I first encountered the peculiar merchant at the San Francisco farmers’ market of 1849, where his weathered hands cradled what appeared to be the most unsightly avocado I’d ever laid eyes upon. Its skin was unnaturally rough, almost scaly, bearing little resemblance to the smooth-skinned fruits I knew from my time in Mexico.
“A peculiar specimen, wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Harrison?” the merchant’s raspy voice cut through the morning fog. I started, for I hadn’t told him my name.
“How did you—”
“The fruit speaks,” he interrupted, his dark eyes gleaming. “Just as it spoke of your arrival. Just as it speaks of things yet to come.”
I should have walked away then, dismissed him as another gold rush charlatan. Instead, I found myself drawn into conversation with this strange figure who called himself Ezekiel.
“This avocado,” he continued, running his finger along its coarse surface, “was harvested from a tree that grew from soil soaked in blood during the conquest of Tenochtitlan. The Aztecs believed it held the power of prophecy.”
“That’s impossible,” I scoffed. “That was over three hundred years ago.”
Ezekiel’s thin lips curved into a knowing smile. “Time is more fluid than you imagine, Mr. Harrison. Would you like to know what it reveals about your future?”
Against my better judgment, I nodded.
He split the fruit with a silver knife. Instead of the familiar green flesh, the interior was a deep crimson, almost black. “Your wife Emily,” he whispered, “she still writes to you, doesn’t she? Even now, as consumption slowly claims her?”
My blood ran cold. I hadn’t told anyone about Emily’s condition.
“The letters will stop coming next month,” he continued, his voice heavy with what seemed like genuine sympathy. “But that won’t be the end of your correspondence.”
“What do you mean?”
“The dead have their own way of communicating, Mr. Harrison. When the time comes, you’ll understand.”
I fled the market that day, but his words haunted me. True to his prediction, Emily’s letters ceased in August. Then, in September, I began finding notes in her handwriting—impossible notes that spoke of things happening in my daily life, written in ink that seemed to seep from within the paper itself.
I returned to the market countless times, searching for Ezekiel and his prophetic fruit, but he was never there. The other vendors claimed no knowledge of such a merchant, though one elderly Chinese woman crossed herself when I described the rough-skinned avocado.
Emily’s notes continue to arrive, and I’ve grown accustomed to their presence. Sometimes I wonder if I truly met Ezekiel that foggy morning, or if the Sierra Nevada gold fever had already begun to claim my sanity. But then I find another note, written in my dear Emily’s precise hand, and I’m reminded that some mysteries are better left unexplained.
The rough skin of that avocado haunts my dreams still, its texture a reminder that reality itself is perhaps not as smooth and predictable as we’d like to believe. In my more lucid moments, I wonder if Ezekiel’s fruit didn’t just predict the future—perhaps it somehow shaped it, carved it into being with its coarse, unnatural surface.
But these are dangerous thoughts, and like the letters from my dead wife, some questions are better left unasked.