Story by Anonymous

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I remember the moment I realized I had no future.

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I was standing in one of the beige conference rooms, the ones you find in hotels or airports. I don't know how I ended up there. I was just wandering, like I always do.

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On the table, left of the stage, were pamphlets, brochures. Old, dusty, outdated. Most of them were for career opportunities that no longer exist. I grabbed one, unfolded it, felt the waxiness of the gloss, my eyes gumming stock photos of house, of men smiling, of desks and skylines. The text said: No future.

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It was a typo of some sort, wasn't it? Maybe the top of the question mark had been rubbed off during the print run. (No future?) Or maybe a comma was missing. (No, future!) But no, the next line also said it. No future. And the next.

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Whole sentences, whole paragraphs, all telling me the same thing, over and over, about my future. My lack of future. My purposelessness. And it wasn't just this one brochure, either. All of them said that. It was maddening. I flipped through all of the piles and boxes, blanketing them on the wobbly table with my palms, pages falling to the floor: No future, no future, no future.

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