Your Life

A slight drizzle fell over Kolkata, casting the city in a humid haze as Sudeep walked past the narrow alleyways of College Street. Bookstores lined the street like forgotten relics of an older time, their wooden shelves brimming with worn-out novels, some stacked on the pavement for display. On days like this, when the burden of his loneliness pressed heavier than usual, Sudeep would wander through these bookstores, hoping to stumble upon something to escape his own thoughts.

He had grown used to the silence in his life — the friends who had drifted, the family that felt more like strangers. His job as a marketing consultant kept him busy, but it was mechanical, draining, leaving him hollow by the time he reached his small, dark apartment every evening.

Today, something caught his eye — a thin, weathered book, its cover frayed and stained. The title, in fading golden letters, read Your Life. Sudeep paused. The title tugged at something inside him, a peculiar curiosity he couldn’t explain. He knelt down and picked it up. There was no author’s name, no publishing details. He turned the pages; they were yellowed, brittle, as though they had been waiting for years to be opened.

He flipped to the first page and froze.

The words described him. Not just his name or his job — it went deeper. His childhood, his parents, the quiet way they drifted apart, leaving him in the care of his grandmother. The awkward teenage years, the heartbreaks, the solitary weekends spent reading. Every event, every thought, every moment of his life was laid out in perfect detail.

With a mixture of fascination and dread, he kept reading. The pages seemed to anticipate his thoughts, recounting moments he had buried deep. The time he had cried after failing an exam in the tenth grade. The quiet joy when he bought his first bicycle. Even last night’s dinner — a simple plate of rice and daal, eaten while watching a re-run of an old movie — was written out with eerie precision.

“This can’t be real,” Sudeep whispered to himself, his heart racing. His mind searched for

an explanation. Maybe it was some bizarre coincidence, a trick his tired brain was playing on him. But the words on the page were too specific, too detailed. He closed the book, his hand trembling slightly. The rain outside had stopped, and the sounds of the city returned — the rickshaws, the distant honking of cars, the hum of conversations. Everything felt strangely distant, as if the world outside had shifted just slightly.

Sudeep stood there for a moment, unsure whether to put the book back or to take it home. The logical part of him urged him to walk away, to dismiss it as a strange oddity, but his curiosity gnawed at him. What would the next page reveal? Would it predict his future? With a sense of foreboding excitement, he stuffed the book into his bag and hurried back to his apartment.

As soon as he reached home, he switched on the dim light in his room and sat down, the book in his lap. His fingers trembled as he flipped to where he had left off.

The narrative continued, now detailing the moment he picked up Your Life from the stall, how he had stood there in disbelief, his inner monologue captured perfectly on the page. His pulse quickened. The book knew everything. He swallowed hard and turned the page.

After a sleepless night, Sudeep would wake up tomorrow, anxious and consumed by the mystery of the book. He would avoid his routine morning tea, instead pacing the room, flipping back and forth through its pages, trying to understand. The phone would ring at exactly 9:15 AM, but Sudeep wouldn’t answer it. He’d be too absorbed in reading.

Sudeep glanced at the clock. It was 11:45 PM. Tomorrow was mere hours away. He closed the book with a snap, pushing it to the far corner of his desk. His mind swirled with fear and fascination. Was the book guiding his actions? Could it truly predict his future? Or worse — was it controlling him?

He tried to sleep, but the words danced in his head. At some point in the early morning, his exhaustion overtook him, and he drifted into a restless slumber.

When he woke up, the book was the first thing he saw, sitting exactly where he had left it. He felt a strange pull towards it, an irresistible need to know what would happen next. Slowly, he walked over to the desk and opened it.

The words picked up where they left off: Sudeep would pick up the book, unable to resist its call. The more he read, the more his world would begin to change. Reality would bend around him in ways he couldn’t understand, events reshaping themselves as though guided by unseen hands.

A knot tightened in his stomach. The book was no longer just recounting his life — it was changing it. His phone rang. Sudeep froze.

The phone would ring at 9:15 AM, but Sudeep wouldn’t answer it.

He glanced at the clock. It was exactly 9:15. His heart pounded in his chest. Without thinking, he reached for the phone, desperate to break the pattern.

“Hello?” he said, his voice shaky.

There was silence on the other end. Then, a faint voice crackled through, distant and garbled, as if it were calling from some far-off place. “You… shouldn’t have done that.”

The line went dead.

Sudeep dropped the phone, his breathing rapid. The air in the room seemed heavier, stifling. Panic gripped him. What was happening? Was the book real? Was it manipulating his life, punishing him for deviating from its script?

He opened the book again, this time with trembling hands, skipping ahead to see what lay in store for him.

The changes would begin subtly, but soon, Sudeep would find the world around him unraveling. His reflection in the mirror would flicker, showing glimpses of a stranger’s face. The streets outside would seem unfamiliar, even though he had walked them a thousand times. People he knew would begin to forget his name.

He slammed the book shut, gasping for breath. He ran to the bathroom, desperate to see his reflection, to prove that everything was still normal. But when he looked into the mirror, his face was distorted, blurred, like a half-formed memory.

Fear gripped him. He rushed outside, onto the bustling streets of Kolkata. The city was alive, but to him, it felt alien. The vendors, the familiar buildings — they seemed to shift and blur at the edges of his vision, as though the fabric of reality itself was loosening. He called out to a passing neighbor, someone he had known for years.

The man turned, his face blank, his eyes scanning Sudeep as if he were a stranger. “Do I know you?” the man asked, his voice flat, devoid of recognition.

Sudeep stumbled backward, his world spinning. He ran back to his apartment, his breath coming in ragged gasps. The book. It was the book! It had to be. He grabbed it and threw it across the room. But even as it hit the wall, something inside him compelled him to open it again.

His hands moved on their own, flipping to the final pages.

And as Sudeep reaches the end of his story, he will realize the horrifying truth — that the book was never telling his life. It was writing it. The moment he picked it up, he ceased to exist in the real world. His life became nothing more than ink on paper, his fate bound to the pages, controlled by forces beyond his understanding. And now, as he reads the last sentence, he will disappear entirely, becoming a story trapped in the book for the next curious reader to find.

Sudeep’s eyes widened in terror. The last line seemed to shimmer on the page, glowing with a malevolent energy:

The end.

He screamed as his body began to dissolve, his form breaking apart into wisps of smoke, drawn into the book’s pages. The room spun faster and faster until all that remained was the battered book, lying quietly on the floor.

A gust of wind flipped its cover closed.

On the pavement below, a passerby noticed the book, abandoned in the alley. Piqued by the title Your Life, she knelt down, picked it up, and began to read.

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