Logan Walker jolted awake, his heart pounding like a jackhammer in his chest. Sweat plastered his t-shirt to his skin as the last wisps of his nightmare faded – swirling galaxies and the chittering of…rodents? He rubbed his eyes, trying to shake off the lingering unease.
“What the hell was that about?” he muttered, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. The alarm clock on his nightstand read 5:58 AM. Two minutes before it was set to go off. Story of his life – couldn’t even sleep in properly on the days he tried.
A cold, wet nose pressed against his hand. Logan looked down to see Roscoe, his scruffy terrier mix, gazing up at him with an expression that seemed almost concerned. “I’m okay, boy,” Logan said, scratching behind the dog’s ears. “Just a weird dream.”
Roscoe tilted his head, then trotted out of the room. Logan heard the jingle of the dog’s tags, followed by the soft thud of something being dropped. A moment later, Roscoe returned, Logan’s slippers gripped gently in his mouth.
“Well, aren’t you the overachiever this morning?” Logan chuckled, accepting the offering. “What’s next? Gonna start brewing my coffee too?”
Roscoe’s tail wagged as if considering the suggestion. Logan shook his head, amused. Sometimes he could swear the mutt understood every word he said.
As he padded into the kitchen, Logan’s eyes fell on the cabinet above the fridge. The one he used to keep locked. The one that had once housed a different kind of medicine than the vitamins and aspirin it contained now. He pushed the thought away, focusing instead on the coffee maker.
“Alright, magic machine,” he said, pressing the brew button. “Do your thing.”
While the coffee percolated, Logan popped two slices of bread into the toaster. He leaned against the counter, his gaze drifting around the small apartment. It wasn’t much, but it was his. A far cry from the mess his life had been just a few years ago.
The toaster dinged, ejecting two perfectly browned slices. Logan grabbed a plate, but as he reached for the toast, he froze. For a split second – so brief he almost thought he’d imagined it – he could have sworn he saw something move on the bread’s surface. Like words forming and fading in the char marks.
He blinked hard. The toast looked normal. Perfectly ordinary, if a bit overdone, pieces of bread.
“Get it together, Walker,” he muttered. “You’re seeing things before you’ve even had your coffee.”
Speaking of which, the coffee maker beeped its completion. Logan poured himself a cup, inhaling the rich aroma. As he took his first sip, a strange sound filled the kitchen. It was barely audible, like a whisper just on the edge of hearing, but it seemed to be coming from… the coffee maker?
Logan set his mug down, leaning closer to the machine. The whisper grew slightly louder, resolving into words that sounded disturbingly like his late grandmother’s voice:
“Time is a river, flowing ever onward,
But beware the eddies that pull you under.
In the city of gears, where dreams take flight,
You’ll find your path in endless night.”
Logan jerked back, nearly knocking over his mug. “What the actual fuck?” he breathed, staring at the coffee maker. It sat there innocently, looking for all the world like a normal appliance.
Roscoe whined softly, pawing at Logan’s leg. The dog’s eyes darted between his owner and the coffee maker, ears perked forward attentively.
“You heard that too, right buddy?” Logan asked, feeling slightly ridiculous for seeking confirmation from his dog. Roscoe just tilted his head, tail wagging hesitantly.
Logan scrubbed a hand over his face. “I’ve got to be losing it,” he mumbled. “Or maybe I’m still dreaming?” He pinched himself, wincing at the sharp pain. Nope, definitely awake.
Deciding that caffeine was probably not the best idea right now, Logan dumped his coffee down the sink. He’d grab something at the station instead. As he headed to the bathroom to shower, he caught a glimpse of himself in the hallway mirror.
For a heart-stopping moment, his reflection seemed… off. Like it was moving a fraction of a second too slowly, its eyes meeting Logan’s just after he’d looked away. He whirled back to face the mirror, but everything looked normal. Just his own bewildered face staring back at him.
“Okay,” Logan said to his reflection, “today is officially weird, and it’s not even 7 AM. Let’s try not to make it any weirder, alright?”
His reflection didn’t answer. Small mercies, Logan thought.
The shower helped clear his head a bit, the hot water washing away some of the morning’s strangeness. By the time Logan was dressed in his EMT uniform, he’d almost convinced himself that he’d imagined the whole thing. Lack of sleep and an overactive imagination – that’s all it was.
“Be good, Roscoe,” Logan called as he headed for the door. “Try not to throw any wild parties while I’m gone.”
Roscoe barked once, tail wagging. As Logan closed the door behind him, he could have sworn he heard a muffled voice say, “Wouldn’t dream of it, old chap.” He paused, hand on the doorknob, then shook his head.
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“Nope,” he said firmly. “We are not doing this today, brain. Get it together.”
The drive to the fire station was uneventful, thankfully. No talking traffic lights or singing parking meters. Just good old Charleston morning rush hour, complete with the usual array of terrible drivers.
“Oh sure,” Logan muttered as a sports car cut him off. “Don’t mind me, I’m just trying to get to work so I can save lives. You go right ahead and shave those precious seconds off your commute.”
He pulled Into the station parking lot, noting with a mix of concern and relief that Sarah’s beat-up Volvo wasn’t in its usual spot. On the one hand, he hoped she was okay. On the other, he wasn’t sure he could handle any more weirdness today, and Sarah had a knack for attracting the strangest calls.
“Morning, Walker!” a cheerful voice called as Logan entered the station. He turned to see Ramirez, one of the other EMTs, waving from near the coffee machine. “You’re with me today. Sarah called in sick.”
Logan raised an eyebrow. “She okay?”
Ramirez shrugged. “Dunno. Sounded off on the phone. Said something about her toaster giving her messages from the future? Probably that flu that’s been going around. Makes people delirious.”
A chill ran down Logan's spine as he remembered his own weirdness with kitchen appliances this morning. But no, that was different. Had to be. “Yeah,” he said, forcing a laugh. “Probably the flu.”
The morning briefing was routine – updates on road closures, weather reports, the usual. Logan found his mind wandering, still unsettled by the morning’s events. He snapped back to attention when the captain mentioned a series of unusual calls they’d been getting lately.
“…people reporting strange distortions in time and space,” the captain was saying, his tone making it clear he thought it was all nonsense. “Probably some new drug on the streets. Keep an eye out, and remember – our job is to treat the patient, not judge them. Even if they’re spouting gibberish about time going sideways.”
Logan and Ramirez had barely settled into their ambulance when the first call came in. Dispatch’s voice crackled over the radio: “Unit 17, we’ve got a Code 3 at 1845 Oakwood Drive. Elderly female, possible stroke or seizure.”
“Unit 17 responding,” Ramirez answered, flipping on the sirens as Logan pulled out of the station.
They arrived at a quaint little house, all pastel siding and white picket fence. A worried-looking man in his forties met them at the door. “It’s my mother,” he said, leading them inside. “She’s in the living room. She’s not making any sense.”
The patient, a woman In her late seventies, sat in an armchair, her eyes wide and unfocused. As Logan knelt beside her, checking her vitals, she grabbed his arm with surprising strength.
“The clocks,” she whispered urgently. “They’re all wrong. Can’t you see? They’re going sideways!”
Logan glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner. It looked perfectly normal to him, ticking away steadily. “Ma’am, can you tell me what day it is?”
The woman laughed, a high, nervous sound. “Day? Oh, there’s no such thing anymore. It’s all mixed up. Yesterday is tomorrow and tomorrow was last week. Time isn’t a line anymore, it’s a big ball of wibbly-wobbly… timey-wimey… stuff.”
Logan blinked. “Did you just quote Doctor Who at me?”
The woman ignored him, her gaze now fixed on something over his shoulder. “Look! Can’t you see them? The cogs are falling out of the sky!”
Logan turned, half-expecting to actually see gears raining down. But there was nothing – just a perfectly ordinary living room. He shared a look with Ramirez, who shrugged.
“Possible UTI?” Ramirez suggested. “Could be causing confusion.”
Logan nodded. It was a reasonable explanation. Certainly more reasonable than time actually going sideways. They managed to convince the woman to come with them to the hospital for tests, her son following in his car.
As they loaded her into the ambulance, Logan couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. Not with the patient – her symptoms were strange, sure, but not unheard of. No, it was something else. Like the world had shifted slightly out of focus when he wasn’t looking.
The rest of the shift passed in a blur of increasingly bizarre calls. A child who insisted he’d fallen through a “shimmering doorway” in his backyard, only to end up in his neighbor’s pool. A woman whose shadow seemed to be moving independently, doing jumping jacks while she stood still.
By the time Logan clocked out, he felt like he’d been running a marathon while blindfolded. He slumped into the driver’s seat of his car, exhausted and more than a little unsettled.
“Just a weird day,” he told himself as he pulled out of the parking lot. “Tomorrow will be normal. It has to be.”
But as he drove home, Logan couldn’t shake the feeling that something fundamental had changed. The city around him, so familiar and yet suddenly strange, seemed to shimmer at the edges of his vision. And was it his imagination, or did that pigeon on the stoplight have… three heads?
Logan blinked hard, and when he looked again, it was just an ordinary pigeon. He let out a shaky laugh. “Get it together, Walker,” he muttered. “You’re losing it.”
As he turned onto his street, a flash of movement caught his eye. For a split second, he could have sworn he saw a creature dart between two parked cars – something that looked like a cross between a fox and a gear-driven clockwork toy.
Logan slammed on the brakes, his heart pounding. But when he looked again, there was nothing there. Just an empty sidewalk and a stray candy wrapper blowing in the breeze.
He made It back to his apartment without any further incidents, but the sense of wrongness followed him like a shadow. As he unlocked his door, Logan half-expected to find his apartment transformed into something impossible – a vast jungle, perhaps, or the inside of a giant clock.
But everything was normal. Roscoe greeted him with a happy bark, tail wagging furiously. The coffee maker sat innocently on the counter, not a whisper to be heard. Even the toast he’d left on the plate that morning was still there, now stale and thoroughly unmagical.
Logan sank onto the couch, Roscoe jumping up to lay his head on Logan’s lap. “What a day, buddy,” Logan sighed, scratching behind the dog’s ears. “I think I’m going crazy.”
Roscoe looked up at him with those too-intelligent eyes, and for a moment, Logan could have sworn he saw understanding there. More than understanding – sympathy.
“You’d tell me if the world was actually going nuts, right?” Logan asked, feeling ridiculous even as the words left his mouth. “You wouldn’t let me just lose my mind without saying something?”
Roscoe’s tail thumped against the couch cushions, once, twice. Almost like Morse code, Logan thought hysterically. Dot dot.
He laughed, the sound edged with panic. “Right. Because dogs can’t talk. That would be crazy.”
But as he got ready for bed that night, Logan couldn’t shake the feeling that something was coming. Something big, and strange, and impossible. He lay awake for hours, staring at the ceiling, half-expecting it to start swirling with galaxies like in his dream.
When sleep finally claimed him, his dreams were filled with ticking clocks, gear-driven creatures, and a vast city that sprawled beneath a shattered sky. And through it all, a voice that sounded disturbingly like his coffee maker whispered:
“The gears are turning, Logan Walker. Ready or not, your time is coming.”