I Didn’t Think Much of It

I didn’t think much of it at the time.

I stopped to sneeze.

You know that feeling—when it builds slowly, taking over your whole face, your whole body pausing like the world itself is waiting?

“Ah—ah—”

I stopped walking.

“—CHOO!”

And then everything changed.

The pavement cracked beneath me.

The coffee in my hand burst apart, scattering into droplets that seemed to fall from very far away. Cars shrank. People scattered. The city folded downward, or I rose above it—I couldn’t tell which.

I blinked.

“Oh,” I said.

My voice rolled across the skyline like thunder.

“Oh no.”

I tried not to move.

That felt important.

The world had become fragile beneath me—I could feel it in the way the ground resisted, like thin ice about to give. Even breathing felt dangerous, like too much air might push everything further out of place.

Then my nose twitched.

“No,” I whispered. “Don’t.”

I sneezed again.

And the world shifted.

Not just size—wrongness. My body stretched, compressed, and rearranged itself in ways I couldn’t understand. My balance slipped. My sense of where I ended and everything else began blurred.

The sky tilted.

Buildings leaned at angles that shouldn’t exist.

For a moment, I slid out of the world entirely.

At one point, I couldn’t breathe.

Not panic—something worse. It felt as though my body had forgotten how to create space for air.

Pressure built.

Everything tightened.

My chest locked.

My throat refused to open.

My vision darkened at the edges.

And then—

Release.

Abrupt. Jarring. Almost ridiculous.

And just like that, everything snapped back.

Normal.

For a minute.

I stood there, shaking, staring at my hands as if they might still be wrong.

Cars drove past. Someone shouted at me to move. A door slammed somewhere nearby.

Everything looked fine.

Too fine.

That was when I knew.

Not panic. Not confusion.

Something quieter.

Worse.

This wasn’t random.

It was repeating.

Later, after another reset, my vision pulsed and dimmed, as if my body had overcorrected. The world faded in and out, unreliable, like something struggling to stay in place.

So I used my hands.

When I touched the desk, I felt its edges, weight, and presence translated through my fingers in a way that replaced sight.

The grain of the wood felt louder than the sound.

The corners felt sharper than they should.

It wasn’t just touch.

It was information.

Like my body rewrote its rules.

As if it didn’t require me to understand.

As if it had already decided who I was now.

I sat down at my desk only when I realized the manuscript was still there.

Open.

Waiting.

I didn’t remember leaving it like that.

Or writing as much as I had.

The handwriting was mine.

That was the worst part.

Same slant. Same pressure. I couldn't fake the same habits, no matter how hard I tried.

I read.

Each line—like something I had thought, but not consciously. As though thoughts had slipped through my mind while I wasn't fully present.

Some of it described things I remembered.

Some of it described things I hadn’t noticed.

And some of it—

Some of it described things that hadn’t happened yet.

My fingers tightened against the page.

I flipped forward.

More writing.

Faster.

Messier.

Like whoever wrote it had been running out of time.

Then my hands reacted.

A twitch.

A warmth.

Then something sharper—an urgency that didn’t belong to me.

It didn’t feel like a thought.

In my shoulders, coiled deep in my upper arms, it spread downward, filling my hands with heat.

A need.

To write.

I clenched my fists.

“Not this time,” I said.

My voice sounded smaller than I expected.

Less certain.

I knew better now.

I knew what happened when I didn’t think.

When I just let it happen.

The pen sat beside the manuscript.

Waiting.

My fingers tingled. Burned.

The story wasn’t forming in my mind.

It was already inside me.

Running through me, actively seeking an escape route.

Like it had been waiting longer than I had.

I grabbed the pen.

The moment I did, the pressure shifted—like opening something that had been building for too long.

Relief came first.

Then something worse.

Ink met paper.

I hesitated.

“This time,” I whispered, “I choose.”

But the words came anyway.

Smooth. Certain. Unstoppable.

He thinks he can control it.

My breath caught.

I tried to stop.

My hand didn’t.

That was the mistake.

“I’m not writing this,” I said.

But I was.

Each letter was formed perfectly and deliberately, without hesitation.

The story isn’t his.

My grip tightened.

The pen carved deeper into the page.

It never was.

My hand moved faster.

Harder.

The ink pressed through the paper, leaving marks on the page beneath it.

As if the surface could not contain what was being written.

I tried to pull away.

My arm resisted.

Not stiff.

Not locked.

Just… unwilling.

Like it had already been chosen.

I dropped the pen.

My hand kept moving.

Writing anyway.

My fingers pressed into the paper, tracing letters without ink, carving them in with pressure alone.

I could feel each word forming before I saw it.

Like my body already knew what came next.

Like I was the last one to find out.

I didn’t want to look.

But I did.

Because I had to know.

He will try again.

The letters dug deep, uneven, and trembled.

He always does.

My hand stopped—at last.

I pulled back, shaking, my chest tight with something I didn’t want to name.

“No,” I said.

“I’m done.”

The room fell quiet.

Still.

For the first time since it started, everything felt… normal.

No pressure.

No heat.

No pull.

Just silence.

I let out a slow breath.

Relief crept in, slow and careful, like it didn’t trust itself.

I leaned back in the chair to steady myself.

Trying to believe it was over.

Trying not to think about what “over” even meant anymore.

My hands rested on my lap.

Still.

Obedient.

Mine again.

I waited.

Nothing happened.

Seconds passed.

Then more.

The quiet stretched.

Held.

I kinda laughed.

My eyes drifted back to the manuscript.

I didn’t want to look.

But I did.

To the top of the page.

To the first line.

The one I didn’t remember writing.

The one that felt too familiar.

Too simple.

Too harmless.

I stared at it for a long time.

Long enough for something cold to settle in my chest.

Long enough to understand.

I hadn’t stopped anything.

I had only reached the part where it allowed me to think I did.

My fingers twitched.

Just once.

Barely noticeable.

But enough.

I looked down at my hands.

They were still.

But they didn’t feel still.

They felt ready.

Waiting.

They appeared to be aware of the upcoming events.

Slowly, carefully, I looked back at the page.

At the beginning.

It was the line that marked the beginning of everything.

The line I read, Once upon a time, a girl sneezed, leading to a series of unfortunate events that ended with an unexpected burp from a place on her body where burps didn't normally come from, was the first line I wrote.

I didn’t think much of it at the time.