Daily Flash Fiction Challenge

The Book


I had just come in from the store and started unloading the groceries, when I saw the book laying on the counter.

“That wasn’t there a minute ago,” I thought. Not only that, but I’d never seen this book before. It was large, bound in red vellum, with the title “Life” on the front in large gold letters. I stood staring at it, my mind trying to come to grips with reality. I didn’t own a book like this, yet here it was.

Hesitantly I picked it up and opened it to the first page. It was about the birth of a baby. He was born c-section, and described as being red and wrinkled with lots of black hair. When they showed him to his mother, she said, “Is that my baby? Oh, he’s beautiful.”

I started to shake. That’s what my mother told me she said when I was born. I started paging quickly through the book. Yes, there was my seventh birthday party with the neighborhood kids. There was my prom with Elaine, my marriage, everything.

With great trepidation, I turned to the last page. It described the massive heart attack I’d had while putting away groceries. I turned and saw my body laying on the kitchen floor. As the world started to fade around me, I thought, “That wasn’t there a minute ago.”