"The First Man You Remember"

The man sitting across from you is the first man you remember seeing. You cannot remember seeing any other man. In fact, you cannot remember anything at all before you saw this man.

The man is old and his face is creased like the pages of a well-read book. He is wearing a dirty blindfold around his eyes and his hair is gray and stringy. He is wearing a dirty brown suit and in front of him is a large leatherbound book, its pages yellowing.

"Who are you?" you ask.

The man does not answer.

"What happened to me?" you ask.

The man does not answer.

"Speak, dammit," you say. "Say something. Who are you?"

The man smiles and his teeth are brown and crooked, the ends jagged and broken. Then he speaks and his voice is soft, like a whisper, but you can hear every utterance, every syllable of what he says.

He says: "I am the first man you remember."

And then he is gone, like he was never there at all. You begin to cry as you realize: he was the first man you remember and he was never there at all.