Ceaseless Night

4, The Coin

Laundromat, City, Night.

Jeremy Ling sat down as he waited for the clothes in the dryer to finish and counted the money that he had found in the pockets of the clothes. Ten, fifteen, twenty dollars and thirty-five cents, now that was a good tip. Jeremy worked for the extremely wealthy Salomon family, and knew they wouldn't notice a few missing dollars and coins.

Jeremy watched the shirts and pants spin around and around as he tapped his feet to the jazz playing on the speakers. The cycle stopped, and Jeremy began pulling out the clothes and folding them. When he folded the last piece, a sweater made by some obscure company in Spain, Jeremy noticed a black spot on the floor of the dryer.

He casually picked the spot up, guessing it would be another quarter that he missed, but he quickly realized that it was much too big to be any normal coin, and it appeared to be made out of this weird black sparkly material. Jeremy also noticed that there weren't any details on the coin, just a smooth, flat surface. When he rubbed the coin, it felt like his finger was pushing into it, even though the coin never changed its shape.

Jeremy shrugged it off, it was probably one of the coins that the eldest of the family, Edgar Salomon, owned. The old man collected coins, and though his memory was leaving him, Jeremy knew he would be able to explain every last detail about the history and making of this piece.

Jeremy put the coin in a separate pocket just in case it was important, and picked up the laundry basket to bring to his car.

That's when the shaking started.

The whole building felt like a present being shook on Christmas day. Everyone tried to find places to hide under and keep steady. Jeremy tripped and fell, his hip burning like hell. Everything was chaos.

And as soon as it started, it stopped.

Jeremy was shaken, he slowly picked himself up to his knees, and not knowing what else to do he started loading the fallen clothes back into the hamper. His hip still hurt terribly, and he looked to see a burn mark on his cargo shorts.

Jeremy slowly pulled the black coin out of his pocket. It was nearly unbearably warm. The sparkles seemed to move around frantically.