We Want Your Story

“Gladys. You. Will. LOVE IT!” Mary said, as she thrust the large tome into my arms.

“Oh, no thank you. I’m not really looking for–”

“No, you have to read it. The main character is SO you!” She interjected. Before I had a chance to refuse the offer of this giant book, which I had no way of effectively carrying during my 2 mile walk home, she had said goodbye and she was on her way.

“Damnit.” I muttered to myself as I attempted to find a comfortable way to hold the book.

Mary was somewhere between an acquaintance and a friend. She treated friendships mainly as a means to gain access to various services, products, or benefits of some kind. That being said, she was usually tolerable, and tolerable was about the best I’d decided I could hope for in this strange world. 

She’d stopped me just as I was leaving work. I was excited to be done for the day. Done for the week, for that matter, and I was looking forward to taking a nice long stroll home in the rarely seen Pittsburgh sunshine. But so often I seem to end up carrying things home I wish I could leave behind. Books, stress, confrontations I’d had during the day with a particularly annoying coworker or customer; that sort of thing.

I briefly considered just leaving the book on a bench. After all, someone might find and enjoy it. On a nice day like today, all the walkers would be out, and some of them might be looking for their next read.

It was titled We Want Your Story. 

I assumed that the title was a cool way of breaking the fourth wall, as so many stories nowadays attempt to do. I think the author probably just wanted to try to make a catchy title, but It felt to me like he or she missed the mark. Or, maybe this feeling was simply due to my annoyance at the situation.

Flipping the book over, I saw that it had been written by “a group of willing participants”. I found this to be very odd. However, I liked odd. Odd was an old friend. In fact, odd usually won me over, especially when it came to books.

My curiosity piqued, I soldiered on, switching the book from hand to hand, elbow to elbow, and occasionally cradling it with both arms as if it was a priceless artifact. A book this massive, with such intricate binding, would, at the very least, probably get me a few bucks at the used book store. That is, if I ended up hating it and wanting to rid myself of it.

As I walked, I let my mind wander back to the day and week I’d had. A customer had been giving me a particularly difficult time as she attempted to return a pair of wireless headphones she had stepped on and subsequently destroyed.

“But WHY isn’t this covered by my warranty?” The woman asked for the fourth time.

“Ma’am, you didn’t purchase the warranty for these headphones. Even if you did, the warranty most likely wouldn’t cover this issue. If the warranty did cover this issue, you would have to go through the company who makes the headphones, not Best Buy.” I explained in as much detail as I could, yet again.

She stared at me, seemingly trying to destroy me with her mind like a supervillain. 

Reflecting on this interaction, I wondered what aliens might think if they were witnessing my verbal beat down from high above in their vessel. Would they be surprised at such an occurrence? Or did this sort of thing happen in their galaxy as well? It would be interesting to know whether assholes were universal or if it was unique to the human condition only in this dimension. If so, I’d be curious to hear a higher power’s reasoning for why he chose to allow these people the freedom to irritate everyone else on Earth. I briefly entertained the idea of starting a podcast based on this premise, then quickly realized that I did not want to do that for a variety of reasons. Chief among them: I don’t know how to start a podcast.

Finally, I made it to my street. I breathed a sigh of relief as my home came into view. I’d made it, 5 pound book in tow.

After getting inside, showering off, and scarfing down an unsatisfying microwave dinner. I finally settled down for the evening. With the sun still shining enough to provide some reading light out on my deck, I decided I would give this book a try.

As I cracked the spine, I immediately felt a sense of familiarity, as if I’d opened this book before, at this time, in this chair.

On the first page, instead of the usual copyright information, I saw only a short message, written directly in the middle of the page, in bold font. It read:

We want your story. Flip to the first page if you agree.

Odd, I thought to myself again, my spine tingling. But I flipped on past a few blank pages, until I reached the first chapter.

I began reading, but found myself feeling more and more apprehensive as I did. On the first page, I found out that the main character and I shared a name: Gladys. Perhaps it’s not the most unusual name in the world, but it certainly isn’t as common as a Maria or a Shannon.

As I scrolled down the first page, more was revealed that continued to put me on edge. Book Gladys’s family was exactly the same as mine: two sisters, a mother living in Florida, and a father who had just passed away last July from a heart attack.

Despite my growing fear, I found myself unable to stop reading. I read on and saw my entire life laid out. Eventually I even read about my interaction from today, with the woman complaining about her broken headphones. It was at this point I decided I’d had enough. I needed to destroy this book and never see it again. Something weird was going on, and it needed to stop right now.

However, I found myself unable to close the title, or even turn my head. I tried to scream and I pulled as hard as I could against the forces keeping me in place, but the harder I fought, the more I was drawn towards the book. 

Just as I felt the pulling stop, I found myself enclosed in a dark, seemingly dimensionless space. I could no longer feel my body, nor could I talk, hear or see. It was as if I was now only mind, with no physical presence. After a seemingly endless period in a panicked state, unable to scream or move, a voice cut through the silence: “Thank you for your story, our readers will love it.”