Your mother looks up from her couch and says: “You won’t find what you’re looking for in there.” She sees you picking up a couple books to take to read at the bar.
When you arrive, you put your books down and look at your phone. You see a guy in the corner of your eye reading one book while the other is on the table. He’s cute. It’s a dark bar. You peer over at his titles. You don’t know this, but he’s reading books on picking up women.
Just then, a lovebird swoops into the bar and lands on your table. It asks you:
“Can you help me out of this bar?”
You’re taken aback by the speaking bird. You look over at the man, but he’s gone. You ask where the man went.
“He escaped.”
“Where to?”
“Maybe the books know.”
You pick up the first book. You open it up and it’s a mirror, but it doesn’t show your reflection. The bird tells you:
“You don’t exist. You are merely a figment of the creator’s imagination. How can you possibly escape? You haven’t found yourself yet.”
You put the book down and open the second. The second book is a window. Through it, you see into the bar you were in just moments before and the man sitting in the bar by himself. The bird tells you:
“That’s the window to the past. You can always break it and get back to the beginning”
“But is there a way out of this bar?”
“Not that I know of. The world collapsed and only this bar remains. All the doors have been shut in”
“How do I find myself?”
“Listen.”
You hear a woman singing in the hallway. The voice sounds familiar. It’s your own voice?
“It’s so beautiful to be!
Better to be than not to be!”
You walk in the direction of the voice and find the woman singing. She has a beauty mark above her lip. She looks at you and exclaims:
“I was lost but now am found!”
But she’s smitten with envy:
“You don’t have a beauty mark! You are perfect! How I wish to be you!”
She pulls a knife out of her dress. She lunges it at you. You run back and she doesn’t follow.
You’re confused.
You hear her yell “Stay away! You will never take him from me!”
But you don’t want him. You don’t know anything about him. Hell, you just want to escape this torturous game.
The bird comforts you:
“She’s right. You’re perfect. You can do no wrong, and that’s why she hates you.”
You open the book with the window and see the man reading his book.
You break the window.
“You used to be in his world, now he is in yours”, the bird says.
“You used to be nothing but a virus in the mind of a man. Now you are a man in the mind of a woman. You have become embodied. You’re now free! You can do as you please. The world bends to your will. Now, can you help me get out of here?”
You look down at the lovebird. It’s speaking from behind the window of the book in your hands.
You look over and see yourself from the beginning of the story, looking at your phone. You wonder if it’s too late for her, or you.