The man who remembered tomorrow

 


The Man Who Remembered Tomorrow

Experimental Short Story Series #25

By Faraz Parvez
Professor Dr. (Retired) Arshad Afzal
Retired Faculty Member, Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah, KSA
(Pseudonym of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal)

"I have lived tomorrow already. I remember it clearly. And I dread it."

At precisely 6:43 AM, the kettle hissed, and Yawar Ahmad poured hot water into his chipped green mug, just as he did every morning for the past nineteen years.

But this morning, he didn’t feel like he was repeating a routine. He felt like he was following a script.

The phone rang at 6:58.

He didn’t flinch. He knew who it would be.

It was Sameera from the district library committee, reminding him that the new shipment of books had arrived, including the rare Persian manuscript he’d been anticipating. She would also remind him of the broken window in the children’s reading room.

She did. Word for word. Exactly as he recalled.

But not from yesterday.

From tomorrow.

A Future in Fragments

Yawar had always believed memory to be a backward-looking faculty. But over the past twelve nights, he’d been having dreams so detailed, so precise, they felt like memories. Only… they were not of his past.

They were of events yet to happen.

At first, he dismissed them. Coincidence. Subconscious trickery. But then, on the third day, when the boy in a red cap spilled blue ink over the library’s ledger just as Yawar had “remembered,” he froze.

It wasn’t déjà vu.

It was pre-ja vu.

The Librarian Who Knew Too Much

He began to test it. He noted each event from his dreams in a worn notebook. The lottery numbers. The library visitors. Even the exact words of an argument between two municipal officers that would happen in front of the archives on Friday morning.

Each unfolded exactly as he’d recalled.

But it wasn’t power he felt.

It was a creeping sense of dread.

The dreams began to stretch beyond the library. To incidents darker, deeper.

A fire. A betrayal. A death.

Tomorrow's Burden

And then, one morning, he remembered something he could not unsee.

His own death. Alone. On the library steps. The date was two days away.

He had already read the newspaper headline in his dream.
“Veteran Librarian Dies of Heart Failure. Community Mourns a Quiet Giant.”

Yawar tried to change it.

He stayed home. Avoided the steps. Turned off the kettle.

But the dreams adjusted.

Now he died in the bathroom. The article headline remained unchanged.

The Choice

With one day left, Yawar walked to the library, manuscript under his arm. He looked at the children in the reading room, at the sun filtering through the dusty windows, and the echo of silence broken only by turning pages.

He realized something: perhaps the point was not to stop fate…
…but to make peace with it.

He sat on the top step as the sun began to set.

And smiled.

A Story Beyond the Page

Dear readers,
With Story #25, we reach the halfway mark in our remarkable 60-Story Experimental Fiction Series. Each piece explores the boundaries of narrative, the edges of realism, and the spark of imagination.

Your support has turned this blog into a sanctuary for short story lovers, an oasis of reflection in a world that moves too fast. In the near future, we will compile these tales into a compelling eBook and a collectible print edition.

Stay with us. More stories await you. More experiments will unfold. Let us continue this literary voyage—together.

By Faraz Parvez
Professor Dr. (Retired) Arshad Afzal
Retired Faculty Member, Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah, KSA
(Pseudonym of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal)


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