The First Email

Inbox (1)

The First Email

Natalie Chen had been the only person on the eleventh floor for nearly three months.

It was the kind of office in which you could hear breathing. The overhead fluorescents buzzed faintly, half of them flickering like they could not make up their mind. Rows of desks stood like tombstones, each one wiped clean and lifeless. No chatter. No clatter. Just the hum of old tech and the occasional groan of the building settling into its bones.

She liked it that way—at least, that’s what she told herself.

After the company switched most of its team to remote work, Natalie had volunteered to keep showing up in person. Said she needed the “structure.” What she really needed was somewhere she could exist in peace, without the gravity of her apartment pressing down on her. Out here, no piles of laundry staring at her, no microwave blinking 12:00 AM like an accusation.

She sat at her usual desk, second row from the window, sipping cold coffee and staring at lines of code on a flickering monitor. Her job wasn’t glamorous—tech support for an encrypted messaging app no one had ever heard of. Mostly she reset passwords and forwarded complaints to devs who never replied.

Natalie had once dreamed of doing something bigger. She still kept a sticky note on her desk that said MAKE SOMETHING THAT MATTERS, though it had lost all meaning a long time ago.

She tapped a few keys. Another ticket resolved. Another human helped. Kind of.

The ping came at 7:16 PM.

Not from Slack. Not from the support queue. From Outlook.

Her personal inbox.

Inbox (1)

She blinked. That wasn’t right. Her personal inbox never pinged on her work terminal. She leaned closer.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: You’re going to forget this.

Sent: July 15, 2025, 7:16 PM

Received: July 5, 2025, 7:16 PM

Natalie frowned.

A prank? An internal test? Some kind of delayed delivery she forgot she scheduled?

She opened it.

Natalie,

If you’re reading this, it worked. The time sync is holding.

Don’t delete this.

Just watch what happens next:

At 7:18 PM, the lights on the west side will go out for exactly six seconds.

Don’t panic. No one’s coming.

—N.

She scoffed. A little too loudly for an empty office.

Then, at 7:18 PM, the lights on the west side went out. Exactly six seconds later, they flickered back to life.

She sat very still, coffee cup halfway to her lips.

“Nope,” she whispered.

She refreshed the message header. Same timestamps.

Sent: July 15. Received: July 5.

Ten days apart.

Natalie pushed her chair back slowly, as if whatever sent the message could hear her moving.

The printer in the back corner made a strange mechanical cough. It always did that.

Still, she flinched hard enough to spill her coffee.

She wiped it up mechanically, then stood and turned in a slow circle, scanning the floor. Still alone.

Back at her desk, she re-read the email three more times. She checked the header source data. No anomalies. No signs of spoofing. It looked like a perfectly normal message… that hadn’t been written yet.

And the worst part?

The signature:

—N.

That’s how she always signed her messages. She hated how formal “Best,” or “Regards” sounded.

Just “N.”

She should have deleted it. Should have called IT. Should have laughed and said, “weird glitch,” and gone home.

Instead, she clicked “Starred.”

Just in case it wasn’t the last one.

Escalation

Natalie didn’t sleep well that night.

She kept checking her phone, refreshing her inbox every few minutes. No new messages. Not from the future. Not from anyone. It was stupid. She knew it was stupid. She’d probably read the timestamp wrong—some server misfire, a delayed send, whatever. And the lights? Coincidence. The west side always flickered. Hadn’t it?

By 3:30 AM, she gave up and pulled her laptop into bed with her.

Still nothing.

She checked the message again anyway, as if it might change.

The timestamp hadn’t budged.

At the office the next night, she was jumpier than usual. The eleventh floor felt off. Like it was watching her. Even her reflection in the window didn’t look quite right—too still, too dim. She avoided eye contact with it as she passed.

At 6:48 PM, a new email appeared.

Inbox (1)

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Still think it’s a coincidence?

Sent: July 15, 2025, 6:48 PM

Received: July 6, 2025, 6:48 PM

She hesitated before opening it. Her palms were already sweating.

Natalie,

You’re not losing your mind. And no, this isn’t a trick.

Tonight, at 6:53 PM, you’ll get a call from HR about the Atlanta breach. Don’t answer. It’s just noise.

Focus instead on what’s coming at 7:11 PM. You’ll drop your coffee mug. It will shatter. Let it.

More soon.

—N.

Five minutes later, her phone rang.

HR. Atlanta branch. She let it go to voicemail, heart thudding.

At 7:11 PM, she knocked her coffee mug off the desk reaching for her mouse.

It shattered on the floor.

She stared at the pieces in silence for a long time. No one had been near her. No one to push her hand or bump her arm. She had just... dropped it. Like the email said.

She didn’t bother cleaning it up right away.

Instead, she opened a new email and typed:

Okay. You have my attention.

—N.

But she didn’t send it. Who would she be replying to?

By Wednesday, there were three more messages. All short. All time-stamped July 15. All right.

One told her which elevator would stall for ten seconds on the way up. It did.

One told her that the hallway motion sensor light would stay dark this time. It did.

The third warned her not to take the subway after work. “The man in the blue parka,” it said. “He’s not dangerous. But he reminds you of someone. And you don’t want to remember that. Trust me.”

She took an Uber.

It was Thursday evening, five days before July 15, when she received the first real warning.

She was sitting in the break room on the eleventh floor. The fridge hummed too loudly, and the vending machine was still broken from weeks ago. The lights above buzzed faintly in time with her nerves.

Another ping.

Inbox (1)

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: The part you won’t want to read

Sent: July 15, 2025, 7:02 PM

Received: July 6, 2025, 7:02 PM

Her mouth was dry before she even clicked it open.

Natalie,

You need to understand: this only works if you do exactly what I did.

On July 15, someone will die. And you’ll be the reason.

Don’t panic. There’s still time to choose how.

More soon.

—N.

Natalie stood slowly. The break room suddenly felt smaller. The hum of the fridge felt louder. The fluorescent bulbs burned hotter against her skin.

She left her coffee on the table and walked the entire floor twice, just to make sure no one else was there. She checked the stairwell. The elevator. Even the fire escape door, which hadn’t been opened in months.

Nothing. No one.

Just her. And the message.

When she sat back down at her desk, she drafted a reply again:

“What do you mean, someone will die”?

“What the hell is this?”

“If this is some kind of warning, tell me who. Tell me how. Tell me why.

Tell me who I become.

—N.”

She didn’t send that one either.

Back at her apartment that night, she locked the door, then locked it again. She shut every window, pulled every blind.

She checked her inbox once every ten minutes. No new messages. Nothing from future-Natalie. Just the old ones, starred and reread so often she had them nearly memorized.

She tried to distract herself with reruns, but they felt hollow. She read Reddit threads about glitches in the matrix. People who claimed to get messages from other timelines. Most were fake. Some were mentally ill. A few, though, made her fingers go cold.

In an effort to anchor herself against the slow, splintering erosion of her sanity, Natalie did something she hadn’t in years—she reached out to someone from before. Before the messages, before the silence, before things stopped making sense. Maybe I should finally reach out to Jordan, she thought, the name surfacing like a forgotten password. They’d gone to university together, orbiting the same group of friends before time and life scattered them apart. Still, there was a steadiness to him she remembered—something solid. Her thumbs hesitated above the screen before she typed:

Hey… I know it’s been a while.

Free for a coffee tomorrow?

The reply came faster than expected.

Brick & Brew at 4. See you there.

When she finally fell asleep—hours later—it was with the laptop still glowing on the nightstand.

And a final thought looping through her mind:

If I’m sending these messages… who am I trying to stop?

Part 1 – Coffee & Confessions

The café was tucked between two brick lecture halls on the university campus, still surrounded by sunlit sidewalks and trimmed hedges that looked exactly like they had ten years ago. A soft breeze stirred the plastic umbrellas outside. Somewhere across the green, a dog barked twice—sharp, cheerful. The scent of espresso and sugar wafted from the door every time someone pushed it open.

Natalie sat by the window, sipping tea she barely tasted, watching a group of college kids spill out of a nearby building—laughing, jostling, alive. She envied them. They didn’t look like they’d ever lost sleep over a timestamp or flinched when their phone vibrated.

Inside, it was warm and loud. Muffled conversation buzzed through the air, competing with clinking cups and low indie music from the overhead speakers.

Jordan arrived five minutes late, still in a zip-up hoodie and cargo joggers that somehow looked professional on them. Their hair was tied back in a half-knot, and they gave Natalie a smile as they slid into the booth across from her.

“Hey, stranger.”

Natalie smiled tightly. “Hey.”

“You look…” Jordan hesitated, searching for a safe word. “Tired.”

“That bad?”

“Only a little haunted.”

Natalie huffed a quiet laugh. “Fair enough.”

Jordan pulled the lid off their coffee and took a careful sip. “So. You reached out. Thought maybe you got hit with a wave of nostalgia.”

“I needed someone I could talk to. Who knows me.”

Jordan’s expression softened. “Yeah. Of course.”

A pause stretched between them. Outside the window, a skateboarder narrowly avoided crashing into a bench. Natalie watched the scene absently.

“So,” Jordan prompted, “are you going to tell me what’s going on? Or should I just keep guessing?”

Natalie glanced around, then leaned in slightly. “I’ve been getting emails.”

“Spam?”

“No,” she said. “They’re from me.”

Jordan blinked. “You mean like… your future self?”

Natalie’s silence said enough.

Jordan gave a low whistle. “Okay. That’s a new one.”

“I know how it sounds.”

“You always were into weird tech theories,” they said, but their tone wasn’t mocking—more curious than anything.

Natalie looked back down at her cup. “It started with little things. Predictions. Lights flickering, elevator stalling, stuff like that. But they’ve all come true.”

“And the emails are really from your own address?”

Natalie nodded. “Same exact address. Same tone. Same way I sign off. I checked the headers. They look normal.”

Jordan leaned back, frowning. “Could be a spoof or mirror script. Maybe someone scraped your old messages? Social engineering prank?”

Natalie hesitated. “What if it’s not? What if it’s really me? From… later?”

Jordan studied her for a long moment. “Is that what you want to believe?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “Part of me hopes it’s just a glitch. The other part is scared it’s not.”

There was another pause, gentler this time.

“I heard about you and Zach,” Jordan said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

Natalie looked away. “It’s fine.”

“Six years is a long time,” they added softly.

“Six years feels like someone else’s life.”

Jordan reached for their coffee again. “You think any of this has to do with that?”

Natalie shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

They sat in silence a moment longer, letting the world spin gently around them. Dogs barked, people walked by, the sky held that muted mid-afternoon shine that always felt like a false sense of calm.

Finally, Jordan said, “Want me to take a look?”

Natalie glanced up.

“The emails,” they said. “I can run the headers. Check the IPs. Maybe trace where they’re coming from.”

Natalie didn’t answer right away. Part of her wanted to throw her laptop at them and beg them to make it all make sense. The other part—the quieter, twitchier part—whispered that maybe she wasn’t supposed to.

Still, she gave a nod. “Okay. Tomorrow.”

They gave each other a familiar handshake before Natalie left, watching the sun lower behind the brick buildings as she walked through the familiar streets towards the office for yet another lonely, screen filled night.

Part 2 – Echoes of Herself

The elevator groaned louder than usual that night.

Natalie watched the floor numbers crawl up like they were trying to resist her. She leaned against the back wall, arms crossed, the air too still, too quiet. The coffee with Jordan had helped for maybe an hour. It had been almost normal—almost—but now the questions were returning, loud and fast and unwelcome.

Had she actually agreed to let them look at the emails?

She thought she had. She remembered saying yes. Or maybe she’d just meant to say yes. She couldn’t tell anymore.

By the time she reached the eleventh floor, the hallway lights flickered twice, even though they hadn’t done that all week. A draft moved past her like someone had just stepped away. She held her breath and listened.

Nothing. Just her.

Her screen was already on when she reached her desk.

That was odd.

She always powered it down before leaving.

The timestamp in the corner read 7:04 PM. She hadn’t realized it was that late. Hadn’t it just been six-thirty?

Her inbox pinged.

Inbox (1)

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: You’re not supposed to involve Jordan

Sent: July 15, 2025, 7:04 PM

Received: July 12, 2025, 7:04 PM

Natalie froze. The cursor hovered over the subject line.

You’re not supposed to involve Jordan.

Her stomach flipped.

She opened the email slowly, like peeling back a bandage.

“Natalie,

Jordan doesn’t need to know what’s coming. He’ll just make things worse.

Do not let them near the files. Check under your bed

You buried this for a reason.

It’s time to dig it up.

—N.”

Her ears were ringing.

She hadn’t told anyone about the files.

The mention of Jordan could be chalked up to surveillance—Zach, hackers, maybe—but the files?

No one knew about those. Not even Jordan.

The ones she’d hidden on the old external drive buried under her bed. The ones she hadn’t touched since… since Zach.

Her head swam.

She stumbled back from her desk, her legs bumping against the chair behind her. She braced herself on the desk, breathing too hard, heart lurching against her ribs.

She was alone. The floor was empty. Her computer didn’t show anything suspicious. Just a clean browser window. Just her inbox. Just her name.

But the message—

She’d typed that phrasing before. You buried this for a reason. She remembered writing it in a journal, months ago. Maybe longer. Back when everything felt like it was shattering and she was scrambling to tape it back together.

She opened the email header.

Sent from: [email protected]

Device ID: Unknown

Login Location: Miami, FL

IP: 127.0.0.1

Her breath caught.

That IP—127.0.0.1—was local host.

Her own machine.

The email was coming from her own device.

The walls seemed to shift around her. The silence of the office deepened. Even the hum of the ceiling lights grew distant, like she was sinking into something.

Had she sent it?

Had she sent all of them?

The thought coiled tight and sharp in her chest. Her memory stretched like thin rubber. Things were missing—tiny gaps she’d been ignoring. Files she didn’t remember creating. Tabs left open she didn’t remember reading.

A calendar reminder flashed on her screen:

"3 DAYS LEFT"

She didn’t remember setting that, either.

Natalie stood still for a long time, watching the monitor.

She hadn’t deleted any of the emails. Hadn’t reported them. Hadn’t even told Jordan the full truth. She’d been treating them like prophecy, not a puzzle.

But what if it wasn’t about the future?

What if it was about the past?

What if the emails weren’t warnings of something about to happen…

What if they were breadcrumbs—clues she’d left herself?

A way back to something she’d buried so deep she no longer remembered doing it?

Her hands trembled as she reached for her mouse.

If she wrote herself an email right now… would it show up again?

Would it already exist?

The Warning

The rain had started sometime between her leaving the office and walking up the stairs to her apartment. It was light, steady tapping against the windows like cautious fingers.

Natalie hadn’t turned on any lights. The living room was dim, lit only by the soft blue of her laptop screen. Her shoes were still on. Her coat still clung damply to her shoulders. She hadn’t even bothered to lock the door.

Her inbox was open again.

No new messages.

But one sat there, unopened. She could have sworn she’d read it already. The subject line was the same.

Subject: You’re not supposed to involve Jordan

But when she hovered over it now, it showed a new time:

Sent: July 15, 2025, 9:41 PM

Received: July 12, 2025, 9:41 PM

She hadn’t noticed the time change before. Hadn’t realized that the email updated itself.

She clicked it.

“Natalie,

You’re close now. That’s why it’s getting harder.

The file is still on the black drive.

You hid it. You tried to forget.

But you have to see it again. You must remember why.

We survive this by facing it, under the bed is where you must go.

—N.”

Her throat closed. Her pulse thudded in her ears.

The black drive.

It was still under her bed, somewhere between tax documents and old cords she never threw away.

She moved stiffly, like her body wasn’t entirely hers, pulling the storage bin from under the bed. It scraped the floor too loudly in the silence.

She found the drive in the bottom corner, wrapped in a gray sock. Dust clung to it like it, too, had tried to be forgotten.

She plugged it in.

A dull hum as the system recognized it.

There were folders: “Receipts,” “2020 Taxes,” “Misc.” She hovered over one called “VACATION CLIPS” that hadn’t been modified in years.

Except that was a lie.

She checked the metadata. Modified six months ago.

Inside were files named things like:

• clip_01.mov

• clip_02_final.mp4

• audio_extract.mp3

She didn’t remember any of them.

Her hand shook as she clicked the first video.

It opened in full screen.

The image was grainy. Night vision, maybe. A room she vaguely recognized—Zach’s old apartment. The air mattress he used for guests. Familiar furniture. Then… a woman. Her face turned away from the camera. Half undressed. Moving slowly, uncertainly.

Then another form entered the frame.

Zach.

Laughing. Talking low.

Natalie paused the video. Her stomach lurched.

Her hand covered her mouth, but no sound came out.

She skipped forward in the video. More movement. The girl clearly intoxicated. Her limbs sluggish. Zach, steady. Close. Too close.

She scrubbed ahead again.

The girl was her.

Natalie staggered back from the desk. The chair tipped over. Her body hit the carpet hard, knocking the air from her lungs.

She didn’t remember this.

She couldn’t remember this.

She lay still for several seconds, the world closing in, sound folding inward like cotton in her ears.

The memory tried to rise, like vomit in her throat. The breathless, frozen moment of waking up on that same mattress, sore and confused. Zach telling her she’d just had too much wine. That they hadn’t done anything. That she fell asleep in the guest room. That it was sweet, really.

Sweet.

She crawled back to the laptop. Hands shaking, she opened another file.

Another girl. Different hair. Same apartment. Same setup.

There were five videos. Different women. Some with distorted voices—pleading, crying, drunk. One had her name as the file title.

“Z_Insurance_FINAL_edit.mp4”

Natalie felt herself dissociating again, floating above her own body, watching herself watching it.

The final email arrived at 9:58 PM.

Inbox (1)

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: It’s not about the future

Sent: July 15, 2025, 9:58 PM

Received: July 12, 2025, 9:58 PM

Natalie,

You didn’t imagine it.

You didn’t deserve it.

He’s done it before. He’ll do it again.

That’s what you were trying to stop. That’s what we forgot.

You buried it because remembering meant accepting that no one stopped him.

Not your boss. Not the HR department. Not the friends who “weren’t sure what they saw.”

But we’re still here. We are still here.

And you have everything you need.

—N.

Natalie stared at the screen until her vision blurred.

She began to cry. Softly at first. Then harder. The kind of crying that doesn’t sound like anything—just air trying to escape.

She had written those emails. Every single one. In the early hours of the morning, during blackouts, through foggy, broken moments of clarity she couldn’t hold onto. Her brain had compartmentalized it all, cutting the pieces apart like infected skin.

The emails were her stitches.

She thought she was warning herself about a murder.

But the real crime had already happened.

And it had happened to her.

Countdown

The emails had stopped.

Natalie hadn’t received a single message in two days—not since the last one: “You have everything you need.”

She hadn’t opened her inbox since.

Didn’t need to.

Didn’t want to.

The silence wasn’t peaceful…it was heavy, deliberate, like something bracing for collapse.

She spent the hours in a strange, suspended state. Making toast and not eating it. Washing her hands until her skin peeled. Lying in bed and staring at the ceiling fan until it blurred.

But she wasn’t confused anymore.

She was remembering.

When her phone finally buzzed, she didn’t jump.

It was a text from Jordan.

“Nat. I know. I got the email. I understand if you hate me. But I never touched anyone. I swear. I didn’t know how bad it was.”

“Please don’t go to the cops. Let’s talk. Let me explain.”

She stared at the screen, then typed slowly:

“I found the chat log.

You knew.

You may not have done what he did, but you stood next to it.

And you didn’t stop it.”

She hit send and powered the phone off.

She reopened the _shadowbackup folder, the one hidden on her black drive.

The chat transcript was there. The voice notes. The clipped messages.

Jordan had once written: “We should talk. But not over this.”

They never did.

The next morning, she walked to the precinct just after 8 a.m.

The rain had stopped. The streets were clean. People were walking their dogs and sipping coffee like it was any other weekday.

She wore a plain jacket and no makeup.

The USB drive was in her pocket.

At the front desk, she told the officer her name.

“I need to make a statement,” she said.

“About what, ma’am?”

She hesitated, just for a breath.

Then:

“About a man I killed. And the people he hurt before I did.”

They took her gently. No cuffs. No crowd.

She answered questions. Gave names. Played the videos. Handed over every file she had. Described everything she remembered….the night she found the footage, the bottle, the impact. The void after.

She didn’t cry until she was alone in the holding cell.

It wasn’t from shame.

It was relief.

As she sat there, listening to the soft ticking of some forgotten wall clock, an officer passed her door on his way out. He was speaking low, but she caught enough to freeze her breath.

“Yeah… Jordan Reyes. That IT kid?

Found him in his apartment this morning. Suicide note next to the laptop. Gutted.

Said he didn’t know how to live with what he let happen.

Said Natalie was right.”

The words didn’t echo. They just… fell.

Jordan was gone.

Natalie closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall. For the first time in days, maybe weeks, her body went still.

She didn’t feel triumph. Or even rage.

Just grief. Quiet and deserved.

Three days later, the story broke.

Not the murder. Not first.

The footage. The evidence. The victims.

News outlets blurred faces, but the damage was already done. Dozens of anonymous posts appeared online from women who had known Zach—at parties, in office halls, through job interviews. Some were direct victims. Others knew people who had been.

They told their stories.

And they believed her.

One survivor, a teacher in Sarasota, posted a video to TikTok that went viral in under an hour.

“Her name is Natalie Chen, and she did what the police and HR and the university never did.

She exposed him.

He raped us.

And she stopped him.

She should be free.”

By the end of the week, the hashtag was trending:

#FreeNatalieChen

#JusticeForNatalie

#Inbox1

Thousands of signatures flooded online petitions.

A lawyer volunteered pro bono.

Even the media started to shift tone.

Natalie sat in a quiet jail cell, watching it unfold on a dusty wall-mounted TV.

Her face flickered in the news crawl:

“Former tech analyst turns whistleblower. Confession exposes serial predator.

Case under review. Prosecutors re-evaluating charges.”

And still, no more emails.

Just the final one, sitting in her “Sent” folder like a heartbeat on ice.

Subject: You’ll survive this.

She didn’t read it again.

She didn’t need to.

Epilogue: Inbox (1)

Spring arrived with jasmine on the air and sunlight finally staying past seven.

Natalie was still awaiting trial, but things had changed.

The prosecution offered reduced charges. Then reconsideration. Then public silence. Internal conflict leaked.

Her lawyer said they were stalling.

Her inbox stayed empty.

Until one morning, the guard at the holding unit walked in with a package.

A brown envelope. No return address.

Inside: A flash drive. No label.

Natalie plugged it into the facility kiosk during her limited rec time.

One file.

Just a simple text document.

natalie_inbox_1.txt

She opened it.

To whoever finds this—

Don’t let them rewrite what happened.

Some systems delete the truth. Others bury it under a password.

But someone will always find the file.

Someone will always read the message.

The body forgets.

The mind distorts.

But the code survives.

We wrote this together.

The document ended there.

But Natalie kept reading, long after the words were gone.