The penny sat on the pavement, lodged in a crack between two slabs of concrete. Tarnished, scratched, ordinary. Lucy almost didn’t notice it. She was late, coffee in one hand, phone in the other, her thoughts tangled in the weight of another disappointing morning.
But she did notice. And that was the first mistake.
She hesitated, staring at it. Something about it felt off—not in a way she could explain, but in a way that curled around the base of her skull like a cold hand.
She bent down. Picked it up.
It was heavier than it should have been. Too cold, as if it had been sitting at the bottom of a well rather than lying in the open. Her thumb grazed the surface. Tiny markings. Words, maybe. Too small to read.
She dropped it into her pocket.
And the world shifted.
Not in a way anyone else would notice. Not in a way that could be measured. But by the time she reached work, her mind felt… crowded. Not with her own thoughts, but with others. Little flickers of intrusion, like static breaking through a radio:
Hope she doesn’t notice I took the last donut.
If my boss asks about the Henderson file, I’ll say I sent it yesterday.
He’s been acting weird lately. Does he know?
The noise built, a rising tide. And then—Greg. Her supervisor, Greg, with his forced smile and stale coffee breath, walked past, and his thought hit her like a fist:
She’s useless. She’ll never be more than this.
The coffee cup slipped from her fingers. The heat of it barely registered.
Greg frowned. “You okay?”
She forced a smile. “Fine.”
She wasn’t fine.
She knew. The penny had given her something.
A curse. A gift. A trap.
It didn’t stop. The thoughts poured in, a ceaseless flood of secrets and regrets. Mia, the receptionist, was drowning in quiet misery: I’ll never get out of this town. The janitor, silent and invisible, was crumbling beneath despair: No one would notice if I disappeared.
And the penny buzzed in her pocket, warm now, alive.
At lunch, her salad rotted in front of her. The clock on the wall ticked wrong, skipping minutes, then hours, then stopping entirely. When she looked outside, the street seemed… stretched. The people moving wrong—too slow, too blurred, like figures in a dream that had begun to unravel.
She went home early.
At the kitchen table, she pulled the penny from her pocket.
“What are you?” she whispered.
The whispers didn’t answer, not in words, but in understanding.
A penny for your thoughts.
That was the rule. The bargain. The price.
It let her hear. But it took, too.
Thoughts were currency, and the penny was always collecting.
She tried to get rid of it.
She threw it out the window. Buried it. Left it in a gutter. But every time, it came back. By morning, it was on her nightstand. By afternoon, in her pocket.
And the whispers were changing. Not just thoughts anymore. Urging. Guiding.
Pick it up. Use it. Let us in.
By the third night, her apartment was wrong. The walls pulsed like living flesh. The shadows watched. The air stank of rot. And the penny sat there, gleaming with something deeper than light.
“What do you want?” she choked out.
The answer came, inevitable as a tolling bell:
Everything.
Lucy was gone by morning.
No missing posters. No concerned coworkers. Just an empty desk.
And a penny.
The janitor found it.
He stood in the dim breakroom, staring down at the coin in his palm. He had seen it before. He had held it before.
And he had buried it before.
Slowly, he turned it over.
The scratches weren’t scratches. They were letters. A name.
Lucy’s name.
His hands trembled.
It had happened again.
For years, he had watched people disappear, one by one. A stray penny. A lost name. A hollow space where a person used to be.
No one noticed. No one remembered.
Except him.
He reached into his pocket, fingers closing around something cold, solid.
A penny.
Another one.
And another.
And another.
His pocket was full of them.
He had been collecting them for years.
And yet, no matter how many he took, no matter how many he buried…
They always came back.
Now it keeps him wondering, was he really meant to find and keep them, or was he a part of something bigger?