"The Diary on My Doorstep: Pages from a Life I Never Lived"

It was a rainy Tuesday morning when I found it.

A plain black notebook, leather-bound and weathered, sat neatly on my doorstep like an offering. No envelope, no return address—just my name, Avery Morgan, etched in gold cursive across the cover. At first, I thought it was a prank. Maybe one of my students was pulling something elaborate. I teach philosophy at Greystone College; existential riddles aren’t exactly rare in my world.

Still, I picked it up. It was heavier than it looked. Inside, the pages were filled with clean, deliberate handwriting. Familiar handwriting.

My own.


---

Entry 1 - June 3, 2013
“Today I saw her again. The girl in the red coat. She was at the station, just like last time, just standing there. She looked right at me, like she knew.”

I blinked.

2013. That was the year I spent in rehab after the accident. The motorcycle crash that nearly took my leg and six months of memory with it. I wasn’t at any train station that year, much less following a girl in a red coat. And yet… I remembered the coat.



A flash—something distant, like a forgotten dream. Standing on a platform. Rain. Her eyes. Blue. Watching me.

I slammed the book shut.


---

I didn’t sleep that night. I couldn’t. The more I read, the more it felt like it knew me. Not just in a general way, but intimately. The diary described details no one could have possibly known—like the mole on my left shoulder blade, or the way I used to hum Rachmaninoff while walking alone. It recalled memories I had lost, or maybe never had—encounters, conversations, dreams.

One entry chilled me to the bone:

Entry 18 - November 11, 2015
“She told me not to trust the man with the gray eyes. But I already had. He offered me answers. Now I think he’s watching me. Every time I write, I feel him closer. I think he wants me to forget again.”

I didn’t know anyone with gray eyes. Not then.

But the next day, I noticed the new janitor at Greystone. He was older, quiet, always nearby. And his eyes were unmistakably gray.


---

I decided to trace the diary’s origin. I took it to a forensic handwriting analyst, a friend of a friend. She was skeptical until she saw the writing.

“This is yours,” she said flatly.

“No, it’s not.”

She turned the page. “It’s your pressure, your slant, even your rhythm. Did you write this while dissociating or something?”

“I don’t remember writing it at all.”

She paused. “Then someone went to a lot of effort to imitate you perfectly. And that… is even scarier.”


---

That night, I read the final entry.

Entry 49 - March 7, 2020
“I left the diary where she’ll find it. Maybe she’ll finish what I couldn’t. If she reads this—Avery, I’m sorry. You’re not crazy. You’re the second one.”

I stared at that last line for hours.

You’re the second one.

The next day, I skipped work and went to the address mentioned in entry 34: 47 Halloway Lane. According to the entry, it was the place I “used to live before the reset.” The entry didn’t make sense, but curiosity burned through me.

There was no house at 47 Halloway Lane. Only a gated lot, overgrown with weeds and surrounded by a tall, rusted fence. But there was something buried under the leaves: a mailbox, crushed and half-buried. Inside it, wrapped in a plastic sleeve, was a photograph.

Me. Standing with someone who looked almost exactly like me—but not quite.

Her hair was darker. Her eyes sharper. But our smile was identical. On the back of the photo, in the same looping script:
“Avery I. Morgan — Original / Avery II — Current.”


---

Reality fractured like glass under pressure.

Was I... a copy?

A clone?

A psychological experiment gone wrong?

I scoured the internet for anything resembling what I was experiencing. Conspiracy forums, deep web threads, identity loss support groups. Most led nowhere—except one. A user named EchoRed replied to a post I made under an anonymous alias.

> “The diary’s your anchor. You’ve looped before. The girl in the red coat—she’s your reset trigger. If you see her again, DON’T follow.”



I tried replying. The user vanished.


---

Then came the dreams.

Same setting every time: a vast library with no end, stacked floor to ceiling with blank books. Except for one. Always the same black diary, resting on a pedestal. And the girl in the red coat walking away, never looking back.

One night, I followed her.

I woke up gasping on my apartment floor—nose bleeding, the diary missing.

It reappeared three days later.

With one new entry.

Entry 50 - Present Day
“You followed her. Again. Don’t trust the memory. It's not yours. If you want the truth, burn the diary. Or read to the end. But choose. One path ends in forgetting. The other ends in remembering everything.”


---

I haven’t burned the diary.

Not yet.

But it’s sitting on my desk, waiting. Pages whispering when no one else is around.

If you’re reading this… I haven’t made my choice.

But soon, I must.

Because the girl in the red coat?

I saw her again this morning.

And this time, she smiled.