“Messages from the Future Me”

Title: Messages from the Future Me

Genre: Epistolary Fiction

Theme: Fate, Choice, Consequence

Letter One — Dated: March 12, 2028

(Arrived March 12, 2025)

Dear Me,

Don’t go to the interview tomorrow.

You’ll think it’s the opportunity of a lifetime — a creative director position, downtown, with a corner office and a view of the river. You’ll wear your gray suit and rehearse your answers in the mirror. But if you take that job, you’ll lose more than time. You’ll lose her.

I know you don’t believe me. You’re reading this with that mix of skepticism and wonder that only you have. But please — skip the interview. Take the walk instead. You’ll see why.

— Future You

(P.S. Don’t forget the red scarf. It’s colder than it looks.)

I laughed when I first read it. A prank, obviously. The handwriting looked like mine, sure, but the ink had a faded, sun-browned tone — as though it had been sitting somewhere for years. And yet, the letter had no postmark, no return address. Just my name, written in looping cursive, tucked into my mailbox between bills.

Still, curiosity has a way of whispering louder than logic.

So I didn’t go to the interview. I took the walk instead — red scarf and all. Halfway through the park, I ran into a woman sketching near the pond. Her name was Anna. We talked about the cold, about art, about everything and nothing. By the time I realized two hours had passed, the interview had come and gone — and I didn’t care.

I married her three years later.

Letter Two — Dated: August 19, 2030

(Arrived April 7, 2025)

Dear Me,

I see you’re happy. Good. Anna’s laugh still warms rooms, doesn’t it?

But listen closely — next Thursday, she’ll ask if you can come to her art show. You’ll tell her you have a deadline. You’ll mean it kindly, but you’ll stay home. She’ll stand in the gallery alone when the lights flicker out, and she’ll feel something break inside her that you won’t see for months.

Go to the show. Please. It matters more than you think.

— Future You

By now, I no longer questioned how the letters arrived. They simply did — crisp, unmarked envelopes sliding into my life like silent intrusions of fate.

So I went to the art show. I left my laptop glowing with half-finished work and stood beside her in the golden light of a crowded room. She smiled, radiant and surprised.

Later, as we walked home, she said, “You always know when I need you most.”

I wanted to tell her I didn’t — that someone else did. But I stayed quiet.

Letter Three — Dated: February 3, 2033

(Arrived May 28, 2025)

Dear Me,

You’ve been faithful to these letters. I’m grateful. But the next one — the fourth — you must ignore. I can’t tell you why. Just promise me: whatever it says, don’t do it.

— Future You

I stared at that one for hours. The handwriting trembled slightly, like it had been written by someone afraid or ashamed. Why warn me against following the next letter — when every message so far had saved me?

I waited. Two weeks later, the fourth letter came.

Letter Four — Dated: September 9, 2035

(Arrived June 12, 2025)

Dear Me,

Anna will die in a car accident next year.

I’m sorry. There’s no gentle way to say it. But there is a way to stop it — if you leave town before September 9, 2026. Move somewhere quiet, somewhere far from the river roads. You’ll think it’s running away, but it’s saving her.

You can change this.

— Future You

I sat there, heart pounding, the world collapsing into ink and paper.

Anna was at work. I could call her, warn her, drive her home, change everything — or nothing.

But then I remembered the third letter — the warning not to follow the fourth.

If I obeyed one version of myself, I’d defy another. Either way, I’d betray myself.

That night, I burned both letters in the sink.

Letter Five — Dated: January 2, 2038

(Arrived December 31, 2025)

Dear Me,

You didn’t save her.

You never could.

The truth is — there were no versions of me trying to change fate. There was only one: the one who couldn’t accept it. Every letter you received was an echo of your grief, looping through time, trying to undo the inevitable.

You created me the night she died — the night you wrote your first letter to yourself, praying the world could bend backward.

I am your echo.

— Future You

I dropped the paper.

My handwriting — all of it — every letter I’d ever received — matched perfectly with the journal I’d kept since Anna passed. The phrasing, the punctuation, the slant of my “r.” The letters weren’t sent to me. They were sent by me — across years of denial and desperate hope.

I’d been living inside the ghost of my own creation.

Letter Six — Dated: November 1, 2040

(Never Arrived)

Because I never wrote it.

Instead, I walked to the pond where I first met Anna. The trees were bare. The air carried the same chill as that first day. I sat with a blank sheet of paper, pen in hand — and for the first time in fifteen years, I didn’t write to the future.

I wrote to her.

“Dear Annar,

I finally stopped trying to fix the past. Maybe that’s the only way to live — by letting time move, not fight it. I’ll keep walking, red scarf and all. You’re still here, in every moment I choose to stay.”

When I left the letter on the bench, a gust of wind caught it, carrying it toward the water. For a moment, I almost chased it — but then I let it go.

Because some messages aren’t meant to return.