I found a photograph I don’t remember saving.
There was no person in it.
Just a chair.
A white wall.
And a riding crop resting in a corner.
I stared at it for several seconds.
Then I checked the date.
Then I checked it again.
The date hadn’t changed.
The feeling had.
At first I thought it wasn’t the first time I had seen the image.
Then I found something strange.
A folder with the same name already existed.
Created eight months earlier.
I don’t remember creating it.
I thought about Sade.
Not punishment.
Not obedience.
Something else.
The way certain objects seem to remain motionless while everything around them changes.
I opened the folder.
There were seven files inside.
The same photograph.
Seven times.
The strange thing wasn’t the repetition.
The strange thing was that every copy carried a different date.
I spent nearly an hour trying to determine which one came first.
I couldn’t.
Every answer seemed to open an earlier question.
I found a note inside a book.
I didn’t remember writing it.
Until I recognized the handwriting.
The sentence said:
“Don’t start with the photograph.”
I immediately returned to the photograph.
The chair was still empty.
The wall was still white.
The riding crop was still resting in the corner.
But now I noticed something else.
A shadow.
I couldn’t tell whether it belonged to someone.
Or to something that hadn’t entered the room yet.
Over the following days I kept reviewing the files.
I lost time.
More than I realized.
I forgot calls.
Delayed replies.
Found searches I didn’t remember making.
One of them appeared seventeen times.
Always the same.
“When did it begin?”
There was no object after the question.
Nothing else.
Just that.
Yesterday I found a second note.
The same ink.
The same handwriting.
“You already found the first answer.”
It wasn’t true.
I hadn’t found any answer.
Or perhaps I had.
And forgotten it.
This morning a third note appeared.
Folded inside the folder.
I’m certain it wasn’t there yesterday.
The sentence said:
“You weren’t looking for a riding crop.”
I spent several minutes staring at the page.
Because I was beginning to suspect it was right.
Maybe I had never been investigating the object.
Maybe I had spent months trying to discover why I kept returning.
I think I need to move my neck.
Or maybe I already did.
I found a new photograph.
The chair was no longer empty.
The strange thing isn’t that.
The strange thing is that the image is dated a week that has not happened yet.
I have to move my neck I am not moving it…
