I Found an Old Photo Album. Every Picture Was of Me With People I’ve Never Met.

It was wedged between dusty cookbooks in the back of a cabinet I didn’t remember using. A thick leather-bound 4" x 6" photo album, edges worn, spine cracked.

I flipped it open. The first photo was of me, smiling stiffly in front of a nameless lake. I didn’t remember being there. The next showed me at a bar, surrounded by strangers, their faces blurred at the edges. Page after page, the same pattern. Me. Laughing, drinking, sitting on park benches with people I couldn’t name. Some of them were marked with a red X.

The more I flipped the pages, the more wrong it felt. My posture appeared stiff and my smile forced. It was like I was trying to look happy… instead of actually feeling it.

In one picture, I was shaking hands with a man in a suit. His eyes had been blacked out with a marker.

In another photo, it showed me sitting at a cafe while a woman leaned in, whispering something. Her lips were parted, caught mid-sentence, but my face stayed blank, like I already knew the camera was watching.

Then there was the last page. A single photo, slipped loose from its slot. Not a bar, not a park. A surveillance still that was grainy, black and white. I was standing in an alley, head tilted toward a man slumped against the bricks. His posture unnatural, his limbs too loose. The timestamp in the corner was smudged, unreadable. Someone had drawn an X over my face, but I could still see my own eyes, staring straight into the camera lens.

My fingers went numb.

I closed the album and stared at the breakroom clock. My shift ended in twenty minutes. The scent of overripe bananas and floor cleaner lingered in the air. I had spent the last three years bagging groceries, scanning produce, stacking cans. A simple life, quiet, normal.

But my hands weren’t made for this. Callouses in the wrong places. The faint indent of a trigger finger. A phantom stiffness in my right wrist, like I’d spent years twisting things… necks, maybe.

The store manager called my name over the PA. I was late getting back to the register. I shut the album, shoved it under my jacket, and clocked in.

I barely noticed the man at checkout staring at me. Not until he muttered, just loud enough to hear…

“You don’t remember, do you?”

🛒 Affiliate Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn a commission from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you.

👁️ Step inside the surveillance-soaked nightmare of 1984 —Orwell’s prophetic masterpiece where thought is treason, love is forbidden, and Big Brother isn’t just watching… he’s rewriting your memories. Narrated with eerie precision, this audiobook is as chillingly relevant today as ever. Don’t just read it—hear it whisper through your earbuds like a telescreen in your skull. 🕶️📡