The Coin

The bus always felt like a holding cell. Metal walls, stale air, faces dulled by exhaustion. Sara boarded every evening at the same stop, after the long fluorescent grind of her office job. She’d grip the pole, sway with the jerks of the road, and try not to breathe too deeply.

Tonight, though, something was different.

When the doors hissed open at Main and Fifth, a man climbed aboard who looked like he’d walked out of an old photograph. His suit was dated — not vintage stylish, just worn-out, wrong somehow. The jacket sagged at the shoulders, and the fabric shimmered faintly as if it couldn’t decide what color it wanted to be.

He hesitated at the threshold, staring into the crowded bus with wide, frantic eyes. Then he muttered, barely audible over the hum of the engine-

“I don’t belong here.”

No one reacted. No one even looked up. Except Sara.

He shuffled down the aisle and dropped into the seat beside her, though there were plenty of empty spots further back. Up close, he smelled faintly of ozone and metal, like the crackle before a thunderstorm. His hands trembled in his lap, fingers tapping a rhythm that was too fast to follow.

Sara stared straight ahead, trying to pretend she wasn’t unnerved.

“Don’t mind me,” he said suddenly, voice rough, too loud. “I’ve only got a little while before they notice.”

Her head turned despite herself. “Before who notices?”

His eyes flicked toward the windows. Outside, the night slid by — shops, streetlamps, neon signs blurred by drizzle. “The ones who keep the clock clean,” he whispered. “You wouldn’t understand. You’re… fixed here. I’m not.”

Sara's pulse ticked faster. She wanted to laugh it off, to put him in the category of unstable strangers muttering on public transit. Yet something about him was different. His words didn’t sound random. They carried weight, like facts she wasn’t supposed to hear.

The bus jolted to a stop. The doors opened, and instead of the expected city street, there was a blaze of white light — too bright, too sharp. The passengers didn’t stir. No one shielded their eyes. To them, it was just another stop.

Sara blinked furiously, and when her vision cleared, the man was gone. His seat beside her sat empty, still indented, still warm.

She nearly stood, nearly shouted, but her throat sealed shut.

The ride continued. No one moved differently. No one asked questions.

At her stop, Sara stumbled into the rain. The city looked ordinary again — puddles, headlights, a pizza place with the usual flickering sign. Yet everything felt like cardboard scenery, flimsy and temporary.

She pulled her coat tighter and muttered aloud, without meaning to, “I don’t belong here.”

The words clung to her lips like a taste she couldn’t wash away.

And for the first time, she wasn’t sure if she meant the bus, the city, or the century.

The rain followed Sara home like a shadow. Her apartment was the same — leaking faucet, buzzing fridge, the faint smell of burnt toast from her neighbor’s eternal midnight snacks. Yet she couldn’t shake the sense that something had shifted. The walls seemed thinner, like they were listening.

Sleep didn’t come easy. At three in the morning she woke to the flicker of her alarm clock. The numbers — 3:17 — 3:18 — 3:19 — stuttered, then rolled backward. 3:18. 3:17. 3:16. She sat up straight, heart hammering. Then it snapped back to normal, marching forward as though nothing had happened.

The next morning, she convinced herself it was exhaustion, a trick of half-sleep. She almost believed it until she stepped onto the bus again that evening.

The same man was there. Different seat, same tattered suit, same trembling hands.

This time, he didn’t whisper. He looked straight at her as she boarded and said, “You saw it, didn’t you? The skip.”

She froze in the aisle. “What?”

“The clock. It ran the wrong way. They’ll notice you soon.”

Sara sat across from him, not beside. The bus hummed along, oblivious. “Who are you?” she demanded.

He leaned forward. His eyes looked ancient, far older than his face. “A repairman. A mistake. Call it what you like. Time isn’t a river, it’s a machine. It breaks. It jams. And when it does, they send people like me.”

She swallowed. “And me? Why am I — why do I see it?”

“Because you looked,” he said simply. “Most don’t. Most won’t. They ride their loop, never questioning the gears turning underneath.”

The bus hissed to another stop. For a moment, the world outside looked… wrong. Buildings bent at impossible angles, cars frozen mid-turn, people caught in the act of blinking. A static frame. Then the scene snapped forward, smoothed over like clay pressed back into shape.

No one else on the bus stirred.

Sara whispered, “I don’t belong here.”

The man gave her a sad smile. “Neither do I.”

Before she could speak again, he pressed something into her palm — cold, metallic, no bigger than a coin. She looked down at it, but the symbol etched there shifted like mercury, impossible to hold in her mind.

When she looked up, the man was gone.

This time, the seat wasn’t warm. It was empty, as though no one had ever been there at all.

Sara barely slept that night. The coin sat on her dresser, catching the glow of the streetlight through her blinds. No matter how many times she looked at it, the symbol shifted — sometimes a spiral, sometimes a clock face, sometimes something like circuitry. Once, she swore she saw it pulse, like a heartbeat.

By morning, she’d convinced herself to throw it away. But when she opened her hand to drop it in the trash, it was gone.

Or maybe it had never been there at all.

She went to work in a haze, her office cubicle buzzing like an insect hive. People moved on autopilot, typing, talking, drinking coffee. Yet their motions felt wrong. The receptionist froze mid-sentence for half a second, then resumed as if nothing had happened. The copier jammed, then unjammed itself without anyone touching it.

Time wasn’t flowing, she realized. It was being pushed forward like a stuck cart on rails.

That night, she boarded the bus with her chest tight, scanning for the man. He wasn’t there.

But someone else was.

A woman in a sleek gray coat, sitting perfectly upright, hands folded in her lap. She had a face that was almost too symmetrical, as if carved by intention rather than accident. Her eyes flicked toward Sara the second she stepped on.

The woman spoke without moving her lips. The words landed directly in Sara's head- You’ve been noticed.

Sara stumbled into a seat. Her mouth was dry. “Who are you?” she whispered.

Correction, the voice said calmly. You’ve been chosen.

The bus lurched forward. Outside, the city stuttered again — frames misaligned, light bending where it shouldn’t. Sara grabbed the seat in front of her. “Chosen for what?”

The woman’s eyes didn’t blink. To repair. To keep the machine from collapsing. You have the key.

“The coin,” Sara muttered.

The woman inclined her head the slightest fraction. It wasn’t given by accident. He slipped. We don’t usually let the passengers see behind the curtain.

Sara's skin prickled. “Passengers?”

This world is a compartment. A carriage on a line. You live your lives, you go from stop to stop. Some of you see the glitches. Very few survive them.

The bus screeched to another stop. No one else got off, no one got on. Sara looked out and saw nothing but blank white stretching forever, like the world had run out of paint.

She turned back, but the woman was gone.

In her palm, heavy and cold, the coin had returned.

And this time, she didn’t want to let it go.

The coin burned in Sara's palm all the way home, though when she looked at it, it lay cold and inert. She barely noticed the rain, barely noticed unlocking her apartment door. The hum of the fridge, the ticking clock, even her own breath felt like part of a system she no longer trusted.

When midnight came, she woke again. This time, it wasn’t her clock that flickered backward. It was the whole room. Her books re-shelved themselves in reverse order. Her coffee mug refilled, then poured itself back into the pot. Her curtains closed, then opened.

The coin pulsed.

And then she wasn’t in her apartment anymore.

She stood in a vast hall that seemed to stretch infinitely in both directions, full of machinery too large to comprehend — gears that meshed with entire staircases, pendulums swinging with the weight of mountains, conveyor belts carrying what looked like fragments of people’s lives. A child’s laugh floated past her, disembodied, sealed in a glass vial. Sparks jumped between floating orbs that pulsed in rhythm like a gigantic heart.

The man in the tattered suit was there, waiting.

“Welcome to the mechanism,” he said, voice steadier now. “Not many of your kind get this far.”

Sara clutched the coin. “My kind?”

“Passengers. Riders in the compartments. You weren’t meant to see the breaks, but you did.” He tilted his head. “Now you’re either a threat to the machine… or its repair.”

A sharp voice rang out behind her. The woman in the gray coat stepped from between two spinning wheels taller than skyscrapers. Her form didn’t blur or shift the way the man’s did; she seemed anchored, perfectly in tune with the place.

“She shouldn’t be here,” the woman said. “One slip is enough. The passengers must not know.”

The man scowled. “She already does. Better to give her purpose than erase her.”

Erase. The word hit Sara like a blow.

The woman’s eyes bored into her. “Sara Moylan, you have the key. You can insert it into the mechanism, restore what has faltered, and carry on as a custodian. Or you can be unmade. Your thread snipped, your seat on the bus emptied as if you’d never existed.”

Sara's throat dried. “What happens if I say yes?”

“You’ll see the breaks. Always,” the man answered softly. “The stutters, the cracks, the moments when time needs patching. You’ll fix them. But you’ll never ride in peace again. You won’t belong among the others. Not anymore.”

Sara looked down at the coin, its surface shifting, showing her reflections of herself she didn’t recognize — versions of her older, younger, in different clothes, different scars. Infinite variations collapsing into her single hand.

“I don’t belong here,” she whispered.

The woman in the gray coat nodded once. “Then choose.”

Sara lifted the coin, felt it grow heavier as though gravity itself bent around it. She saw a slot in the nearest gear, as natural as if it had always been waiting for her. Her pulse raced. She could throw it away, step back, let herself be erased — clean, painless, forgotten.

Instead, she pressed the coin into the machine.

The hall roared to life. The gears screamed, the pendulums surged, the lights flared. Sara felt the entire world outside jolt forward, skipping like a scratched record snapping into place.

And in her head, a thousand voices whispered in relief.

The man smiled, wearier than ever. “Welcome to the repair crew.”

The woman only turned away, as if Sara was no longer worth her attention.

When the world steadied again, Sara was back on the bus. Same hum, same passengers, same smell of gum. Only now, when the teenager in front of her blinked too slowly and froze mid-chew, she knew what it meant. She reached into her pocket.

The coin was waiting.