The Annex

I wake up in the library. It’s the middle of the day.

No. Wait.

I wake up in the library. It’s the middle of the night. 

That’s right. The lights were off. The building was quiet. It was the middle of the night and the library was closed. That’s the last thing I remember.

Then why do I hear people upstairs? Why does my phone say it’s 2:30 in the afternoon?

Pause. Take a breath.

I’m in the library right now. It’s the middle of the day. But where exactly am I? I’ve never been in this section of the library before. The building was renovated a few years ago, so everything is modern - straight lines and open spaces and shiny monolithic surfaces, but this place...this place is showing its age. It looks like a vast medieval wine cellar, except the bottles have been replaced with books, row after row of large leather bound books, identical, as if volumes of a single infinite set. There aren’t any windows that I can see, in fact, I don’t even see any walls, the harsh fluorescent strip lights can't penetrate the oppressive shadows creeping inward through the expansive maze of shelving. There's a faint odor - likely mold - and a perceptible denseness to the air. 

The basement annex. That’s right. I remember this place now. I was here once before. Was it a year ago?

It was the weekend before exams and I was looking for a quiet place to study among the crowds of coffee-addled kids in tank tops and sweats pulling all-nighters. I was about to give up and go back to my dorm when I nearly tripped over a sign for the library annex, pointing down a dark hallway. I never even knew we had an annex.

So that’s when I was here before. My memories come flooding over me all at once, but I can’t hold on to anything as a thousand moments all spill together and crash down like a wave. And I can already feel the wave receding, the memories drifting farther into the periphery. Something important feels like it’s being lost. I need to remember before it’s gone forever.

There's a figure in front of me. Something is being taken. Destroyed.

No. That’s another memory for another time. I need to focus.

I’m in the library annex. Despite the mold and the dim lighting, the place is quiet and that’s perfect. I wipe off the dust and sit down in one of the large leatherback chairs haphazardly squeezed between shelves. I pull out my textbooks, notebooks, pens, and paper, organize them all neatly in front of me, and promptly fall asleep.

And that’s when I wake up in the middle of the night. The memory is becoming clearer. The library was closed. It’s quiet and the air feels still, stagnant, even for an out of the way corner of a forgotten library annex. But there’s something else that seems to suck all the air out of the room. I get up and wander down the center aisle. Endless shelves of books tower over me on either side and seem to pull me towards them.  It’s the books. There’s something about them - a force, an energy - that screams for my attention. As I walk further into their depths, the scream grows to a roar. The feeling intensifies until it reaches a fever pitch and then...

It stops.

I stopped walking as the books fell silent. As I looked around, a single book caught my eye. A single book out of a thousand identical copies. It wasn’t screaming like before, forcing itself on me. It was quieter this time, gently calling me over.  

My memories are failing me. I try to hold onto them, but they keep slipping through my fingers. I remember the large pieces, but not how they fit together or the small spaces in between. For example, I don’t remember picking the book off the shelf and I don’t really even remember holding it. But I remember the gold letters emblazoned on the cover, the meticulous cross stitching that magically spelled out my very own name. I don’t remember opening the book, but I remember the first line accurately documenting my name, birthday, birthplace, and the names of all my family members. But I don’t remember how long it took me to fully realize what this book was. Did I suspect immediately, or was it after I flipped ahead and read about my first grade field trip to the Grand Canyon, the one where I fell and broke my arm? Or was it when I read about my parent’s divorce, or my high school graduation, or my dog dying? All the substantive moments of my life, all contained in a book with my name on it. Did my brain fight against the obvious or did I easily accept that this was my life story. That someone or something had written down every detail of my life and then left it to gather dust in an abandoned library annex? 

And what about the blank pages, nearly the last two thirds of the entire book. Did I understand that this was my future, yet to be written? What mental gymnastics were required to accept the impossible. Did it shock or frighten me? Or was a part of me always waiting for confirmation of my own importance. What better confirmation than a book chronicling every last detail of my life. 

I must have stayed up the whole night reading the book without even realizing it, because my next memory is a voice telling me that this area of the library was for faculty only. It was the next day and the library had re-opened. I stash the book in my bookbag, weave past a couple shelves and then back down the hallway. I leave the annex, sneak the book past security, and head back to my dorm.

Something is in my dorm. Something is holding the book. It looks as if the universe has been split open, like a tear in the fabric of space. I’ve seen something like this before, but I can’t tell if it’s a dream or a memory. The figure opens the book.

I’m in my dorm, but the memories are blurred and fading once again. I just brought the book back from the library. I flip to the back and see the blank pages. I fip to the middle and find the last written page. It’s a brief retelling of my trip home from the library. I flip one page forward to the next empty page and grab a pen.

It was my first test. What happens if I write in the blank pages? Can I write something into existence or narrate the future? I can’t remember what it was, but surely I started small. Something with low stakes. Maybe straight A’s on my upcoming exams.  As the pen reached toward the blank page, the universe seemed to split open. And that was it. I had seen this before because I had created it. It was a small split, where the pen landed, a blot of ink turned into a tear-drop shaped rip right through the page of the book, through the spine of the universe, into an infinite beyond. My pen dipped into the vastness, and pulled out the exact sentence I intended to write. The pen made motions across the page, and from the ‘rip’, a smooth column of ink expanded and snaked its way across the page, each line and curve contorting until it formed words. I will make straight A’s on my exams.

No. That can’t be it. I certainly tried that. I tried to wish for the universe to give me a shortcut to success, but it didn’t work like that. After trial and error I learned that I couldn’t get the universe to just give me something. There were rules. And I couldn’t affect other people’s actions or decisions. Nothing would happen. My pen would move across the page. But no ink would come out. No universe would open up. I learned that I could only influence myself. If the book was my life, it only gave me the ability to determine my actions. Granted, this is something we all have to an extent, but now the book turned it into a superpower. 

I remember what I wrote. I started small. At first I tried, “I made an A on all my exams,” but nothing happened. Then “I knew all the material that would be on the exams,” but nothing happened. Finally, “I studied all night and learned all the material on the exams,” and with that, the universe opened for me. Sure, I still had to stay up all night and study. But I had now memorialized it in ink, I had pre-ordained my future so that none of my normal excuses could break the bond. I wasn’t captive to inspiration or motivation, or being too tired, or too busy, or just lazy. If I decided I wanted to do something, I could write it down, confident that I would do it. I could finally get the courage to ask my boss for a raise or ask out that girl in my English class. Or I could will myself to learn guitar, or Spanish, or how to cook. The book had its limitations but it gave me the opportunity to decide who I wanted to be and write it into existence.

The rip in the fabric of the universe. The figure in front of me. I try to push this memory aside, but the figure won’t let me. The figure doesn’t speak, it just stands there staring at me. The figure is tall, and while it seems to resemble a person - it has a head and some sort of face, a body, arms and legs - it is something else entirely.  It feels transparent and immaterial but at the same time so heavy that everything seems to be slowly collapsing into it. 

The memory crystallizes for a brief moment. The figure held the book, and without speaking any words, it made me understand. The book wasn’t mine. I was never supposed to have it. And I certainly wasn’t supposed to steal it and use it. Whatever it was that I had used it for in the past year, I still can’t remember, it was obvious to me that I had committed a crime. Some cosmic line had been crossed and this figure was here to offer correction. It was here for my punishment.

The figure slowly opened the book, his gaze never wavering from me. The hands gently turned to the very last page, delicately gripped the top corner,  and in one slow smooth gesture, the page was ripped from its binding, floating to the floor. Then the next page. And the next. Slowly, methodically, the figure ripped days, weeks, years from my life. I was powerless to stop him. I could only sit there, watching my future death grow closer day by day. Understanding that this was my punishment. Five years, the figure said wordlessly. I had the book for one year, and in payment, I would give up five years. So I watched as the figure tore page after page, and a dull sense of loss took its place, like a small anxiety tickling the back of my mind. One year. Two years. Three years. The figure slowly, meticulously, sent page after page drifting to the floor.  And at the end of the fourth year, the figure stopped.

Slowly he flipped back towards the middle of the book until he came to the very last written page. He paused as if reading what would have been a near instantaneous description of this very moment, although his head never moved, his gaze never broke from its icy stare. Gracefully, his hands again began sweeping through, tearing page after page, again working his way backward, as if tracing my life back to the scene of the crime. And this time, the loss was no longer distant and abstract. As his hands reached for each page, they seemed to be also reaching inside me. Jolts of pain shot through me as a hole seemed to open inside me. 

The figure kept ripping until he reached the beginning of this whole thing, nearly one year ago. And then I understood. The universe couldn’t just let me live out the rest of my life with the knowledge of this book. So it either had to take my life or take my knowledge. And it decided to take both. This whole time I’ve been fighting the failings of my memory, as if it was just dreams naturally drifting away, and not memories being forcefully excised from my brain. And even now, I feel the emptiness inside me growing larger, the last year’s memories working their way out of my life forever.

I have to remember before it’s too late.

I wake up in a library. It’s the middle of the night.

No. I wake up in a library. It’s the middle of the day.

No. I wake up in my dorm. It’s the morning. I wake up at my parent’s house. I wake up at my friends place. Three hundred days. A million small memories. All passing through me at once. I need to focus. Just find a single memory in the noise.

I had the book and my first test was eventually a success. With a single sentence, and a night of studying, I had made straight A’s on my exams. But I can’t remember what I did next. The future was open wide before me, but I didn’t use it right away.There was no reason to rush. I just needed to decide what I wanted and I could make it happen. I must have taken weeks before I wrote in the book again, carefully weighing my options, taking time to determine what I wanted to do, who I wanted to become. And even then, when I dared open the book again, when the blank pages seemed to demand something impressive and bold, I kept my ambitions small. Maybe I forced myself to exercise or eat healthy. Nothing big, just another small step to test the limitations of the book’s power. More time went by, and I continued to contemplate my next action. There were too many possibilities to decide. I wanted to do something big, but everything I could think of seemed too small, too trivial. The blankness of the pages became overwhelming. So I waited for inspiration to strike me. I waited for my future to come to me. Maybe I used the book here or there when I needed it. To help me focus. To help me overcome my own inhibitions. But nothing really changed. I didn’t change.

I had the power to carefully reshape my life into everything I always dreamed of. But not knowing I’d ever have access to this power, I had never thought to dream of anything. So I set the book down and more time passed. The book began to collect dust, and eventually I stopped thinking about the book all together. Everyone knows if you find a magic lamp, your first wish is to ask for unlimited wishes. But nobody ever knows what that second wish should be. 

And maybe that was why I was being punished. I had a year with the book. A year with my future spread out before me. I had a gift and I failed to use it. A year of my life wasted, and soon gone forever.

As the figure completed his performance, he carefully closed the book and set it gently on the desk. I don’t remember how exactly the figure left my room, whether back through the ‘rip’, sealing it up behind him, or whether he just disappeared, his spirit dissolving into the air. I remember picking the book up, one last time, careful not to open it. But I don’t remember taking it back to the library, back to the annex, back to the shelf I once stole it from. And I don’t remember once again falling asleep. And pretty soon, I won’t remember any of this.

I wake up in the library. It’s the middle of the day. But where exactly am I? I’ve never been in this section of the library before.