This Town is Not Your Town

By Rhianna Koppes

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This town is not your town. You aren’t sure why it’s not. It is exactly the same as your town. Identical streets, identical buildings, identical people. Everything is the same, down to the cracks in the sidewalk and the rain-faded flyers on the lampposts. By all accounts, it should be your town. But it is not your town. Something is wrong with this town, something you can’t see or hear or touch but you can feel it, just slightly in the marrow of your bones. Or something like that. The feelings—the wrongness—were hard to describe.

You don’t know when this town stopped being your town. Part of you wants to pinpoint a moment of “before” and “after”. Something satisfying, like the flick of a light switch or waking from a restless sleep. It would be nice to say that one moment this town was your town and the next it wasn’t. But that wouldn’t be true. Whatever changed, it changed just slightly enough to be imperceptible to your senses, and it must have kept changing until you finally felt the shift. You try not to think about what would happening if it kept changing.

It was once your town. You do know that. You’d lived here since you were a child. Growing up, you’d thought that small town life was tedious, suffocating. Like most of the people in your graduating class, you left as soon as you were able, onto “bigger, better things”. However, unlike most people, nothing was bigger or better for you outside this town. So, between the passing of both your parents and the horrendous job market for people with degrees in library sciences, you were in desperate need of stability. You moved back to your town five years ago, back to your too-empty childhood home, to the same streets and faces. But they aren’t the same anymore.

The faces, the people you once knew, are especially foreign. You knew all of these people, at one point or another. This is a town where everybody knows everybody, after all. But despite what they say, you know, you feel that these aren’t the people who greeted you as you passed, who you sat next to in dusty classrooms, who watched you grow up. When you first realized that this town was no longer your town, you tried asking others if they felt the same way, if they noticed anything wrong with this town. That only earned you strange looks and whispers behind your back. The rumor mill of your town had always been terrible, and you can’t help but imagine what they might be saying about you. At one point, you thought about seeing a doctor, but there’s only one in town, and you shudder to think of how quickly leaks out of that office. The doctor tells his nurses, the nurses tell the receptionists, and the receptionists gossip to their book clubs and church potlucks. You’ve stopped trying to ask anyone. This town is not your town, but it is theirs.  

…

This town is not your town, and you’re not sure what to do with that information. Where is your town? Did you somehow leave, or did it leave you? Where does a town even go? This town offers no answers. The logical part of you knows should get out of this town, either to find your town or to simply escape the wrongness. But you don’t. You don’t even try. Because of one thing.

Your library.

Well, it’s not your library. You don’t own it; it’s a public library. But it is the one place that remains the same. You started working there as the assistant librarian shortly after you moved back home. Ms. Grey, who’d been the one and only librarian for as long as you’d been alive and then some, had begrudgingly accepted that, as she advanced in years, she would need some help with the more physical needs of running a library, like reshelving books and children’s story time. She’d reached out to you personally to offer you the job; you never interviewed or even knew there was a job opening. Whether she chose you because she knew of your degree or remembered you from all the days you spent at the library in your youth, you didn’t know. 

Ms. Grey is more librarian than person. That’s how the children always describe her. You couldn’t deny the statement; even in your childhood, twenty odd years ago, she was all cardigans, glasses-chains, silver-streaked hair, and lips pressed into a permanent hush. To be fair, you aren’t sure Ms. Grey is doing anything to refute these descriptions. You’re not sure you’ve ever seen her leave the library; she lives in a small apartment tucked somewhere in the back rooms, and you’d never seen her buying groceries or feeding pigeons in the park.  

The library is still your library. Ms. Grey is still your Ms. Grey. Coming to work feels like stepping into a warm bath after a long day; you can feel the wrongness melt out of your bones the more time you spend in the shelves. It’s a sanctuary in this town that is not your town. That’s part of the reason why you’ve never tried to leave. You’re scared. You’re scared losing this sanctuary, of never finding safety again. But that’s not the only reason. You’re scared for the children. 

Having spent a lot of time in the children’s section, you’ve noticed something. Unlike the adults of this town, the children are… almost there. You see glimpses of the kids you remember from your town, flickers of familiarity as they sit enraptured for story time. You think, maybe, if you hadn’t noticed this, you’d eventually work up the courage to finally leave this town for good. But you were a library child like them once, and you cannot leave them behind in this town that is not your town. 

…

This town is not your town, and it shows no signs of becoming your town again. Weeks pass, maybe months? You aren’t sure; time works differently in this town that is not your town. Hours drag by like years, weeks slip out of your grasp like seconds. You’re sure you’d lose track of the day-night cycle if it weren’t for your regular hours at the library. You still understand that time, and you plan to take advantage of that as much as possible. You start showing up earlier and earlier to work each day and leaving later and later. You’re sure Ms. Grey has realized something. She’s very observant. She doesn’t comment on it, though, and you send thanks to whatever good is left in this town. 

The town is slowly becoming less and less like your town. Just slightly. If you hadn’t already felt that this town was not your town, you would know now. The wrongness has long since flooded your muscles and is making a home in your joints. You’d think—you’d hope—that it would make movement harder, but it doesn’t. If anything, you feel loose, like someone cleared the debris out of the hinges of your body and they can now swing unrestricted. You try not to dwell on the part of you that doesn’t mind the feeling. The people of the town have changed too. Their gazes feel heavier as they linger on you just a little too long. 

You begin to think the town that is not your town has a mind of its own one morning. You’ve always walked to the library, so the path has become muscle memory. You could walk it blindfolded. Most mornings, even before you lost your town, your mind fades and you return to consciousness on the front steps of the library. Yet, one morning—you think it was a Tuesday—you stumble over a crack in the sidewalk that shouldn’t be there, and when you look up, you’re in a part of town you hardly ever step foot it. It’s the nicer part of town, mostly retirees who bought real estate before it cost an arm and a leg. And it’s in the exact opposite direction of the library. Or it should be. You could have sworn you walked your normal path; there would be no reason for you to have ended up here.

You’re thankful you started leaving early. You’re able to navigate back to the library long before Ms. Grey would consider you late. Since then, you pay attention to the streets you turn on; you still end up taking wrong turns. 

You’re not sure what to do about the children. You see them outside the library occasionally, playing in their yards as you walk home from work or holding onto their mother’s hand in the grocery store. They seem less lively than they do in the library. Usually they’re squirrelly, unable to sit still unless you pick a really good book for story time. But outside, they’re oddly calm, oddly gentle; the picture-perfect image of well-behaved children. You start choosing longer and longer books just to keep them in the library a little bit longer. You think they notice too. They start asking for a second book, a third, a puppet show, a game. They beg their parents to let them stay just five more minutes, even on beautiful days where normally they’d want nothing more than to play outside. You want to do more, to hold them close and keep them safe. Their parents drag them kicking and screaming out of the library, back out into the town that is not your town. 

…

This town is not your town, and you think they’d have to revoke your degree if you didn’t at least try to figure out why. You seem to have a lot of free time at work, lately. Besides story time, most of your duties fly by. Shelving books takes half the time it once did. As long as someone is manning the front desk, which Ms. Grey insists on doing herself, she doesn’t care how you spend your time as long as everything gets done. Before, you might have spent your time journaling or making a home in all of Agatha Christie’s books. Lately, however, you’ve been spending time in the psychology section of the nonfiction stacks. The brain is a strange thing after all, and while you seriously doubt this is all in your head, wrong answers are better than no answers. You keep notes on terms that catch your eye on a legal pad you borrowed from the front desk.

Jamais vu: experiencing a situation which one both recognizes and views as unfamiliar; the opposite of déjà vu.

Capgras Syndrome: a delusion in which a person believes the people around them, often loved ones, have been replaced by identical imposters; often associated with aggression towards the “imposters”.

Reduplicative paramnesia: the delusional belief that a place has been duplicated or relocated to a different location.

Derealization: when one experiences a shift in their perception of the external world, causing them to believe it to be somehow falsified; often associated with depersonalization.

Depersonalization: a feeling of the detachment from the self, including thoughts, emotions and actions.

Fregoli Syndrome: a delusion in which one believes the different people around them are actually one single person in disguise; closely related to Capgras Syndrome.

Semantic satiation: in which the repetition of a word or phrase causes it to be perceived as unfamiliar or strange

You’re not sure you believe anything you’ve researched to be the cause of the wrongness, of the lack of your town. As far as you can tell, most of the various phenomena are either fleeting moments of strangeness or caused by pre-existing psychological disorders or extreme head trauma, neither of which you have. Probably. Still, it’s nice to know. More information never hurts.

When you return to the front desk, Ms. Grey is watching you. Her gaze is different than the people of this town. Where theirs is heavy, hers is sharp, drilling into you. You wonder if she knows. Knows about your time in the psychology section, knows about the wrong turns and the watchful eyes, knows about the wrongness that working its way through your body, knows about this town. You think she’s about to say something, until she turns away from you, the absence of her stare leaving your mind to bleed. You take your seat next to her and push down the desire to ask her too many questions. Instead, you pull out your legal pad again and begin to write. 

Library Library Library Library Library Library Library Library Library Library Library Library Library Library Library Library Library Library Library Library Library Library Library Library Library Library Library Library Library Library Library Library Library Library Library Library

Over and over and over again, until you fill up two sheets of the legal pad and your hand starts to cramp. Despite this, you can’t recreate the unfamiliar feeling that you read about earlier. The word still looks the same. If Ms. Grey notices your distress, she doesn’t say anything. You tear the pages out and stuff them into a pocket. As you leave the library that evening, you spot the silver book drop, and for a long moment, you want to fold yourself up as small as a book and tuck yourself into the slot, back into the library, away from the town that isn’t your town.

…

This town is not your town.

It’s getting harder and harder to navigate your way to the library. The streets aren’t consistent. You swear they shift under your feet sometimes. There are entire neighborhoods you don’t recognize, or maybe you do. You’re losing grip on how your town differed from this town. Did it? Should you recognize the neighborhoods, remember the path to the library? Everything has changed. Nothing has.

This town is not your town.

…

This town is not your town.

The people of this town keep staring. You’re not sure they’re trying to hide it anymore. Their whole bodies slowly swivel to face you as they pass. You’ve learned to keep your head down as you walk. Making eye contact makes you feel lethargic, unalert, nearly content. Like you want to lay on the ground and let the earth swallow you. 

This town is not your town.

…

This town is not your town.

You don’t know where the children are. Slowly, they’ve stopped showing up for story time. You’ve stopped going anywhere besides work and home, so maybe they’re at school or the grocery store or anywhere else. But you don’t see them anymore. You wonder if they miss story time. You hope they do. 

You’re still scared for them. You still don’t leave. 

This town is not your town.

…

This town is not your town.

The wrongness has made a home in your guts. It flowers there, feeding on bile and stomach acid. You feel it creeping towards your heart, towards your brain. You wonder how it will feel flooding your veins, tapping on your nerves, rewiring your synapses. Instead of eating, you write words over and over again on any scrap of paper you can find. Instead of sleeping, you spend hours staring into the bathroom mirror, trying to look at your face so hard it warps into something new. Try as you might, these are the only moments of familiarity you get anymore. 

This town is not your town.

…

This town is not your town.

Who are you? What are you? Where are you? When are you? Why are you? “You” is a strange word. What does it mean? Can you lose “you”? Did you? Can you get it back? Do you want to? Perhaps the wrongness was the “you” all along, flushing the parasite that you thought was “you” out. Perhaps it was rightness all along. Why fight? Is the “you” really that important? Why are you?

Where are the children?

This town is not your town.

…

You can’t find your library. You stumble down idyllic small-town streets that go on forever. Neighbors watch you, concerned. They care about the people of this town. They watch over the people of this town. Your legs barely support you. You want to ask for help. You can’t find the voice to do so.

By the the time you find your library, the sun has slipped below the horizon, and the doors have long since been locked. You collapse on the front steps, clinging to the door handle like driftwood in a tempest. You do not move, do not leave, because you know if you do, your library will be lost for good, and so will the children. The night is silent save for your near-sobbing breaths. Time passes and doesn’t. You lay there until the sharp click of a lock wakes you from your incoherence. You let go of the handles and Ms. Grey pulls the door open. She looks down at you for forever and a moment, expression unreadable as ever. You think she is about to slam the door back in your face until she utters something that flushes all the wrongness from your body

“This town is not your town.”

She extends a hand towards you. You take it, and she draws you into the library.