Victor

"Victor awoke, mouth a dustbowl, brain a tape rewound too many times, ancient. A hangover, mythic, the kind that warps existence, livers beg for mercy. Something reeked: rancid whiskey, stale cigarettes drowning in coffee. Maybe him.

He rose, a war vet from slumber, dragged himself to the desk. The manuscript, a perfect stack, as if night-delivered. A murder, pre-written. Did he write it? Yes, surely. Or so he willed himself to believe.

He grasped it, flipped through pages, not before snorting some coke on it. A bomb. The bomb. Metanarrative apex. Noir, a book writing reality. An author, discovering he's written. If there existed something grander, more shattering, more perfect, Victor knew not of it.

A bomb. A fine metanarrative delirium. I'd take it to the fair.

The fair buzzed, words evaporating, books no one would truly read. I wandered stalls, manuscript throbbing beneath my arm. I'd leave it in the right place. Someone would find it. Then? Reality would shift.

A reason for being here. Or so I'd told myself this morning, before sun and four beers derailed logic. The manuscript. Right. I'd left it somewhere, lost in this bubble of people, words, nothingness. Now, beyond his control. Good, but who cared? Whatever.

That was not the point: things happen only if we make them. Or, they happen, but as something else. I'd brought a manuscript, a mark, a ripple in the system. But was I the ripple? Was the manuscript a decoy, a distraction from a greater question: what the hell was I truly here for?

The crowd moved, slow, broken voices merging with heat. Blurred faces, details popping at random: a ring too tight on a swollen hand, a perfume trail out of place. Was it real? Or it was me seeing what I wanted?

Hunter S. Thompson said reality is angle. It shifts if you think about it too much, or too little. And I stood where certainty unraveled.

Maybe I'd just brought a book. Or maybe I'd written himself into it, unaware.

'Victor had brought a manuscript to a fair. Or so he'd told himself that morning, stuffing printed pages into his backpack. An experiment, a metanarrative game. Leave it, abandoned among the right people, see what unfurled. But now, under blinding sun, four beers churning, a sense of otherness gnawing at his neck, he wondered if the manuscript was ever the point.

He'd walked the stalls, titles meaningless, conversations fading like cigarette smoke. The manuscript, gone, beyond his control. Things happen only if we make them. Or they happen, and we invent reasons after.

As he thought this, his phone vibrated. The name, a jolt. The guy. The one he was to leave the manuscript for, the one he'd missed. But now, he wrote. Victor stared, then the message:

'Hey, weird, someone mentioned a manuscript. Was that you?'

Heart skipped, imperceptible. Who told him? Had someone found it? Or was the manuscript always there, waiting to be seen, a cursed object activating only when gazed upon?

Victor ran a hand over his face. He couldn't recall leaving the manuscript. Had he? Or was he imagining it now, reshaping the past to fit? Action or thought?

Sun burned, crowd shifted, a broken machine. Maybe the manuscript never existed. Maybe he'd written it all this morning, in half-sleep, where reality is soft, malleable. Or maybe he hadn't written it.

What if he was writing it now?

The idea slid into his mind, slick, a creature. Was he living in real time what he'd already written? If the manuscript spoke of him, here, now, wondering if the manuscript spoke of him?

He looked at his phone. Typed, erased. Typed again:

'Yes, I think I left it there. Or at least, I want to think I did.'

He sent the message, felt the weight of the phrase. Want to think. Why? Closure? A role in a story that might not exist? Or because, deep down, he knew everything happens twice: first in the mind, then in reality? Or vice versa?

He closed his eyes. Heat, alcohol, the crowd's hum. Hunter S. Thompson said reality is angle. It shifts if you think about it too much, or too little.

Phone vibrated. Another message, the guy.

'Curious. The manuscript speaks of a guy leaving a manuscript at a fair. Are you messing with me?'

Victor felt a plunge. He read the message again. The manuscript spoke of this?

He sat, beer in hand, opened the manuscript. A glance. Just to check. He flipped through pages, until a paragraph exploded in his eyes.

'Giulio’s descent into madness mirrored the city’s crumbling infrastructure…'

Victor froze. Giulio.

Heart missed a beat. Who the hell was Giulio?

He flipped pages, frantic. Read the paragraph again, again. Ink seemed to move on the paper. The name, there, always there. But he didn't remember. Did he write it?

No. No, this part, not his. Couldn't be.

Hands sweated. The fair's noise, muffled. The manuscript, changed. Or was it always like this, and he saw it only now?

What if Victor wasn't Victor?

What if he was Giulio?

No. No. Nonsense. Calm down.

Find the murder.

He flipped, skipped pages. The book, about him. He knew. Felt it. Each line swallowed him, the plot twisting like a burning page.

Then he found the passage.

'The body lay on the fair floor, amidst stalls and voices. No one noticed the murder at first. The victim's phone vibrated, a message unread: "Look behind you."'

Victor's eyes widened. The description. There.

The book spoke of him.

Phone vibrated on the table.

Victor didn't want to look.

Fingers moved on their own. Screen lit. A new message.

'Look behind you.'

The story, written.

And he, choice-less."

The more I read it, the more I thought it had potential, but suddenly a horrible doubt came to me. The manuscript I left there... was it the one I thought I had written, or was it another? A text that described exactly my day, the present moment, this conversation? If someone had opened it, what would they have found? A detailed narrative up to that exact point, up to the reading of that message?

I took the phone with sweaty hands. I wrote:

"Can you send me a photo of the first page?"

The guy saw it, remained silent for a few seconds. Then he replied.

"Better not."

I felt my heart stop for a moment. What did it mean?

Then another message.

"Look at page 47."

I froze. My hands trembled. I opened the manuscript to page 47.

Victor. His room. The awareness that the book was about him. But it was impossible. Victor had written that scene. Or was he Giulio?

My blood froze. I scrolled through the text. The protagonist realized, line by line, that he was not reading the future. He was creating it. If he continued to read, the murder would happen. But if I didn't read?

My eyes fell on the last sentence of page 47.

Victor raised his head. He felt a breath behind him. A hand brushed his shoulder. The blow came dry, precise, inevitable.

Victor didn't want to turn around.

And you're still reading. You shouldn't. But now it's too late."