Well, if this isn't the strangest thing?

How. In. The. Hell.

This has to be a joke. The Post Office is messing with my head.

A letter from me, seven years from now.

Okay, I'll bite, I'll just open this up and read the joke played on me.

Ohmygod! This is my handwriting!

Here is what will happen to you, October 21, 2027.

Your death will be a simple one. You won't be murdered,

hit by a car or a bus ... nothing quite so tragic. You will

simply go for a walk around the lake, suddenly become

tired in the knees, find a lakeside bench, sit down, and lean

over, closing your eyes. There won't be any last few seconds

of seeing your life flash before your eyes, nothing melodramatic

will happen; you will simply fall into what everyone falls into ...

the last sleep you will ever need.

This is so strange, especially since there is a lake across from where

I live.

Seven years.

And to think? I can't even remember the amount of times I had

asked God to tell me how I would die, yet alone why am I still

alive.

Strangely enough, I find myself without worry or fear now. I have

seven years in which to make the most of them. I guess this is where

I make my bucket list.

Look. I never wanted to hear from her. I mean me.

This old lady comes up to me at the bar and I thought she looked sweet until I realized she was scowling.

She thrust a letter into my hand and hobbles off. I’m still partly convinced she was just insane. The only weird thing is, the letter was.. personal. For instance, I never advertise my relationships on social media or tell many people. But the letter went:

“Hi.

Don’t let Steve read this. This is my 34th attempt so I’m getting a bit blasé about this whole letter writing thing. Time travel exists. I’m you. On to business, we don’t have much time.

Dump Steve. He’s a washed-up toxic rag ball and you know it.

Stop eating grilled cheeses from Raoul’s. This’ll be in the newspapers in a few years but he’s involved in a sex trafficking thing. Yes, that is why the food is so cheap.

Don’t tell anyone, things go very badly for you whenever you do.

I should also mention. Ever since the discovery of time travel, you’ve ended up dying in a cowfield. Which means *I* die. Honestly, it might be a glitch in the system.

Before you ask, I’ve tried everything. From no letters to a phonecall to dinner together. I’ve tried not telling you about Steve, but then Steve took you to the Alps. You guys ran into a bunch of cows with bells and an angry cheesemaker.

I’ve tried letting you tell Steve about the future but he freaks out and either breaks up with you, leading you to take long walks in dairy farm countryside, or convinces you into going on a relaxing retreat—where they make their own yoghurt by fields full of cows.

Once, you stripped and ran into a cow field screaming 'Freedom'.

The first time I told you about the cow field, you lasted about a year before you found some cows and ran around them screaming I’m not scared. Please, never do that again.

The only thing I can think to tell you is to avoid cow fields at all costs. Tell people you have a phobia of cows and then don’t let ANY fit guy or girl convince you to go on a mountain holiday. They won’t “take care” of you. It won’t “be fine”. You’re not “being silly”.

PLEASE please take this to heart. And dump Steve. Not because he’s dangerous. I’ve just got to know him thirty-four times and he’s even more annoying now than he was the twenty-seventh.

Good luck and take care. Our life depends on it.

alienor”

So now I don’t know what to do. I really like the sound of the relaxing retreat thing, though.

I woke up to the familiar ding of my phone. Absentmindedly I reached to the nightstand and fumbled for it.

4:44…. Odd that was the time I was born. Rolling to my side, I threw my arm back over my soundly, sleeping husband, and drifted back into a deep slumber.

"Don't drive anywhere on the 28th of June. You will be in a terrible accident."

Encased in twisted metal and fragments of glass, my mind drifted back to the mysterious text. The hot, sticky blood began to seep from an unseen head wound. Slowly, I let myself succumb to the encroaching darkness as a spectral image of myself whispered, "I tried to warn you….."

You have this idea in your head.

You'll hire someone to end it, in a random moment.

In that moment, you begin to live, waiting for the end.

Yet, the days pass, months, years.

The person you hired is gone in the wind.

Then all those things you don't believe will happen, happen.

You finish your doctorate.

You are hired for that dream job.

You find someone who understands you, inside and out.

You finally go on that vacation, thousands of miles away.

In that moment when life is so beautiful, he will come for you.

End of story.

Just live, death is already knocking at the door.

I opened my eyes to the dripping from the leak in the ceiling. This shithole ruined any chance I had at sleep. I went to turn over and was met with the grey, soulless eyes of a woman. In one swift movement, I was out of my bed, crab walking towards the door. It slammed, and the woman arose. Her neck was craned awkwardly and a pool of blood was endlessly dripping from her wrists down her fingers, leaving a trail of blood behind her.

“I’m unrecognizable to you, huh?” she whispered.

“Wh-- who--”

“I had to get a nose job. Don’t worry, the surgeon is understanding and doesn’t ask too many questions.”

“Wh-- why are you here! Who are you! What do you want!”

“I’m you. You’re so young now... I forgot how young I was.”

″What are you talking about?"

"You just swiped right on Caleb, right?"

"H-- how do you--"

"I'm you. I died a few years ago. I was haunting this scientist who said he'd help me prevent my death. We found the trigger and as soon as it happens in any reality, I appear."

"Why?"

"Caleb was my husband. I married him at seventeen. I ran away to be with him and everything. We were inseparable. I helped raise his two small kids, and there were no signs of trouble until I got pregnant."

"I don't even know him yet. We just talked about--"

"Puppies," she interrupted. "It made me think he was sensitive. He didn't send a dick pic on the first night. We had the same political feelings. Similar work ethics. Determination. When Grandma dies in a few months, he becomes my shoulder to cry on. When Darren goes to jail, he helps me through it. We talk about our pasts, our futures, our goals, desires. He becomes my everything in eighteen months."

"I'm not going to fall."

"No one knows they fall until they hit the ground. You'll hit the ground when he gets in a car accident and you can't talk to him and are desperately trying to reach him and ensure he's okay. You'll coddle him through the death of his youngest son. You will fall for him, convince yourself that you are ready to be a wife and mother at seventeen, abandon your family over something petty, and end up screwed."

"But you clearly committed suicide," I said snidely.

"Already protecting a man you just met," she replied with a snide smirk. "This is how I know this is right. I did commit suicide after he beat me until my kids were dead in my body then took the only living child away from me. He left me broke and destitute, then married some crater-faced sixteen-year-old cheerleader and put on Facebook that my daughter calls her Mommy. I am twenty-two. My daughter has no idea I ever existed. I can't do anything. I lived on the street because I had nothing and even if I had enough to go back home, Mom would laugh at me becaude she told me he was a pedophile in the beginning and I stupidly defended him. This is your warning call. Go change your clothes, wipe the piss off your floor, and delete that stupid app. You're a kid. You shouldnt be doing dumb shit this young, and unless you would like to be dead ceaselessly yelling at yourself to get your shit together, you'll change."

I sat, stunned, in that spot until long after she was gone. The sun was peeling over the horizon when a buzz from my phone startled me from my spot near my door.

"Hello from Philly! :)" Caleb had written.

My atomach churned with disgust and I stared at the message for a long time.

"You there or did you just leave your app open?"

"Happens to me all the time."

"Hello???"

"Earth to Dahlia"

I opened my keyboard and started to type back for him to fuck off, then that I couldnt talk to him, then for him to leave me alone. Finally, I closed the keyboard and the app and uninstalled it. I tossed my phone back on my bed, wiped my eyes, and went to take a shower.