The Library That Forgot You

The Library That Forgot You

I first noticed the library at exactly midnight. It appeared without warning, tucked between the shadows of two buildings I’d walked past hundreds of times. One moment, it wasn’t there—a narrow alley with cracked bricks and flickering streetlights. The next, a tall wooden door stood in its place, brass handles gleaming as if polished by unseen hands. A small plaque above read simply: The Library That Forgets.

Curiosity overpowered caution. I pushed the door open, and a soft chime echoed through the empty street behind me. Inside, the air smelled of old paper, dust, and something faintly metallic—like rain on iron. Shelves stretched infinitely in every direction, stacked not with books, but with glowing orbs, each humming with a soft, melodic vibration.

A voice, neither male nor female, spoke from the darkness. “Welcome. You may borrow what you seek. Memories, experiences, fragments of life.”

I froze. Memories? Borrow them?

“Your own memories?” I asked, voice trembling.

“Or those of another. But be warned,” the voice said, echoing like wind through a canyon, “to borrow is to forget. To take what is not yours may erase what is yours. Choose wisely.”

I wandered between the shelves. Some orbs were pale and serene, like a lazy summer morning. Others pulsed violently, crimson and restless, as if screaming silently. My eyes fell upon a small, sapphire sphere, the size of a fist. The label read: A childhood with Ana.

Ana. The memory made my chest ache—a girl with freckles and wild curls, a constant in my lonely adolescence. My first best friend, the one I’d lost touch with when life took me away from our quiet town. I remembered our treehouse, our whispered secrets, the night we both swore we’d be friends forever.

Without thinking, I reached out and touched the orb. Warmth spread through my fingers, and suddenly I was there again, in the treehouse, Ana’s laughter filling the room. The smell of rain-soaked grass. The thrill of the secret codes we’d invented. I could feel her hand brush against mine, just like it had years ago.

When I pulled back, blinking in the dim glow of the library, the orb was gone. The space where it had hovered shimmered, then vanished. I felt… lighter.

But later, when I returned home, a strange emptiness gnawed at me. I tried to recall other memories from that time, and they were… gone. Not just blurred, but wiped clean, like the ink had been scrubbed off the pages of my mind. I couldn’t remember the sound of my old dog’s bark. I couldn’t recall the smell of my childhood home. Even the face of my mother in those early years seemed… distant, like a painting I’d never seen before.

Panic set in. I returned to the library that very night, desperate. The door was there, waiting. Inside, the shelves stretched further than I remembered, infinite as the night sky. Orbs floated in place, some humming, some silent. I searched desperately for the memory of myself before Ana, hoping to restore what I had lost.

“Be careful,” the voice said, now closer. “Memories are not books. Once borrowed, they change hands, they fade. Some cannot be returned.”

I didn’t care. I reached for a large amber sphere labeled Before Ana. My fingers brushed the surface, and I was transported again—back to a smaller, earlier me, sitting alone on the edge of a playground, the wind pulling at my hair. I could feel the absence, the longing for a friend I did not yet know. I tried to grasp it, to hold onto it, but it dissolved the moment I tried to pin it down, like water slipping through my hands.

When I returned to the present, I understood. In borrowing Ana’s memory, I had erased the foundation of my own past. The world felt slightly… off. Names of people I knew became fuzzy. Places I had visited seemed half-remembered. And worst of all, the bond with Ana—the one I had cherished—was now a borrowed ghost. It wasn’t truly mine.

I staggered to a corner of the library, breathing heavily. The voice murmured, soft as a lullaby: “All memory is fragile. To take without understanding is to lose more than you imagine. Some things are meant to remain forgotten, until you are ready to face them.”

I left the library that night with trembling hands and a hollow heart. The door vanished behind me, leaving only the alley and the streetlights. The world had not changed, but I had. Part of me was missing, swallowed by a library that forgot me.

Yet, somehow, I could still remember the ache. And in that, I found a strange kind of solace: a reminder that forgetting, even when forced upon you, leaves a space for something new—a memory you have yet to create, a life waiting beyond the shadows.

And so I walk forward, carrying fragments of borrowed time, hoping one day the library will appear again—not to erase, but to teach me what it truly means to remember.