Letters From a Stranger

The first envelope arrived on a gray Monday morning. Daniel nearly stepped on it as he left for work, a plain white slip folded neatly in half, no stamp, no handwriting on the outside. He thought at first it was an advertisement, one of those flyers that drift onto porches in the night.

But when he opened it, he found a single typed sentence.

“I know what you dream about.”

Daniel frowned, folded it back up, and stuffed it into his coat pocket. All day he tried to convince himself it was a prank. Maybe one of his neighbors was bored. Maybe a teenager thought it would be funny.

The second envelope came on Tuesday. This time, the note said:

“You were seven the first time you lied to your father.”

Daniel felt his stomach tighten. That was true—something no one but him could have known. The memory was distant and sour, a small lie about a broken window he had blamed on a neighborhood kid. He hadn’t thought about it in years.

By Wednesday, he was checking his porch before bed, nervous and restless. He told himself he wouldn’t look for another letter, but of course, it was there.

“You pretend not to miss her, but you do.”

He didn’t need the paper to tell him who her was. Melissa, his ex-girlfriend. The one he had spent months convincing himself he had moved on from.

Daniel felt invaded, like someone had peeled back the layers of his life and placed them on the page.

He decided not to show anyone. What could he even say? Hey, I’m getting anonymous letters that know everything about me? It sounded paranoid, and paranoia was the last thing he wanted to admit to.

On Thursday morning, the note was waiting again. This one stopped him cold:

“At 3:47 tomorrow, you will break a glass.”

He laughed at first, more out of unease than amusement. A prediction? That seemed too ridiculous. And yet, all day Friday, he couldn’t shake the words. He avoided the kitchen. He kept his hands steady, careful. When the clock struck 3:47, he sat frozen at his desk.

That was when his elbow nudged his coffee mug. It tipped, shattered on the hardwood.

The sound made his chest seize.

He didn’t laugh this time.

On Saturday, he didn’t want to go outside. He sat at the window instead, staring at the porch like it was a crime scene. The envelope was there by noon, crisp and waiting.

He opened it with shaking fingers.

“Tomorrow, you will choose whether to answer me.”

Daniel barely slept. When the sun rose on Sunday, he found himself pacing, staring at the door, his heart a knot of dread and curiosity.

By midmorning, the letter had arrived. His hand trembled as he unfolded it.

“Do you want to know who I am?”

There was no instruction, no threat, no clue. Just that single line. He set it on the table and stared.

For the first time, he noticed something he had overlooked. The notes were not handwritten, but the paper was always slightly warm, as if freshly pressed. And the typewriter ink—yes, it had to be a typewriter—was uneven, sometimes faint, sometimes bold.

Who even used a typewriter anymore?

Daniel grabbed a pen. His handwriting was clumsy, but he wrote a reply on the back of the page: Yes.

He placed the letter on the porch, weighed down by a stone, and closed the door.

The whole day passed in silence. No knock, no voice, no hint of anyone nearby. By nightfall, he began to think he’d imagined the entire thing.

But at dawn, when he opened the door again, the page was gone. In its place was another envelope, thicker this time. His pulse raced as he tore it open.

Inside were not one, but a dozen pages. Each covered in lines of text, each one revealing moments from his past, details he had forgotten or buried.

At the bottom of the last page was a single signature.

It was his own.