Casey placed the heavy ceramic mug down on the formica tabletop. The dark liquid sloshed dangerously close to the rim. The man – the out-of-place, tailored-coat man – simply nodded his thanks, his gaze fixed somewhere outside the rain-streaked window, though the rain itself remained stubbornly absent from the actual weather forecast playing mutedly on the small TV behind the counter.

  "Decided what you're having?" Casey asked, pen poised over her pad. "Or are you just here for the scintillating conversation and the view of the empty tire shop across the street?"

  A faint smile touched his lips, crinkling the corners of his ordinary brown eyes. "Forgive me. Lost in thought." He glanced down at the menu, though his perusal seemed cursory. "Just the coffee for now. And perhaps… one of those blueberry muffins, if they're fresh."

  "Baked yesterday, which counts as haute cuisine around here after midnight," Casey quipped, scribbling it down. She turned to fetch it from the glass display case. As she did, she felt his eyes on her back. Not in the usual leering way some customers employed, but with a strange intensity, like he was cataloging the exact shade of her ridiculous red hair or the way the cheap polyester uniform hung. It made the back of her neck prickle.

  She placed the muffin, nestled on a small plate, beside his coffee. "Anything else? Winning lottery numbers? The meaning of life?"

  "No, thank you, Casey."

  She froze mid-turn. She hadn't offered her name. Her name tag was pinned to her uniform, sure, but he hadn't even glanced at it. He'd been looking out the window or at the menu.

  "Stalker much?" The words slipped out, sharper than she intended, the sarcasm less a shield and more of a spiked mace.

  He didn't flinch. He took a slow sip of his coffee. "It's on your name tag," he said calmly, gesturing vaguely towards her chest with his mug, though his eyes didn't follow the gesture.

  Casey glanced down. Yep, there it was: CASEY, in worn blue embroidery. Still, the ease with which he’d used it felt… off. Presumptuous. She forced a tight smile. "Right. My mistake. Enjoy the muffin."

  She retreated to the relative safety of the counter, busying herself by meticulously rearranging the sugar packets, her mismatched eyes narrowed slightly. Sal was snoring softly in his booth, a low rumble that barely disturbed the quiet. The couple in the back had apparently resolved their crisis, or at least postponed it; they were now sharing a plate of fries with zombie-like slowness. The laptop woman continued her furious typing.

  Casey risked a glance back at the stranger. He was eating the muffin with surprising delicacy for a man in a diner at 4 AM. He still hadn't taken off his coat. And he kept looking out the window, as if expecting someone, or something.

  Suddenly, the jukebox in the corner, silent for hours, sputtered to life. Not with a familiar tune, but with a strange, discordant jumble of notes – a half-second snatch of crackling static, a bluesy guitar riff cut short, a fragment of operatic soprano – before falling silent again with a final, pathetic whine.

  Casey jumped, dropping a handful of sugar packets. "What the hell?"

  Sal snorted awake. "Gus really needs to get that thing fixed. Does that every few weeks."

  Casey frowned. She'd worked here three years. She'd heard it skip, sure. But she'd never heard that. That cacophony of mismatched sounds. It was less a malfunction, more like the jukebox had tried to tune into five different dimensions at once.

  She glanced instinctively at the stranger. He was watching the jukebox now, a thoughtful, almost analytical expression on his face. He caught her eye and gave a small, noncommittal shrug. As if a haunted jukebox randomly playing snippets of otherworldly static was perfectly normal.

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  Okay, that was officially weird. Weirder than flickering lights or suicidal salt shakers. Still, old diner, faulty wiring, maybe a short circuit caused by… cosmic rays? Whatever. She swept up the sugar packets, her heart beating a little faster than usual. Probably just the caffeine.

  The man finished his muffin and coffee in silence. He signaled for the check, and Casey approached the table again, wary.

  "Just this?" she confirmed, placing the small slip of paper down.

  "Just this," he echoed. He pulled out a wallet – expensive-looking leather – and extracted a twenty-dollar bill, placing it on top of the check. The total was barely five dollars.

  "Keep the change," he said, rising smoothly from the booth.

  "Uh, thanks," Casey mumbled, picking it up. That was a ridiculously large tip.

  He paused at the door, turning back to face her. The fluorescent lights seemed to catch the odd angles of his face, making him look younger and older all at once.

  "Almost time, Casey," he repeated, his voice soft but clear in the quiet diner.

  "Almost time for what?" she asked, exasperated. "My shift to end? The apocalypse? What are you talking about?"

  He offered another one of those faint, enigmatic smiles. "You'll know," he said. And then he was gone, pushing the door open into the pre-dawn gloom. Casey watched him walk away, his figure quickly swallowed by the shadows. She half expected the non-existent rain to suddenly start pouring the moment he stepped outside, but the street remained dry.

  She looked down at the twenty-dollar bill in her hand. It felt… strangely warm. Shaking her head, she rang up the sale, stuffing the generous tip into her apron pocket. Weirdo. Rich, cryptic weirdo. Probably hopped up on something.

  The rest of the shift passed in a blur of routine. The 5 AM rush arrived – construction workers needing caffeine drips, early commuters grabbing breakfast sandwiches. Barry clanged pans, the smell of frying bacon filled the air, and Casey ran orders, poured coffee, and deflected questions about her eyes with practiced ease. The jukebox remained silent. The lights remained steady. The strange man and his cryptic pronouncements faded slightly, overlaid by the immediate demands of hungry customers.

  By 6:30 AM, as the first real rays of sunlight began to pierce the gray sky, painting the chrome fixtures in pale gold, Casey was beat. She handed over the reins to Brenda, the morning shift waitress, grabbed her worn backpack from the staff room, and practically stumbled out the door.

  The morning air was cool and crisp, smelling of damp pavement and exhaust fumes. The city was waking up around her, a symphony of car horns, rumbling buses, and distant sirens. Her world was inverted; their beginning was her end.

  She walked the six blocks to her apartment building, head down, exhaustion pulling at her like gravity. Usually, she just focused on putting one foot in front of the other, eager for her bed. But tonight – this morning – she felt oddly alert despite the fatigue. She kept glancing over her shoulder, scanning alleyways. Was that coat dark enough to be his? Was that shadow moving?

  She scoffed at herself. Paranoid. She was letting one strange customer and a faulty jukebox get to her. It was the lack of sleep, the caffeine, the sheer monotony finally making her brain short-circuit.

  Her apartment was a third-floor walk-up above a laundromat. It wasn't much – a cramped studio with a kitchenette that always smelled faintly of fabric softener – but it was hers. She unlocked the three deadbolts (a necessary precaution, Gus always said) and stepped inside.

  Kicking off her worn sneakers, she dumped her backpack on the floor. The small space was tidy but impersonal, mostly furnished with secondhand finds. A stack of library books teetered on a small table, her main source of entertainment. There was one oddity: hanging by the window, catching the morning light, was a mobile made of dozens of small, mismatched buttons – blues, reds, greens, yellows – strung on fishing line. She’d found it at a thrift store years ago, drawn to its cheerful randomness. Sometimes, when the light hit it just right, the buttons seemed to hum with faint colour. She’d always assumed it was just her tired eyes playing tricks.

  Today, though, as she glanced at it, one bright ruby-red button seemed to pulse with a faint, internal light for just a second before returning to normal.

  Casey blinked, rubbed her eyes hard. Nope. Definitely hallucinating now. Far too tired. "Almost time," she muttered under her breath, mimicking the stranger’s tone with dry sarcasm. "Almost time for bed."

  She pulled the blackout curtains shut, plunging the room into artificial night, the familiar hum of the world outside muffled. But even as she crawled under the covers, the stranger’s ordinary brown eyes and his extraordinary pronouncements lingered in her mind, a discordant note in the familiar, weary rhythm of her life. And for the first time, the thought crossed her mind – not as a real belief, just a fleeting, absurd possibility – what if the weirdness wasn't just the diner? What if some of it was… her?

  She pushed the thought away. Ridiculous. She was just Casey, the sarcastic waitress with the weird eyes and the graveyard shift tan. Nothing more.

  Sleep claimed her, dragging her down into its murky depths, leaving the mystery to wait in the encroaching daylight.