me hooking up with a girl at the bar last Sunday, it even recorded me slipping in my shower and landing on my ass then groaning every time I had to step, boy I hated that week, my buttcheeks just hated me. Out of all the things to be worried or shocked about, nothing hit me harder than the fact that out of hundreds of pages, this book was barely filled up until the 20th page. Of course I only truly thought about this after I sat down, breathed in and out for like 20 mins, asked Marcus what the hell it was and all (he said he didn't know what the hell he was talking about, I call mega-cap, but I moved on). I read it over and over again many times. This was my story, this is what I accounted for, what I had done, years and years of my life fit in less than 20 pages. Worst of all is that the most enjoyable section from the book was when I started getting into gardening, something I enjoyed doing, but that was it, the rest slipt right through my memory, if I hadn't lived it, I wouldn't remember it from the reading. I was scared, shocked, I needed to get home and I don't know, think maybe?! I noticed the book was not recording what I was doing inside the library, so I decided to take it out. I came to Marcus and told him I would like to book out that certain book. To my further surprise, he said:

"That book does not go out, it stays in the library just like any of the restricted section."

"Marcus I really need this book," I said,

"It will be here whenever you need it."

I ran out without the book and headed straight home. I spent the next couple of weeks trying to forget about what I had seen, I didn't care who wrote that stuff in that book, but reading my story from the reader's perspective just felt different. It pointed out what truly mattered to ME, it was quite a good trick. So I decided to do all stuff I really liked, and two weeks afterwards I went back to the library, I headed straight for the book. I ignored Marcus, everyone, anything really, and I found it after a long hour of searching. As I had suspected, the book recorded everything, but this time it was filled at LEAST 40 pages, the most interesting reading I had done my whole life. I understood I was missing a lot in my life, a lot that I had yet to do, but it had to do what I truly wanted to do, this was all I had left to find out.

From that moment on I started pursuing more hobbies, meeting with more of my old friends and so, things I loved doing, and then at the end of the week, I would come back to the library and read the book again, and play a game or two with Marcus. Funny how I never learned the name of the library.