The wind had teeth that morning.
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She stood at the window, her fingers wrapped around a chipped mug of cold coffee. Across the street, a bookstore she'd never noticed before gleamed strangely red in the dull morning light. It pulled at her subtle, magnetic until she found herself outside in mismatched socks and a hoodie fraying at the cuffs.
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Inside, dust danced like memory. The air smelled of old paper and something older. No bell jingled. Just the soft creak of wood and the hush of pages waiting. An old man looked up from behind the counter, eyes sharp under bushy white brows.
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"Looking for something?" he asked, his voice like a worn page.
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"No," she replied. "Just browsing."
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"Then let the right story find you."
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She wandered. Rows of forgotten worlds leaned in on both sides. Then she saw it: a glass case, slightly ajar, holding a red leather notebook with no title. It looked... alive. She blinked and it was in her hands. She didn't remember opening the case. Or walking to the counter. Or paying.
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That night, she couldn’t sleep. She sat cross-legged on her bed, notebook open, pen poised. It felt stupid. But...
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She wrote: "Tomorrow, it will rain just as I step outside."
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It rained the moment she opened the door.
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Coincidence. Clearly.
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The next night, she wrote: "Max will text me. I miss him."
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At 11:03 AM, he did.
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A week passed. Wishes turned to dares. Dares became tests. Harmless things lost keys, sudden songs on the radio, people tripping over curbs.
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Then one night, her pen trembled before the words: "Mrs. Gladstone's cat will never come home."
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Posters went up. Mrs. Gladstone wept on the porch. The cat never returned.
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Her stomach knotted. Guilt scraped her ribs. But she kept writing.
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Until one night, heart galloping, she wrote something she never should have: "Elliot will be in a car accident. Tomorrow. Around noon."
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The next day, the sirens started at 12:07.
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Her phone buzzed. A news alert. His name. The intersection. Her ink.
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She dropped the notebook. Its pages fluttered like wings. Then, a line appeared on its own, slowly forming in handwriting that wasn’t hers:
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“Now it’s my turn.”
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She stared at the sentence for what felt like hours. Every attempt to close the notebook ended with her hands trembling. The red cover pulsed beneath her palms as though the thing was breathing.
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She didn't sleep that night.
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The next morning, there was a message under her door: "Write wisely. He watches now." No signature. Just that.
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Her dreams grew stranger. She saw the old man from the shop, standing in her hallway, eyes like black glass marbles. She saw herself standing at a cliff, the notebook in her hands, pages fluttering into the wind and behind her, dozens of people with ink-stained fingers, silently watching.
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She stopped writing. For three days.
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Then the whispers began.
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In the dark corners of her room, at 3:33 AM, a voice rasped her name. Her phone began typing messages on its own fragments of sentences she never remembered writing. Her shadow moved seconds out of sync.
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On the fifth day, she opened the notebook again. Not to write.
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To tear out the pages.
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But they wouldn’t budge.
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The paper screamed when she tried.
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The lights blew out. Her bedroom door slammed shut. In the darkness, a line etched itself into the page:
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"Your story isn't over yet."
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She screamed. Threw the notebook into the hallway.
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It was back on her bed the next morning, open to a new page:
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"Let’s see what happens when you stop pretending you're not part of this."
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Tears burned down her cheeks. Her hands shook violently. But somewhere beneath the panic, a darker voice whispered:
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Write back.
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And so, she picked up her pen.
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"If you’re watching," she wrote, "then let’s make a deal."
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The ink shimmered.
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And a new story began.
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