The chair was exactly where I remembered it.
That should have reassured me.
It didn’t.
The same angle in the backrest.
The same dark stain on one of the straps.
The same vertical crack running through the lime-covered wall.
For a few seconds I simply stood in the doorway watching it.
I had the feeling I had entered that room before.
Not that morning.
Not the previous week.
Before.
Much earlier.
As if the room had remained waiting for me while the rest of time continued moving forward.
A folded sheet of paper rested on the seat.
I did not remember leaving it there.
The handwriting was mine.
I recognized it immediately.
What was strange was something else.
I remembered perfectly writing that note.
What I did not remember was reading it.
There was only one sentence.
“Do not sit down yet.”
I looked at the chair.
Then at the note.
Then at the date.
The date belonged to tomorrow.
I remained still for several seconds.
The chair had not changed.
Neither had the note.
Nothing seemed interested in explaining itself.
The air carried that dry smell that always appeared before the anomalies began.
Lime.
Iron.
Ancient dust.
Something else.
Something resembling the inside of a file cabinet sealed for too long.
I stepped forward.
The straps did not move.
Yet I heard the sound of a buckle tightening.
Very close.
As if someone had just finished restraining something behind me.
I turned around.
Nobody was there.
When I looked back at the chair, a second sheet of paper was resting on it.
It had not been there before.
Or so I believed.
I picked it up.
The same handwriting.
The same pressure on the page.
The same slant in the letters.
This time the sentence was different.
“You never sat down.”
The contradiction brought more relief than fear.
For the first time, a note was not confirming anything.
It was making everything worse.
I looked at the chair again.
The marks on the armrests seemed deeper.
As if they had endured years of accumulated tension.
Or as if they had just been made.
I opened my phone gallery.
There was a recent photograph of the room.
The chair was occupied.
The image was blurred.
The face could not be distinguished.
I zoomed in.
Then again.
It did not improve.
Then I noticed something worse.
The photograph had been taken three months before I first entered that room.
I zoomed further.
A note rested on my knees.
I could read it.
The handwriting was mine.
The sentence was mine as well.
“You still think the chair is empty.”
An unpleasant tension appeared at the base of my neck.
I could not remember when it had started.
Perhaps it had been there for hours.
Perhaps for weeks.
Perhaps the photograph had left it there.
I put the phone away.
The room remained motionless.
The chair remained motionless.
The feeling of familiarity intensified.
The same light.
The same waiting.
The same sensation of arriving late to something that had already happened.
Then I noticed a third sheet.
It protruded from beneath one of the front legs.
I did not need to approach to recognize the handwriting.
I already knew what I would find.
Or I thought I did.
The note read:
“Do not check the date again.”
Naturally, I checked the date.
It had changed.
I need to move my neck.
Or I think I need to move it.
The discomfort had been there before I thought about it.
I reviewed the photograph one final time.
Something had changed.
The figure sitting in the chair now held its head slightly tilted to one side.
As if it were watching me.
As if it had finished reading before I had.
And then I understood something.
Not about the chair.
Not about the notes.
About the photograph.
It was not showing a room from the past.
It was showing a room waiting.
I have to move my neck…
