A Blank Page

I look around, wondering if this is some sort of trick. Everybody is still acting normally; the couple are still on their towel, the businessman is still reading the newspaper, the girl is still jogging around the path.

I look at the cover of the book, turning it over in my hands. I touch the spine. It’s just a book. It’s old, a bit scruffy, but it’s just a book. I open it again.

He looked up from the book, noticing a woman jogging along the path between the bench and the lake. His eye was caught by her legs first, long and firm in grey cycling shorts. Her lycra top was tight, and he stared at her breasts swinging as she ran. He was imagining her naked, and briefly fantasised that she ran over to his bench, bending over in front of him and pleading with him to fuck her.

Embarrassed by his thoughts he returned to the book.

Woah. Okay, so I might have had those thoughts when I saw the jogger. Well, I did have those thoughts. But how…?

I skip further down the page.

He was distracted then by the businessman on the next bench. He had spilled his coffee over his suit and swore loudly before wiping himself down and leaving. Zanzibar noticed the man’s newspaper, discarded next to where he had been sitting.

Well, he doesn’t even have a cup of coffee, I only saw him eating a sandwich. I look over. Shit. He is drinking a coffee from a paper cup. It must have been on the bench on his other side.

I’m thinking. I can’t think. I touch the page, it’s just normal paper. The words are not changing, they are just there like any other book. I’m wondering if the guy is actually going to spill his coffee. I’m wondering, if he does, what happens if I read the whole book? Will it detail everything I’ll ever do? I’m about to flip to the last pages, but the man swears loudly. I look over, losing my train of thought. Yep. He’s spilled his coffee in his lap. He stalks off. Of course he leaves his newspaper on the bench.

I look at the last page of the book. I’m a bit scared of this – what if it shows how I die or something?

It’s blank. I flip through the pages. All blank. Except the one I’m on. This page finishes with:

Suddenly, Zanzibar had an idea. ‘What if I write on the next page of the book?’ he thought to himself. ‘If it really is describing what will happen in the future, could I adjust it before we get there?’ He pulled a pen from his back pocket, flipped to the next blank page and considered what to write.

This is interesting. Except it’s wrong. I don’t even have a pen. I know I don’t. I check my back pocket just in case. There is a pen there.

This has to be a dream. But if it is just a dream, surely there is no harm writing something in the book? I flip to the next blank page and consider what to write.