Short Stories

Message Received

There are many strange things in this world. Things that don't make sense, and things that have been questioned about for over a thousand years. But if you were to ask Aiden Cin what the most strangest thing that has happened to him - without a doubt - it would most certainly be this:

As the sunlight shone through the window, and onto his bed sheets, Aiden Cin woke up to the soft beeping of his alarm clock. He groaned to himself as he shuffled around, comfortable in his bed. He reached above his head and blindly looked around for his alarm to hit 'snooze'. After around a minute or so, and no such luck in finding it, Aiden reluctantly sat up in his bed. It was then he noticed that the clock was actually beside his head, and not above it. Feeling a little embarrassed at himself, he finally turned the alarm off. He was already awake enough as is, and so he concluded to himself that there was no point in sleeping in anymore. He then placed his alarm clock back beside his pillow, and by reflex, he reached over to his study desk where his cell phone was charging. He pressed the Home button, and noticed that he had received a text message three minutes ago. This was when things started to get strange for Aiden.

The first thing that Aiden read when he opened up the message, was a phone number that he had never seen before. 'They probably messaged the wrong number.' he thought to himself. Still, Aiden proceeded to read the message that was sent to him.

Hey!

How's the me doing three years ago?

This may seem a little weird, so don't get freaked out... But knowing the 'me', or I guess the Aiden Cin back then, you probably will anyways. That or you'll ignore this like everything else.

Don't ignore this though.

What I'm about to say next is important. Really important.

I'm going to tell you what's going to happen in the next seven days.

At this point of the message, Aiden was already a little more than weirded out. How did this person get his number; how did this person know his name; and how did they know about his bad habit of ignoring things 'like everything else'? But rather than worrying about such things, what Aiden should be worrying about is getting school; because if he didn't get out of bed in the next two minutes, he was going to miss his bus and was going to be late.

The first three classes went by rather slowly. In each class, Aiden sat in the back and avoided any form of socialization, as usual. As the bell rang signalling the end of third period, Aiden quickly stuffed his binder into his bag, and sped walked to the cafeteria. He sat down where usually sat and waited for his friend, Lev Sherman. Since then, Aiden hadn't looked at the message he had received that morning. He'd be lying to himself if he said he wasn't curious about the text message. Seeing that he had some free time before Lev would show up, Aiden decided to read the rest of the message.

On the first day, while you're waiting for Lev to show up at the table, he'll be three minutes late again.

He'll come in while talking on the phone with his mom about his sister.

When he's done, he'll sit down in front of you and start complaining about his morning as usual.

Be nice and listen for once.

He'll mention a girl named Charlotte Jefferson.

I want you to stay away from her.

After reading the next part of the message, he read it over once more. He was still a little skeptical about the text message in general, but from what he had just read, it seemed quite legitimate. Aiden put his phone back into his pocket; just as he did this, he saw Lev walk into the cafeteria, and just like the message stated, he was on the phone. 'Maybe that's just a coincidence.' Aiden told himself as he watched Lev walk closer and eventually hang up. Aiden looked down at his watch and noticed that the message was also right about Lev being three minutes late. 'A really good coincidence...'

"Sorry, for being late, I was on the phone with my mom." Lev smiled sheepishly, and sat down across Aiden. 'Coincidence number one.'

"It's fine, what did you talk about?"

"The usual, my sister got into some trouble again." Lev sighed. 'Coincidence number two.'

"Anyways!" Lev exclaimed, "I just had the worst morning! I woke up late to school, so of course I decided to book it, right?" Aiden nodded slowly, he didn't really want to listen to this, but why not? The message had told Aiden to listen to him for once, so he figured that he might as well. "So I'm running, yeah? Yeah. I'm running and running, and all of a sudden a seagull decides to take a dump on me. Rude, isn't it?" Lev continued, "But by then I was already at school and the bell was going to ring. I couldn't run back home and change! I was way too tired for that! So I just went to first period with bird crap on my shirt..." Lev scowled to himself before continuing his story. "Thankfully, Ms.A pitied me enough to let me go change and miss the first half of class. So I leave class and I'm about to run back home to change, but then the principal catches me and thinks I'm skipping class! He walks me back to class and - "

At this point, Aiden couldn't help but zone out. It wasn't as if he didn't like Lev. He liked him a lot. But sometimes Aiden just couldn't help but zone out whenever they hung out with each other, and have his mind wander elsewhere.

"Hey, are you paying attention?" Lev waved his hand in front of Aiden's face.

"Um, yes." Aiden lied.

"So as I was saying," Lev rambled on, "there's this new girl, Charlotte Jefferson - "

"W-Wait, who?"

"Charlotte Jefferson? Why, do you know her?"

"Uh, no... I don't." Aiden cleared his throat awkwardly. "What about her?"

"Have you seen her?" Lev was beaming. "That girl is gorgeous! I wonder if she has a boyfriend..."

"I thought you liked Rosa..."

"Love has no limits." Aiden rolled his eyes at this. Lev was known to jump from liking one girl to another quite often, so this type of commentary stopped surprising Aiden a long time ago. As Lev continued to talk about his day, Aiden couldn't help but think back to the second part of the message he had just read. Everything the message said that was going to happen, really did happen; and now that Lev had mentioned a girl named Charlotte Jefferson, all Aiden could think about was the last two sentences of the message:

He'll mention a girl named Charlotte Jefferson.

I want you to stay away from her.