It was a dreary day. The clouds engulfed the sky, and the colors above were nothing but dull shades of gray. The rain continued to fall, just as it had all week, leaving the ground muddy and full of puddles. My wife was still away on a trip with her friends from her knitting club. The kids were nowhere nearby—hours away, scattered across different towns with their own families. It was just me, alone on this dreary day, and to say the least, I was pretty depressed.
Tired of doing nothing, I went looking for things to keep myself busy. I finally fixed the leaking sink my wife had been pestering me about and repaired some creaky floorboards in the hallway. Then the attic stairs faintly caught my eye. My wife had mentioned, years ago, that she wanted me to take care of something up there, though I couldn’t remember what it was. I figured that once I got up there, it would come back to me.
I pulled the string, and the attic stairs dropped down, sending dust everywhere. Before I could even think about climbing up, I had to grab the vacuum and clean the mess. I was annoyed, but I had already made the mess, so I cleaned it up anyway.
I started up the stairs, but one board after another cracked beneath me. My frustration grew. I tried to shimmy up by stepping on the remaining edges of the wood. Finally, I grabbed the edge of the landing and hoisted myself up, using what felt like 150% of my strength. I made it. My eyes darted around the attic as I stood, trying to remember what my wife had wanted me to do.
The attic wasn’t big, but it was packed with so much stuff that it was hard to move without bumping into something. Everything was covered in inches of dust. I noticed a partially opened box filled with my kids’ old baby clothes. The sight made me unexpectedly sad—time had passed so quickly, and now they had families of their own. I carried the box toward the entrance, thinking that the next time they visited, I could give it to them for their own children.
As I continued searching through the attic, I finally spotted the small window, buried under piles of old belongings. On the window ledge sat a book with a strange title. It was simply called Story. Nothing else. I picked it up, intrigued.
I read the first page, and my heart dropped. I kept reading, faster and faster. The more I read, the more confused I became. I had never seen this book before, yet it was all about me—my life, how I met my wife in college, the wild stories from my younger years, the births of my children, even secrets I had never spoken aloud. I was terrified. How had this book gotten here? Who wrote it? How long had it been sitting in this attic?
My breathing grew shallow. I flipped to the end of the book and read the last few pages. What I found horrified me. It described this exact moment—me in the attic, looking for something, eventually finding a box of old photographs my wife had asked me to retrieve two years ago. It said it was a dreary day. And then it said I suddenly suffered a heart attack and died right there in the attic.
I began to question everything. How did this book know what hadn’t happened yet? How did it know my life? Was everything I knew just part of this book? Would I really die here? Was I even real?
I couldn’t understand any of it. I tried to make my way toward the attic opening, but my heart began pounding at an alarming rate. My vision blurred, my body stiffened, and the next thing I knew, I hit the floor. Everything went black.