I opened the folder because I recognized its name.
That was the strange part.
I didn’t remember creating it.
Yet I recognized the name immediately.
There were other folders around it.
Dates.
Screenshots.
Documents.
But this one seemed to be waiting for me.
I opened it.
Inside I found a photograph of the lime room.
The same wall.
The same cracks.
The same chair.
For a few seconds I assumed it was recent.
Then I saw the calendar.
The image was more than a year old.
I looked back at the wall.
The cracks matched exactly.
Not almost.
Exactly.
I walked closer.
Counted them one by one.
The vertical fracture near the window.
The dark line close to the floor.
The small hook-shaped split.
All of them were there.
As if nothing had changed.
Or as if the photograph had been taken afterward.
I closed the image.
Opened it again.
It did not improve.
There were seventeen files.
Most of them were photographs of the same room.
Taken on different dates.
The light changed.
The dust changed.
The cracks did not.
In the sixth photograph something new appeared.
A boot.
Only the tip.
Entering from the lower edge of the frame.
It did not seem important.
Still, I kept looking at it.
I had the uncomfortable feeling that I had seen that photograph before.
Not the image.
The act of seeing it.
As if I were remembering the memory of looking at it.
I opened the next screenshot.
The boot was closer.
And in the next one too.
And in the next.
It was not a normal sequence.
It took me a few seconds to understand.
The distance between the boot and the camera was shrinking.
But the dates were moving backward.
I stared at the screen.
Then checked the dates again.
Then a third time.
Nothing changed.
At the bottom of the folder I found a text file.
A single line.
“You were not here.”
The sentence did not frighten me.
What unsettled me was that I recognized it.
I knew I had read it before.
I did not remember where.
I kept searching.
In another folder I found a scanned note.
The handwriting was mine.
The sentence was different.
“You never left.”
I stared at both screens at the same time.
Both felt true.
Both felt incompatible.
While trying to decide which one came first, I noticed something strange.
I had lost almost two hours.
Not a sensation of time.
Two real hours.
The system clock was visible in one corner.
There was a screenshot taken during that interval.
I did not remember creating it.
The image showed the same folder.
The same note.
The same photograph of the boot.
And an additional window.
A document that was no longer open.
I zoomed in.
It contained only one sentence.
“You are going to check the date.”
I looked up.
I was already doing it.
For a few seconds I remained motionless.
Then I found another image.
An older one.
Much older.
Someone was sitting in front of the computer.
The resolution was poor.
The room was dark.
But I could distinguish one thing.
The person in the photograph was turning their neck to the left.
I zoomed in.
An immediate familiarity appeared.
As if I had seen that movement hundreds of times.
I checked the date.
The photograph was older than the first note.
Older than the first folder.
Older than the earliest file I still possessed.
I kept staring at it.
I do not remember for how long.
The last thing I found that night was another note.
A single line.
“This is not the first time you have found the photograph.”
I did not try to verify it.
I think I needed to move my neck.
Or perhaps I already had.
I have to move my neck I am not moving it…
