I first found it on a Friday, which makes no sense because I don’t go anywhere on Fridays. My schedule is trash, three classes stacked back to back in the morning, and then I usually just collapse in the dorm until dinner. But somehow, around four, I ended up walking past this alley that wasn’t there before.
And there it was. A red-bricked building like the ones I see in UK movies and music videos, with a flickering neon sign. THE TIME LIBRARY.
The library called upon me, and I didn't resist. I walked straight inside. I pushed the door open, and the smell of old paper rushed through my nostrils.
The librarian was a slender woman in a grey sweater. She didn’t even look up when I walked in. Just said, “Borrowing or returning?”
“Uh, browsing?”
She finally looked at me and nodded like she knew something I didn’t.
The books were arranged in shelves that touched the high rise ceiling. It contained every known subject in the world. Physics, history, romance, cookbooks, even books like applied Telepathy and telekinesis. Some looked printed yesterday, while some looked like they were copied by monks a thousand years ago.
I grabbed a history book, something about the Roman empire, and walked to the desk.
“No card?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“That’s fine. Payment?”
I didn’t know what she meant. I had like seven bucks in my wallet and a half-punched burrito loyalty card. I started pulling them out.
She actually laughed. Not warm, but not cruel either. “We don’t take money here. Time only.”
I thought she meant late fees, like how long I could keep it. So I said, “A week?”
Her smile tightened. “No. Minutes. Hours. Years, if you can afford it.”
I blinked. “You’re joking.”
“Try me.” She slid over a little clock. The hands weren’t moving.
I set the book down, laughing nervously.
“So what, I put a minute in there?”
She tapped the glass. “One minute for one book. That’s our smallest denomination.”
I didn’t feel anything when I agreed. Just nodded and slid the clock back to her. She stamped the book. “Due in three days.”
And that was that.
Later that night, I noticed I was brushing my teeth and then suddenly it was two minutes later. Like a blink, but bigger. I thought maybe I’d zoned out scrolling on my phone, but my phone was in the other room.
I forgot about it until midterms. I was dying, with three papers due and two exams. I remembered the library and sprinted back.
“Payment?” the librarian asked, not even pretending to care who I was.
“Uh... ten hours?” I said, like I was ordering a pizza.
She nodded and slid the clock toward me. My body felt different the moment I touched it, like an unknown weight had been taken away from me.
"Ten hours, gone," I thought.
But suddenly, I could read and actually focus, like caffeine squared. I tore through three textbooks in a night. Passed both exams, turned in the papers, no problem.
I thought, “Why doesn’t everyone use this?”
Then I noticed something.
My roommate Ben started oversleeping. Like, not “oops, I hit snooze,” but whole afternoons. He’d wake up pale, rubbing his temples, saying, “Weird, I was awake a minute ago.”
Then my history professor collapsed mid-lecture. Just dropped like the plug had been pulled. Ambulance came, and they said “sudden fatigue.”
I didn’t want to connect the dots, but the guilt was buzzing in my chest. So I tested it. A small test. I borrowed a tiny little poetry book. Paid five minutes.
My mom called me the next day. She was laughing but was also freaked out. “Honey, I was making coffee this morning and suddenly it was ten minutes later. The pot overflowed. Isn’t that funny?”
It wasn’t funny.
It hit me at that point that the time wasn’t always coming out of me.
I tried to quit. I stayed away for a week. But then finals came, and my brain was soup again. The library was just there, always on the corner, no matter which street I walked.
I paid twenty hours and told myself it would be fine.
That night, Ben didn’t come back to the dorm. His girlfriend texted me, freaking out, saying he’d slept straight through their date. She couldn’t wake him for six hours straight.
And I still sat there at my desk, highlighting chapters, sipping Red Bull, pretending it wasn’t my fault.
I don’t know how much I’ve paid now. Days, probably. Maybe weeks. The librarian never asks questions. She just stamps the books and watches me with that tight smile.
Sometimes I think about returning everything, but the shelves don’t work that way. Once you’re done, the books vanish like they were never there.
I asked once. "What if I stop paying?"
She tilted her head. “Then your debts get collected from somewhere you wouldn't want.”
My heart skipped a beat. Now, this is scary. I'd rather not go down that lane.
But tonight, I’m holding another book, palms sweating. It’s for my philosophy finals. If I fail it, I lose my scholarship. If I lose the scholarship, I can’t afford tuition.
The stamp waits. The clock ticks. And outside my window, the whole campus is quiet, too quiet, like everyone’s already asleep.
I don’t know whose hours I’ll take this time. I just know I can’t stop.