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TOD, Time of Death

Things You Don't Want to Know

By Cleve Taylor Published 3 years ago Updated 2 years ago 3 min read
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At first blush, knowing the future sounds pretty neat. Who wouldn't want to know what stocks were going to be hot next week, or next week's Power Ball numbers? But there can be a downside. Can't say I'm much interested in knowing when I or anybody else is going to die. That is terrible information to have.

This is a serious discussion I am having with myself, because I am the only person I know who actually can know exact information about a limited number of future events. It's ok, go ahead and scoff, but leave a little room to change your mind until after I tell you my story.

It started some years ago, before the internet and Google were invented, when I got interested in tracing my ancestors. I was in Booger Hollow, Arkansas visiting genie cousins in their home, discussing a shared great great grandfather who had served in and survived the civil war. I. B., to my surprise, had been in an Arkansas Union Calvary unit. I had always assumed that my Arkansas ancestors were Confederates, but not so.

Anyway, to my surprise, my genie cousin who was so wrinkled that he looked like he could have served in the civil war, said that some of I.B.'s effects had been handed down to him, and asked if I wanted to see them. There's only one answer to a question like that, and that's "Absolutely!"

He chuckled and said, "Thought you might." He offered me another cup of coffee, my third, which I accepted and he topped off my mug from a thermos bottle in which he kept his daily supply of caffeine.

He then gingerly went to a closet, declining my offer to help, and after moving some heavy coats and boxes around pulled out a very old dusty lidded cardboard box tied with twine. Opening the box, he started removing the contents. A leather belt. An envelope with a snip of hair. A pair of Ben Franklin style eyeglasses, and a Little Black Book.

He said "This aint much but it's all that's left of I.B. I ain't long for this world, and since you're the only person who's ever shown an interest in this stuff, why don't you take it with you and keep it in the family?"

I accepted.

Later, back in my hotel room, I carefully examined my new treasures. Not much can be said about belts, hair, and glasses, although they did trigger my imagination, and I always thrill to links to the past. But the Little Black Book fascinated me. It had faint penciled notes in it in script that was hard to read and what looked like dates, which puzzled me because many of the dates were years later than when I.B. died. One entry mentioned Pearl Harbor and another mentioned a uranium bomb.

I put I.B.'s things away and didn't look at them again until several years later when I once more had a spurt of genealogical energy. I examined I.B.'s Little Black Book again, and you're not gonna believe this, but the book now contained notes and dates about the near future. One note was about a commercial airliner crash in Florida two weeks in the future. I scoffed, but two weeks later when a plane crashed in Florida, I became a near believer. Then after more weeks passed and two more predictions came true, one an election prediction, I became a real believer, especially since one of those predictions told me the date and time when I would hit a $20,000 jackpot on a one armed bandit at the MarylandLive Casino outside Baltimore. I gotta admit the $20,000 came in handy.

So, you may ask, why am I not rich?

The answer is that the next several predictions were predictions of death. I watched while, right on schedule a life long friend died of meningitis, then a cousin died in a boating accident, and a friend's child died on the school playground. I found that so unsettling, that I have been unwilling to open the book again, for fear of further predictions of death.

In fact, if I offered you the book, Would you take it?

future
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About the Creator

Cleve Taylor

Published author of three books: Ricky Pardue US Marshal, A Collection of Cleve's Short Stories and Poems, and Johnny Duwell and the Silver Coins, all available in paperback and e-books on Amazon. Over 160 Vocal.media stories and poems.

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