A Letter From the Future
This is my creative take on a writing prompt. These are unedited and written without any plotting. I allow about 30 minutes to let my thoughts flow.
The Prompt
I found the letter tucked into a book I didn’t remember reading. It was dated five years into the future, and it was in my handwriting.
My Creative Take
I found the letter tucked into a book I didn’t remember reading. It was dated five years into the future, and it was in my handwriting. The words made no sense. They were just a string of letters that spelled nothing.
I tossed the note back inside the book and set it on my nightstand before stepping into a warm bath. I sank beneath the water, closed my eyes, and let the silence fill every part of me. It was heavenly the way the heat caressed my muscles and enveloped me completely. From aching limbs to weightless calm, this was my nightly ritual.
One year after I’d first found the note, I pulled it out again and tried to decode the message. Still nothing. So, I returned it to the book and placed it back on my nightstand.
By the third year, I gave it more attention. By year four, I held it tightly, staring at it for nearly an hour until my fingers grew tired. The note slipped from my grip and landed upside down.
That’s when I saw what it said: Unplug the phone from the wall. The cat knocks it into the bath and you die tonight.
My thoughts spiraled. I glanced around the room. Everything looked the same as it had for the past four years. Nothing had moved.
“I’m dead. I must have died the night I noticed the letter four years ago,” I whispered to myself.
Panic surged through me. I knew I had to find a way to send that note back in time, to warn myself. It took a year, but I did it. I managed to send the letter again, hoping this time…
my younger self read the warning. My life depended on it.
My Thoughts
Imagine being stuck in a loop. I wanted to write something that felt like a subtle, time-bending thriller that starts off slow and comforting. The kind of story that eases you in with warmth and routine like the calm of a nightly bath, the weightless drift of familiarity. But beneath that stillness, something’s off and waiting.
The turning point is just a single line: “Unplug the phone from the wall. The cat knocks it into the bath and you die tonight.”
It’s not violent. But that’s what makes it terrifying. The suspense doesn’t come from action, but from inevitability or from the creepy realization that something was set in motion years in the past or in the future, and it’s only now beginning to come to light. In the end, it’s about the desperate hope that this time, she reads the message before her bath and saves her own life.
