Jonas was an accountant, a man who preferred things that added up. He trusted ledgers, straight lines, and conclusions that could be reconciled. The world, to him, worked best without excess—without meanings layered too thick.
That was why Elmsford suited him. It never asked for more—until it did.
His mother, Elena, lived differently. She listened in the pauses between words. She handled objects like they held more than shape. Jonas never argued. He just moved around that part of her—respectfully, quietly. She didn’t try to change him, and that gave him room to be himself.
He’d had a conversation with Burt at the mill that evening. It was practical. Rooted. Jonas liked that. A closed door was a closed door. A flickering streetlamp was just a bulb nearing the end of its life.
But stepping outside, something in the air shifted.
Not dramatically—just enough. A faint thinning, like two moments overlapping. He wouldn’t have known how to explain it. He didn’t try.
Ahead, near the bookshop, a group of people stood just outside the lamplight. At first, they seemed ordinary. But as he walked closer, he saw it—their edges weren’t anchored. Blurred, like reflections in water.
Still, he didn’t stop.
Until one figure stepped forward. A woman. More solid than the rest. Present.
She met his eyes.
“You weren’t meant to be here.”
The words caught in him like a thread pulled too tight. Something stretched.
Then—
Everything reset.
The street was empty again. The air lost its weight. No sign of the group.
He passed the bookshop and glanced, as he always did, at the display in the window. One book stood apart from the rest. Its title, clear and unmistakable:
You Weren’t Meant to Be Here Yet.
Jonas didn’t stop. Didn’t press his hand to the glass. Didn’t go inside.
He knew—deep in the body, where no reasoning lives—that to try and claim what had just happened would be to lose it.
“Lack of sleep makes everything feel strange,” he muttered.
And he kept walking.
However, he was his mother’s son. The woman had seen it.
Try another story: Elmsford