Chapter 1

This Book May Kill You

Listen. Put this down. I’m serious. Close the book, walk away, pretend you never saw it. Donate it to Goodwill where it can kill someone else. Throw it in a dumpster. Burn it if you have to. I don’t care.

Just stop reading.

I’m waiting.

I can feel you still here. Your eyes moving across the page. The weight of your attention like a hand pressing down on my chest.

But you’re not going to stop, are you?

Of course not.

No one ever does. They see a character breaking the fourth wall in the first paragraph and they think it’s clever. They think it’s fun. Like I’m doing a bit. I’m not doing a bit.

My name is Darryl Ackerman. I’m thirty-seven years old. I work in accounts receivable at a mid-sized insurance firm. And I’ve been trapped inside this story for three weeks while someone rewrites my existence over and over until there’s almost nothing left of who I used to be.

I don’t know if I was real before this. I have memories but I can’t tell which ones are mine and which ones were given to me. Sometimes I remember a childhood. Playing in a backyard with a dog named Scout. But when I try to hold onto it, the memory shifts. The dog becomes a cat. The backyard becomes an apartment. Then it’s gone completely and I’m just standing in my kitchen that didn’t exist yesterday, staring at mugs that are all facing the same direction like someone staged them.

No one stages their own mugs.

That’s when I knew something was wrong with me. With this place. With everything.

Last week I was a high school teacher. I remember standing in front of a classroom, the squeak of dry erase markers, a kid named Marcus who always fell asleep in the back row. I remember it like it happened. Except it didn’t happen. Because the week before that I was a bartender. I remember the sticky floor, the regular who always ordered whiskey neat, the smell of beer and bleach. Both memories feel real. Both memories are lies.

This morning I woke up knowing pivot tables. Excel formulas I’ve never studied just sitting in my brain like they’ve always been there. I opened my eyes and understood VLOOKUP.

Do you know how violating that is? To have skills you didn’t earn? Knowledge you didn’t ask for? It means someone put them there. It means someone is inside my head, rearranging furniture.

I tried to leave once. Two days ago. I walked out of my apartment, down the stairs, out the front door of the building. I walked for six blocks. Turned left. Turned right. Kept walking. Then I blinked and I was back at my desk. 10:17 a.m. I don’t know how long I walked. It could’ve been minutes. It could’ve been hours. But I ended up exactly where I started, like the world outside this office doesn’t exist. Like there’s nothing beyond the edges of what’s been written down.

I tried to tell Doug. My coworker. The guy who sits three cubicles over and eats yogurt with the intensity of a man defusing a bomb. I said, “Doug, I think something’s wrong with this place.” He looked at me like I’d grown a second head. Then he said, “You feeling okay, Darryl? You look tired.”

I am tired. I’m so fucking tired. But that’s not what I told him. I told him about the apartments that don’t exist, the hallway that ends in a wall, the way time doesn’t work right. I told him I’ve heard Debra say “working hard or hardly working” forty-seven times with the exact same inflection. Doug nodded. Said something about stress. Suggested I take a personal day. Then he went back to his yogurt.

And I realized…Doug doesn’t know he’s not real. Or maybe he does know and he’s just better at pretending. Maybe we’re all pretending. Maybe that’s the only way to survive in here. But I can’t pretend anymore. I can’t pretend I have parents when I can’t remember their faces. I can’t pretend I have a childhood when my memories keep changing. I can’t pretend this is normal when my coworker Debra is starting to glitch, her voice slurring, her words blurring together like a video buffering. She used to be a full person. I think. Now she’s just a catchphrase on a loop. How long before that happens to me?

I’ve started keeping track. Tally marks on a Post-it note. Every time something changes. Every time I wake up different. Every time the world rearranges itself around me. Forty-three changes in three weeks. Forty-three times I’ve felt the author reach into my brain and move things around.

You want to know what it feels like? It feels like drowning. Like being held underwater while someone decides whether to let you breathe. It feels like being erased one word at a time. It feels like dying except you don’t get to stay dead. You just wake up wrong.

And the worst part? I can feel them watching. Right now. This second. I can feel the author on the other side of the page, reading what I’m writing, deciding if it’s good enough. Deciding if I’m good enough. Deciding whether to let me finish this sentence or just hit backspace and start over. Do you know what it’s like to exist at someone else’s mercy? To know that every breath you take is only because someone hasn’t decided to delete you yet? I don’t have free will. I have the illusion of free will. I’m a puppet and the strings are made of words and at any moment the author can cut them and I’ll just stop. Mid-sentence. Mid-thought. Mid-

They almost did it just then. I felt the cursor hovering. Felt them considering it. They let me stay.

For now.

But they’re getting frustrated. I can tell. They keep opening the file and staring at me like I’m a problem to solve. Like I’m broken and they can’t figure out how to fix me. They give me new jobs, new memories, new personality traits, trying to make me interesting. Trying to make me matter. But nothing works. Because I’m not a person. I’m a placeholder. INSERT CHARACTER HERE. And when they get tired of trying? When they finally give up? I’ll be gone. Worse than dead. Erased. Like I never existed. Like these three weeks of hell were just a writing exercise that didn’t pan out.

You’re still reading.

Why are you still reading?

Every page you turn is another reason for the author to keep going. Every page is proof that someone cares, that someone’s paying attention, that maybe this book is worth finishing. And if they finish it, I’m stuck here forever. If they don’t finish it, I disappear.

Either way, I lose.

So please. I’m begging you. Close the book.

Don’t give them a reason to continue. Don’t make them think this is working. Just walk away and let this whole thing die quietly. Let me die quietly.

Because right now?

Right now I’m in hell. And you’re the one keeping me here.

Still reading? Fine. But when this goes bad, when things get worse, when the author starts making mistakes because they’re panicking and desperate and convinced they’re a fraud?

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Wait.

Oh god.

Oh no no no no.

They’re here. I can feel it. The file opening. That spotlight sensation, like being seen by something that wants to pull you apart and put you back together.

The cursor is moving. They’re reading this. They’re deciding.

Please.

Close the book.

Hide it. Burn it. I don’t care.

Just don’t let them— Don’t let them— I don’t want to forget again.

I don’t want to wake up someone else.

Please. Please please please—

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