He hadn’t even meant to go into the kitchen—it was just habit. There was a little bakery down the road, and he’d planned to surprise Grace with fresh coffee and doughnuts. But as he was there, he grabbed a glass of water and, unable to resist, glanced at the crunchy nut cornflakes on the table. The same message, his message, was still on the box, but two things had been scribbled out and replaced.

“I’m Mark, this is my house I’ve lived here for 18 25 months, and Grace is fine dead.”

He snorted softly, so was this the punchline the cornflake conversation had been building up to? The whole situation had just hit ridiculous. Clearly, someone with a vivid imagination was pranking him for some reason. Maybe a streamer or blogger acting out an elaborate hoax: breaking into his house, planting a cereal box and then leaving messages…all while never setting off the alarm…?

Entirely possible. But he paused, mid-lace, as he noticed Grace’s shoes by the door. Of course, it was so simple, it was her, she just lied so as not to spoil the joke. Maybe it was a way to reopen the channels of communication between them. He snorted again, even more relieved. And—feeling pretty good about the fact she clearly wanted him back—he shouted over his shoulder: “Ha ha, no hard feelings, but don’t complain when I prank you. I’m off to grab doughnuts.” He bounced all the way to the bakery and back.

Already sipping his coffee, he found her in the kitchen, one foot tucked under her and the other resting on the chair’s edge, she was holding up the cereal box, turning it this way and that: “It’s not funny. I know it might seem harmless, but to me, it feels a bit threatening, it seems to imply I’m going to die. Have you reported it to the police? I mean, I’m assuming it’s not you, right? Otherwise, it wouldn’t have gotten under your skin.”

He stopped dead in his tracks. It was one of those moments when life seems to pause, even the next thought doesn’t come, and somewhere, a cinematographer is adding a Hitchcock zoom for dramatic effect.  

Aware he’d been standing motionless for a while, perhaps even with his mouth open, he recovered enough to say, in what he hoped sounded a casual voice: “Yeah, I was going to report it this week.”

The police station was, as it happened, close enough to his office that he had no excuse not to report it. During lunch, he reluctantly walked up to the front desk and, in smug self-congratulation and an attempt at self-preservation, announced, “My girlfriend wants me to report an incident.” He inwardly cringed as the policeman took details with more than one raised eyebrow. Fortunately, it was quiet enough that the man found it amusing, despite it being a waste of time. Cautioned to keep setting the alarm and assured he’d be contacted if any other unusual events were reported in the area, he left.  

It was a monumental waste of a lunch break, but at least Grace would be happy, and the entire precinct would have something to laugh at over coffee. Although police reports, incident numbers and Grace made the cornflakes feel like cornflakes again, all very tangible and solid—a real-world problem with a real-world solution—what if…?

On the way home from work he stopped at an electronics store and did what the crunchy nut cornflakes themselves had suggested: he bought a spycam. No point, it seemed, in setting them up all over the house, so after climbing on and off the kitchen cabinets for almost an hour trying to position the thing for the perfect view of the kitchen table, he stopped, satisfied his Mission Impossible antics would pay off.

Sitting down to a plate of spaghetti, he allowed himself to complete the thoughts that had up till now just been shadows of ideas. What if a future him was able to communicate via the cornflake box? If that was true, and Grace was going to die, could he prevent it? Was this a linear time situation where he would change something and the future would change? Was it a parallel universe of extensive similarities but subtle differences, one where it was already different in so many ways you couldn’t draw parallels between the two? What if their fate was predetermined and nothing he did would matter, Grace would die soon one way or another? And what if Grace dying was part of some plan and interfering would have terrible unintended consequences?

He tugged at a single strand of spaghetti and watched with curiosity as some moved—though not always the ones he expected—while others remained stubbornly in place. He’d read an article on quantum entanglement and, looking at the spaghetti, he thought perhaps that was the explanation for what was going on. Despite his pseudoscientific theories and the untold number of possibilities and outcomes and explanations, he knew one thing, he couldn’t do nothing. Just before bed, when he was sure Grace would not turn up unexpectedly, he wrote a new note on what was now an empty box of crunchy nut cornflakes: “Say I believe you ‘future me’, how do I save Grace?”

End of part 2

It was a promotional box — back-to-school theme. The front had one of those write-and-erase magic slates. The trouble was, it was only March and he couldn’t remember buying it. But there it was in the middle of the kitchen table.

It was part of his morning ritual: coffee and crunchy nut cornflakes. It had been Grace’s favourite cereal, and he’d picked up the habit. Even after she left, it felt reassuring, even though the rest of his day-to-day life had been shaken to the core.

He picked up the box and stared. Surely, he would have remembered buying a box with such a bold promotion on the front. Perhaps Helena, his cleaner, had picked it up for him. The cornflakes always sat on the table; it wasn’t a secret that he liked them.

As he sipped his coffee, he absent-mindedly scribbled on the box: “Helena, did you buy these?”. Then thought nothing more about it.

Later, while expertly faking interest in a spreadsheet of sales figures, he noticed his phone light up. Helena: “Saw your cereal note. No, it wasn’t me. Doing your shopping wasn’t in the job description 😉 You ok?” He wasn’t sure what to reply, so he played it safe: “Ok, I’m fine, just a bit absent-minded, it seems.”

The next morning, it wasn’t until he finished his coffee, and the caffeine kicked in, that he noticed the note. “I’m getting spycams weirdo, what kind of person breaks into a house to leave messages on a cereal box? I’ll be watching”. Confused and unsure what to do he sat starring at, or rather through, the crunchy nut box. He took a deep breath and placed his hands on the table, as if trying to stop a thought in its tracks, then got up and began getting ready for work.

As he began to turn the key in the lock, he stopped. He couldn’t resist, even though arguing with an unknown person who it seemed had left him a box of cereal only to use it to berate him was insane. Still… “It’s my house. I already have an alarm. Grace is this your idea of a joke?”. It’s the only thing that made sense, Grace still had keys. And for the first time in months, he set the alarm as he left.  

A large box of cereal usually lasted two weeks, but a few days later, he found himself peering down at the powdery remains. The whole situation was niggling at him. He had to text Grace: “This is going to sound nuts—no pun intended—but are you coming to my house to eat cereal?”. He held his breath and hit send. The reply didn’t take long: “What? No!”. Then 5 minutes later: “Are you ok?”. As conversations by text had directly contributed to the end of their relationship, and he wasn’t sure if he was ok, he decided not to reply. But he did leave another note on the cereal box: “You’re not Helena, you’re not Grace, but you are coming into my house to eat my cereal and not setting off the alarm or taking anything? Who are you?”.

The next morning, he didn’t need coffee to wake up because the box read “? This is my house. Grace died two weeks ago. Do you get kicks tormenting people?”. He couldn’t sit still, he paced the kitchen, he texted Grace: “Grace are you ok?”. He erased the message on the box once again and wrote “I’m Mark, this is my house I’ve lived here for 18 months, and Grace is fine.”

He couldn’t concentrate. He got up and walked to the work kitchen to make coffee so many times that his leg started uncontrollably bouncing under his desk. At home, he walked round and round the kitchen table until a knock at the door interrupted him.

Grace stood in the doorway. “I was worried,” she said, handing him a paper bag of take-out and walking past him into the house. For the rest of the evening and first thing in the morning when he woke up and saw her lying on her side of the bed again, he didn’t think about the box of cereal.      

End of part one.