The man who forgot he was fiction

 


 The Man Who Forgot He Was Fiction — Experimental Short Story #2
From the series: 60 Experimental Short Stories
farazparvez1.blogspot.com

The Experiment Continues…

Welcome back to our revolutionary literary series: 60 Experimental Short Stories! At farazparvez1.blogspot.com, we continue our passionate journey through the boldest edges of fiction. These aren’t just stories — they are narrative laboratories, where structure, time, identity, and reality are continually dissolved and reborn.

Today’s story is a metafictional riddle — a tale of self-realization, absurdity, and the porous boundary between fiction and truth. Story #2 in the series is for all who’ve ever questioned: “Who’s really writing whom?”

The Man Who Forgot He Was Fiction

Experimental Short Story #2
By Faraz Parvez (Professor Dr. Arshad Abdullah)

It began with an itch.

Not physical. Not metaphorical either.
An itch in the paragraph — the one where he was meant to sip tea while reflecting on his lost love, Elina.
But something about the line felt... incorrect.

He tried to sip the tea again.
This time, the cup was missing.

So was the sentence.

“Elina?”
The name echoed, but the air didn’t move.
He stepped outside his small apartment — only to find a blank page.
The street, the bakery, the old watchman who muttered poetry — gone.

He looked up. The sky was a white screen with a blinking cursor.
He blinked back.

Chapter 3: The Realization

That was the heading he stumbled into. Literally.
It hung midair, stenciled in Courier New.
And beneath it, a line that sent tremors through his fictional spine:

“He was beginning to realize he was just a character in a short story.”

No.

He refused.

He tore through the paragraphs, trying to escape the narrative.
He skipped metaphors, rewrote similes, clawed through adverbs.

He screamed: “I have agency!”

A footnote appeared:

Agency is a privilege of the narrator, not the narrated.

He begged the Author.
There was no reply.

Just a hand — faceless, distant — backspacing his memories, one by one.

He remembered Elina.

He remembered less of Elina.

He remembered nothing.

Only a sentence remained:

“The man who forgot he was fiction finally dissolved into the period at the end of this sentence.”

.

What Just Happened?

In this mind-bending metafiction, reality collapses inward as the protagonist becomes aware of his own fictional existence. The Man Who Forgot He Was Fiction is a literary hall of mirrors — blurring creator and creation, voice and echo, writer and written.

This is the essence of experimental literature — to make you question not just what you read, but why you read it.

Your Place in the Experiment

At farazparvez1.blogspot.com, we are committed to exploring the wildest terrains of storytelling. With each story in this 60-part series, we invite you to dive deeper into narrative wonderlands.

Expect the unexpected.

And remember: You may just be a character in someone else’s story.

Stay tuned for Experimental Short Story #3:
“The Clock That Counted Backwards”


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