Michael sat at his desk, absentmindedly scrolling through his emails on his laptop. He clicked through a sea of newsletters, work updates, and random emails. Then, his eyes froze and focused on a particular subject line: “I didn’t mean to hurt you.” His heart skipped for a second. It was from Debby, his ex-girlfriend.
The email was dated today, and yet, Michael knew something was definitely wrong. Debby had died five years ago in a car accident, the occurrence that had shattered his world and left him questioning everything. He hadn’t spoken to her in over six months before that, and there had been nothing wrong between them. The breakup was strange, sudden, and unexplainable. There were no arguments, no warnings. Just one day, she said she needed some space. The next time he tried to reach her, she was gone. Her life was lost in a tragic accident that no one could have predicted.
“I didnt mean to hurt you.” Michael read the subject line again, trying to make sense out of it. He hesitated, then opened the email.
“Michael,” it began, the font and text size familiar, just like the ones in the messages Debby used to send when they were together. “I’m so sorry. I know you probably won’t understand, and I don’t expect you to forgive me. But I need you to know that it was never my intention to leave you like I did.”
The words were like lightning, they struck Michael. It was as if he was punched at the abdomen . He leaned back in his chair, staring at the screen of his laptop, trying to understand. “Is this some kind of sick joke?” He murmured.
The message continued:
“You might not want to hear this, but I never meant for things to end the way they did. You deserved so much more than the way I hurt you. Like I used to say, there is a reason for everything, this is not an exception, but I couldn’t explain it before.. and I’m afraid it’s too late to tell you now.”
Michael’s heart began to race and he once again felt a familiar ache in his chest, the one that he had buried for years. However, he knew something was wrong. Something didn’t make sense. He glanced over the rest of the message, which was filled with apologies and peripheral statements about unfinished business, but the cause of the accident wasn’t mentioned neither did the reason for her death disclosed. The email was filled with more regret and silence.
“I can’t undo the past, but I hope you can forgive me, even if you cannot understand.”
The email ended there. Michael sat still, staring at the laptop screen. He could feel his pulse fasten. How was.. or rather how is this possible? His mind raced, trying to put together the pieces of a puzzle that he had never quite understood. If Debby had been dead for five years, how could she have sent this email? Was it some kind of cruel prank? A hacker? He looked behind him briefly and focused on the screen again. “Am I being watched?” He murmured.
Deep down, he felt something far more unsettling. The voice of the message, the words, the fonts, the message itself, it all felt too real. Too personal to be a hacker.
His fingers trembled as he typed a reply, but then stopped. “What am I supposed to say?” He asked himself in disbelief of his current situation. How could he possibly ask the questions he wanted to ask when it seemed impossible for Debby or anyone to answer them?
With an uneasy breath, Michael opened the email’s full header to investigate the origin. The sender address was prettydebby.me@gmail.com, the same way it had been during their relationship, but there was something off, the email was sent from a location very far from where Debby lived. He still couldn’t pinpoint but there was something undeniably chilling about it.
Maybe it was a mistake, Michael thought. He tried to be open minded. “It could be an email that had somehow gotten stuck in my inbox from years ago, somehow resurfacing after all this time.” But that didn’t explain the details in the message, the way it felt too real. “No, this was not a mistake, he assured himself. This was intentional.
He needed answers.
Michael called Debby’s parents. He needed to know if anyone had received anything similar, if there was some explanation he was missing. But when he asked, they were nervously silent. They hadn’t seen anything like that, and when Michael pressed further, her mother’s voice trembled as she hung up, leaving him in a disturbing silence.
That night, Michael sat at his desk, unable to sleep. His mind kept racing back to the email. What did she mean? Why had she left him with no explanation? Was the message an attempt for closure, or something else?
He knew he couldn’t let this go but he was so scared.
This was about something far darker, something that is likely connected to Debby’s death that he hadn’t yet understood. The real question was not why she’d left, but what had she been trying to warn him about, even from beyond the grave?
Michael glanced once more at the screen of his laptop, then hit “reply”.
“Why did you leave me, Debby? Why didn’t you tell me everything?”
He hit the send button. But as the email flew off, something else came to his mind, “What if the answer is already too late to find?”
Thank you for reading.