I thought I knew what reality was. I was always the type of person to have everything put together to the best of my ability. I put my wallet in the same place every time I come home and I’ve yet to lose it in ten years. I brush my teeth twice a day, floss at least once a day. I still wear the retainer I’ve had since I was a teenager getting off my braces. I clean my bedding regularly, I iron my clothes, and unless it’s an extreme circumstance, I never show up late to any meeting. Professional or casual.
I run a fairly successful business, and I know that in our current day, that’s not something to take for granted. I make sure I do things right, I always plan ahead.
All this is to say, I know what my life is. I know who I am, what I value, what I do and what I don’t. I needed to write this down, just to prove that I can. Just to prove what happened was something. It wasn’t nothing. It couldn’t have been nothing. How could nothing be something?
It was late. I don’t know the exact time, but if I had to guess, it was about 2AM. I was woken up by something. I looked around at my surroundings to see what could have alerted me. My bedroom is very simple, a cheap, IKEA bedframe, a similarly cheap dresser by my bed side. White walls, walk-in closet, single overhead light, and a clock over the door frame I couldn’t see. Scarce moonlight was the only means of seeing anything when night fell in my bedroom.
I’m a deep sleeper, and when I fall asleep, I tend to be able to sleep just as long as I need to. So to wake up to nothing was particularly unusual for me. I tried to go back to sleep, but every single time I started to drift off, I found myself waking up again.
I tried to go back to sleep at least three times, before standing. I was irritated. I had plans that I would need to be well rested for, and this disturbance of my sleep was hampering that. If I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t perform my best, and if I couldn’t perform my best…
It was as I began to spiral in anger did I notice something off. Just to the right side of the doorframe, just as I was about to walk out into the rest of my home, I saw a calendar. The type you hang up on a wall and write plans into the margins between the dates. I had a similar one in my kitchen, but this calendar was noticeably different. Even in the faint natural light from my window, I could see the calendar was crumpled, stained, and yellowed with age. There was a stale smell in the air, and I could see massive letters scrawled on the month the booklet was opened to.
“OUT OF YOUR CONTROL” Said the calendar, on the month of march.
I ran to my bedroom window. No signs of a break-in. I ran out into the hallway leading to my front door. But just as I rounded the corner, I tripped. My face hit the hardwood floor hard. My teeth absorbed much of the impact, and I felt my heart drop at the possibility of having lost one of them. Thankfully there was no permanent damage, though my gums were bleeding slightly.
More importantly, once I got up off the floor to check, my front door was completely fine. No signs of any kind of break-in, still locked just as I left it. Now I wasn’t as afraid, mostly just irritated. Someone was playing some kind of prank on me, and I was not in the mood. I had to look at the calendar again.
I grabbed a flashlight from my supply closet, batteries still fresh. I went back to my bedroom and shined my light on the suspicious planner. It was only then did I notice another piece of writing on the page for March.
“Turn me please :)” It said, nestled neatly in the bottom right corner of the page.
Much less intimidating than the other writing, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to listen. I flipped the page to see another set of bold, messy words under the name of the next month.
“YOU CANNOT STOP IT” April said.
I flipped again.
“THE DAYS WON’T STOP” May added.
I flipped again.
“ALL YOU CAN DO IS WATCH”
I couldn’t stop flipping.
“JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT COULDN’T GET ANY BETTER”
The words started to blur, I barely took the time to read them in full. Yet they also started to seem more well written. The faster I tried to escape the lettering, the more sharp and comprehensive they became.
“THE FUNNIEST PART IS”
I felt a cold sweat form on every square inch of my skin. For whatever reason, this text made me stop in my tracks. My hands shook. I didn’t want to flip it again, but I had to. I couldn’t stop. I needed to know what else it said.
“YOU’RE DOING THIS TO YOURSELF”
I barely read the text before flipping the month again. I continued to flip, I continued to fear, I continued to obey.
Month after month after month after month, it wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop. The months lost order, appearing in complete random. April into June into January into December into August. The grid of days didn’t make sense either. Some days appeared longer than others, some days took up half the month, some days didn’t exist.
I didn’t want to read any of the text, I didn’t want to keep looking at this weird calendar, I didn’t want to be awake. But I couldn’t stop. I realized then that the calendar was right. I was doing this to myself, and it was completely out of my control.
The text I was trying to ignore wouldn’t let me off so easily. It dragged my eyes back to their jet-black letters.
And then, I felt the calendar near its end. The pages, which seemed infinite, finally began to run out. Only a few more pages remained, until the final month was reached. And the final month showed the longest string of words up to that point.
“YOUR NAME IS OZYMANDIAS, KING OF KINGS; LOOK ON YOUR WORKS, AND DESPAIR!”
The words were written in cursive, perfectly spaced and aligned with itself. But most noticeably, this page of the calendar had only one square for one specific day. The exact date burned itself in my mind. The square had been circled hundreds of times with the same black ink of all the writing before. And within the date, a single entry on a to-do list.
March 15th, 2044. In the circled date: “THE END”
The calendar ended there, and just as I flipped to the end, I started to feel something clog my throat. I was rather nauseous from anxiety, and I thought vomit was trying to escape my esophagus. But instead of a release, I instead felt wet pulp somehow begin to choke me. I grabbed hold of my throat and tried to make for the bathroom, but I had already ran out of air before I could even make it out of the door to my bedroom. I choked until I fainted.
I woke up in my bed the morning after. I sighed in relief. A nightmare. It was rare for me to have them, but it would explain everything. I rose from my bed, trying to shake off the odd feeling of the experience. Then I turned to check the time, and I noticed it.
The stain on my wall, next to the door, right where the calendar was. A brownish-yellow tinge, indicative of mold. Closer to a sweat stain than a spill of wine. And I would have been happy to walk past it and ignore it as something I simply hadn’t noticed before, if there wasn’t a distinct taste left in my mouth upon seeing the square outline.
The smell of paper filled my nostrils as I stared at the stain, and the mucousy texture of paper pulp graced the tip of my tongue. I felt my throat seize, my heart begin to race, the ticks of my wall clock ringing in my ears like the sonorous clang of a church bell. I didn’t want to go to work anymore.
I’ve been inside ever since, frantically searching online for any explanation. There isn’t one. That’s why I had to write this down. To find answers, but also to warn others.
I don’t believe in a higher power, at least not one that interferes with our lives. But if there was ever a sign of something else, a sign that the world isn’t simply bound to the laws and conventions we’ve discovered, I believe it was this. And I believe this was only a warning.