The Auction of Your Tomorrow

The hammer falls, and five years of your life are sold to a stranger.

You stand so fast your chair hits the floor.

“You cannot sell my life.”

The Auctioneer checks the ledger.

“I am not selling it. You already gave it away.”

Behind them, a screen lights up:

FIVE YEARS WAITING TO FEEL READY.

The stranger takes the receipt for the years you kept assuming would still be there tomorrow.

The stranger folds the receipt into her coat. She does not look triumphant.

She looks like someone putting away something fragile.

The screen behind the Auctioneer flickers — waiting for a memory to show. Yours, if you give it one.

/what the hell is going on here?

They turn the ledger toward you. Your own handwriting fills the line marked SELLER.

what did I sign?

The ledger's page fills with small marks — each one a morning you told yourself tomorrow would be different.

"And you'd have let them go for nothing, wouldn't you? That's what frightens you. Not that I bought them.

That you were giving them away for free."

Marah rises from the front row, receipt in hand, and looks at you the way you'd

look at a house on fire you used to live in.

Behind the Auctioneer, the Clerk's fingers rest on the ledger's next page, waiting for the room to settle.

Marah sits back down slowly, receipt still folded in her fist.

The Clerk's fingers tighten on the page's edge. The room leans in.

The Clerk turns the page.

LOT TWO: EVERY CHOICE YOU MADE SO NOBODY WOULD BE DISAPPOINTED IN YOU.

Half the room raises a paddle.

You almost laugh.

Then the first image appears behind the Auctioneer.

A job you never wanted.

A yes you gave because no felt cruel.

A version of you everyone liked because it asked for nothing.

The bidding climbs.

Marah does not raise her paddle this time.

She looks at you instead.

“How much of your life was really yours?”

The room goes quiet.

Because you do not know the answer.

The silence stretches, and the Auctioneer lets it. They are very good at letting things stretch.

The Clerk's hand moves on the ledger, and a new image forms on the screen: a door you never opened.

A language you never learned. A person you never called.

Marah's paddle is in her hand before the Auctioneer finishes the sentence.

The room turns. Bidding on your unlived self, and the only person fighting for it is a stranger.

what exactly are you trying to buy marah?

Marah turns the paddle over in her hands, and for a moment she doesn't look like a bidder at all.

The screen behind the Auctioneer flickers — offering to show you, if you ask.

where would I have been?

The screen sharpens. Not a fantasy — a Tuesday. A version of you mid-sentence, mid-laugh, mid-something.

The face is yours. The ease in it is not.

The image holds a moment too long. Then the Auctioneer raises the hammer.

The room exhales. And you finally see it — the cruelest part.

Nobody took any of this from you. You traded it. For safety. For approval.

For the promise that you would begin, one day, when you felt ready.

The question lands in you somewhere the hammer never reached.

The Clerk rises, and wheels out a tall shape covered in black cloth.

No card. No starting price. The room has never been this quiet.

let me look

You step forward. The room parts for you without a word.

The Auctioneer does not stop you. They step aside, ledger held to their chest.

The black cloth hangs still. Your reflection ghosts faintly across it in the lamplight.

The Clerk's hand finds the edge of the cloth, and waits for your nod.

The Clerk waits for your nod, cloth gathered between white knuckles.

The whole room leans in, and no one breathes.

The black cloth hits the floor.

There is no object underneath it.

Only a mirror.

Above it, one final card reads: EVERYTHING YOU COULD STILL BECOME.

Nobody raises a paddle.

Your stomach drops. “Nobody wants it?”

The Auctioneer looks almost surprised.

“It is not theirs to buy.”

The Clerk turns the ledger toward you.

Every page behind you is stamped GONE.

Every page ahead is blank.

“Your past was sold the moment you stopped choosing what to do with it.”

Then the Auctioneer places the hammer in your hand.

“But tomorrow has never belonged to anyone else.”

You cannot buy back the life you postponed.

But you can stop putting the rest of it up for auction.