The first anomaly was not the leather.
It was the file.
I found it already open.
I do not remember opening it.
For a few seconds I assumed I had simply forgotten.
Then I saw the scroll bar.
It was much lower than it should have been.
As if someone had already read before me.
There was nobody in the room.
The darkness behind the hood remained absolute.
The air tasted of damp lime.
And yet the document was already waiting.
Not the text.
The reading.
That was the first thing that unsettled me.
I had always assumed the mechanism began with the impact.
With the sound.
With anticipation.
With the impossibility of predicting where the next strike would come from.
Now I was no longer sure.
Because the first visible line on the screen was not about the body.
It was about me.
You already made it this far.
I remained motionless.
Not out of obedience.
Out of calculation.
I scrolled upward.
I searched for the beginning.
It did not exist.
The first page started in the middle of a sentence.
As if the previous pages had been removed.
Or as if they had never been necessary.
I kept reading.
Not because I wanted to.
Because the absence of a beginning was worse than any answer.
Then the second anomaly appeared.
A note.
It was not part of the text.
It looked as though it had been added later.
As if someone had come back to correct something.
The note said:
It was not deleted.
You no longer need it.
I felt an involuntary movement in my shoulders.
Not fear.
Recognition.
I had read something like that before.
Or so I thought.
The problem was that I could not remember where.
I continued.
The room remained silent.
The hood remained sealed.
The file kept growing.
That made no sense either.
The scroll bar slowly moved downward.
As if the document were adding new lines while I watched it.
I assumed it was an illusion.
Visual fatigue.
A consequence of remaining still for too long.
Then I found a screenshot.
It showed the same screen.
The same page.
The same scroll bar.
The same note.
The date was wrong.
It had been created tomorrow.
I did not try to explain it.
Experience had taught me that explanations always arrived too early.
I kept looking.
The screenshot contained one difference.
Small.
Almost invisible.
There was an additional line at the bottom.
A line that did not yet exist on my screen.
I read it several times.
Then I closed the image.
Returned to the document.
The line was still absent.
Yet I remembered it perfectly.
You already noticed the sentence is missing.
I remained motionless.
Because I did not understand which sentence it meant.
Then I understood.
And for the first time I stopped thinking about the file.
For weeks it had always appeared at the end.
The final element.
The closure.
The sign that the record was complete.
This time it was gone.
The sentence had disappeared.
Not the entire phrase.
Just one.
The same one.
The one I always expected to find.
I kept scrolling.
Nothing.
Further down.
Nothing.
I closed the file.
Opened it again.
Nothing.
That was when a new note appeared.
It had not been there before.
I am certain.
It said:
You took longer than last time.
It did not say who.
It did not say when.
It did not say where.
It simply assumed it had already happened.
I stare at the scroll bar.
I no longer know whether I am moving forward.
Or returning.
Then I notice a new folder.
I do not remember seeing it before.
Its name is simple.
Too simple.
BEFORE READING THIS
I open it.
Inside there is a screenshot.
It is this screen.
This exact moment.
The difference is that in the screenshot the folder is already open.
And I had not opened it yet when it was created.
Below it there is one final note.
Only one line.
This time you started from the end too.
I have to move my neck the record cannot close I should…
