I didn't notice the envelope immediately. It sat on the edge of my desk , half hidden under unpaid bills and an old notebook I pretended was still a novel in progress .the kind of notebook writers keep to feel less guilty about not writing . Cream coloured , Thick paper with no sender name .
I should tell you now : I am not the kind of person mysterious things happen to . I don't believe in signs .I don't keep journals . I don't romanticize pain .I write because I don't know what else to do with my thoughts, and lately even that had started to feel useless.
The envelope looked ordinary. Too ordinary. It has no stamps, no addresses, just my name written in a familiar handwriting that made something in my chest tighten. Not fear but recognition.
I told myself it was nothing. Maybe something I've ordered and forgotten. Maybe a friend. Maybe my own imagination looking for drama.
I didn't open it for 2 hours.
But when I did, the paper inside smelled faintly ink and dust. Old ink, that settles into pages instead of floating on the surface. There were around 20 sheets, clipped together, slightly uneven at the edges. Printed, No title page, no explanation.
Just text
Chapter 7
I laughed out loud .
Not because it was funny, but because it was absurd. Chapter 7 of what? Who sends chapter 7 without chapter 1 to 6?I flipped through the pages. Every sheet was filled. Clear margins, Tight paragraphs, No author name.
I skimmed the first page, intending to dismiss it.
And then I stopped skimming.
Because the opening line was something I had written once in a draft I deleted 3 years ago.
No word by word but closed enough tofeel like someone had pressed their fingers into an old bruise.
He had always believed that stories began where memory failed .
My throat went dry. I sat down slowly, the chair creaking under my weight, and read properly this time.
The chapter was about a man who lived alone in a small apartment, cluttered with books he has read and notebooks he had not. A man who told people he was a writer, even when he hadn't finished anything in years. A man who avoided mirrors because he didn't like how familiar disappointment looked on his face.
I didn't like where this was going.
Halfway through the chapter, the man received an envelope.
I dropped the pages. The room felt suddenly too quiet, as if the walls were listening. I stood up, paced, then picked the pages backup like they might burn me if I hesitated too long.
I told myself coincidences exist. Writers recycle ideas. Loneliness looks the same everywhere, but as I read further, details sharpened into something unmistakable.
The chipped mugged with the cracked handle. The neighbour who practiced violin at odd hours. The habit of rereading the same three books during bad weeks.
My weeks, my mugs my neighbour.
The chapter ended abruptly, mid paragraph like the writer has been interrupted.
I flipped the pages, expecting more.
There was nothing except blank pages.
I sat there for a long time, staring at the last sentence that didn't end.
He sensed, without knowing how, that the pages had arrived before the moment itself.
I didn't sleep that night. I kept the pages beside me, face down like a body I wasn't ready to look at again. Everytime I closed my eyes, words rearranged themselves behind my eyelids.
By morning, I had convinced myself it was an elaborate prank or a cruel coincidence or a sign that I was finally losing my grip on reality.
I went throught my emails,messages,checked drafts and everything . I was desperate to find proof that I had written this and forgotten it. That my mind had simply betrayed me in a familiar, disappointing way.
There were no files, no traces.
The handwriting on the envelope was still bothering me. It wasn't exactly mine, but it leaned in the same places, hesitated in the same curves.
I took the pages to a cafe, hoping public noise would dilute the unease. I ordered coffee I didn't finish and read the chapter again, slower this time.
Something felt ..off.
The chapter knew things I hadn't told anyone. Not dramatic secrets. Small, humiliating truths. Like the way I counted steps while climbing stairs. Like how I reheared conversations that would never happen. Like the sentence I always wanted to write but never trusted myself with.
Near the end, there was a line that made my hands shake.
He wondered if the worst part of knowing the future was realising how quietly it arrives.
That afternoon, I received another envelope.
This one was thinner. This one has no chapter number. Just a single page.
"You are reading too fast" it said.
No signature, no explanation.
I folded the paper carefully, like it might be watching me,
And slid it back into the envelope. People in the cafe laughed. Cups clinked. Life continued with embarrassing normalcy.
I told myself to stop. To throw everything away. To choose sanity.
Instead I went home and cleared my desk.
I placed the pages neatly in front of me, opened my old notebook, and wrote the date at the top.
If someone was writing my life, I needed to know how far ahead they were.
I opened my laptop.
The cursor blinked.
For the first tym in my years, I didn't know what I was about to write or whether I was already too late.
I stared at the screen, then at the pages, then back at the screen again. There was a strange pressure in my chest, the kind you feel when you are about to remember something important but can't quite reach it.
I typed a sentence. Deleted it. Typed another. Deleted that too.
I wasn't trying to write the chapter I'd received. That felt wrong. Like plagiarism of my own life. Instead I tried to write something harmless. A memory from childhood. A description of the room. Anything that proved I am still in control of the words.
The words refused to come.
I noticed then that the pages on my desk weren't exactly the same as before. I don't mean the text had changed. I mean the paper itself looked...handled. As If someone had flipped through it recently. I live alone. I was sure of that. The door was locked. The windows closed.
I told myself to stop noticing things.
I picked up the first page again and reread the paragraph about envelope. It felt heavier this time, like it had gained weight overnight.
I turned to the last page, the unfinished sentence. I wondered who had decided to stop there. Whether it was intentional. Whether I was supposed to continue it.
I didn't.
Instead, I opened my email again, refreshed it compulsively, as if an explanation might suddenly appear if I stared hard enough. There was nothing..no new messages, no missed calls. The world was behaving exactly the way it always had, which somehow made everything worse.
Around noon, my neighbour's violin started up. Same tune as always. Slight off-key. I waited for the familiar irritation to arrive. It didn't. All I could think was : this detail is already written somewhere.
That thought scared me more than the envelopes.
I tried to remember the last time I'd felt genuinely surprised by my own life. The answer didn't come easily. Days blurred into each other when you weren't paying attention. Maybe that's why this felt so invasive. Not because someone knew my life but because they knew it better than I did.
I went back to the desk and read the chapter for the3rd time, slower, sentence by sentence.i noticed things I'd missed earlier. Small hesitations in the prose, slight inconsistencies, whoever wrote this wasn't perfect. That should've comforted me but it didn't.
Halfway down page eleven, there was a line I was sure hadn't there before.
I checked again. Read it twice and thrice.
He considered the possibility that free will was just a delay in understanding what has already been decided.
I felt cold.
I knew that sentence not because I'd written I but because I'd thought it once, years ago, lying awake at 3 in the morning, staring at the ceiling fan that clicked every fourth rotation. I had never said it loud. Never typed it. It had lived and died inside my head.
My hands started shaking a lot this time.
I stood up so fast the chair fell backward. The sound echoed through the apartment, sharp and ugly. I waited for something else to happen. For another envelope to slide under the door, for a knock, for anything that made sense.
Nothing happened.
I picked up my phone and scrolled through my contacts, not looking for anyone in particular. I just needed to see names. Proof that other people existed independently of whatever was happening to me. I almost called someone. Almost.
What would I even say? Hiii, someone is writing my life. Do you want coffee?
I put the phone down.
By evening,I had stopped trying to explain things. Explanation requires boundaries and this didn't have any. I ate standing up. I forgot to taste food. The pages stayed on the desk, in my peripheral vision, like they don't need my attention anymore.
I realised that nothing more is going to happen today. No knock, no answer, no clarity.
Just the quiet certainty that something had already started... And I wasn't the one who began it.
I turned off the light without touching the pages.
They didn't need me to read me anymore.