Peter paid for his coffee during the morning rush, like he always did these days. He occasionally wondered whether the drink he purchased here held any power over his stay, but ordering what he wanted never seemed to change anything. People stuck in places like this always got out by becoming a better person, or helping a stranger, at least in the movies. Peter had embraced that conceit in the beginning, but that was a long time ago. As this day insisted on still repeating, he had begun walking away and parking himself here. It was just around the corner from his apartment.
Maybe this was supposed to be a Tuesday. Peter started ordering from a rotating menu of seven items, to try and mark the passage of time. Today’s choice had been the second on this list, a nonfat caramel macchiato, something sweeter than he would have ordered for himself on any normal day. His drink sat untouched for hours on the thinly veneered green table in front of him.
He blinked, and found himself in the early afternoon again. From his back wall booth, Peter watched Marvin Jeremy Percy, 34, sit down with at the two-top nearest the display of corporate logo mugs. Peter didn’t think that he and Marvin had ever met before today, at least not technically yet today-today, but he could also remember meeting Marvin countless times. He had learned almost every detail of Marvin’s life. Peter knew everyone who entered this coffee shop today.
Marvin tore his blueberry muffin in half. His laptop battery was only charged to seven percent. Marvin absentmindedly fetched his vibrating phone from his pants pocket, still scrolling endlessly through a website with his other hand. As Marvin looked at the phone and answered, Peter mumbled under his breath. “Oh, hi, Astrid.”
“Oh, hi, Astrid,“ said Marvin, leaning back in his chair. “What can I do for you today?”
Marvin listened. Peter mumbled, “What, sorry.”
“What!” shouted Marvin, his posture stiffened. Looking around the room, he locked eyes with Peter for a moment, before looking away. “Sorry, Astrid. I am sure that I have the Marigold brief with me right here. But, I sent that to your assistant last night.” Marvin paused to listen again, and rolled his eyes.
“Of course, I’ll –” started Peter.
“Hi, sorry to interrupt, but do you do this a lot?” asked someone close by.
Peter felt a long forgotten mix of emotions, curiosity and fear. He slowly turned in the direction of that unexpected voice. Fear jolted into terror, and Peter forgot what he was going to say next. Sitting directly to his left, at a table that had always been empty, a teenage girl sipped from a pink drink with giant jelly balls crowded around the base. She was wearing a gray blazer with a matching tie, and a very short pleated skirt. Her hair was pulled into six braids with sparkling accents.
She grinned and waved a hand down her torso. “Hit me with a bus, right? The anime girl cliche is a bit much, but if that was going to be their dress code, I was going to lean into it. And now, what can you do?” She shrugged. Peter heard fast electronic music playing from the chunky pink headphones slung around her neck, her single accent of color. “Call me Noriko, if you like, Peter.”
“Wh-?” Peter caught a glimpse of Carmen In his peripheral vision, waiting in line to order her tall black with an almond shot and a big cookie. She would have paid for one of the gluten-free dog treats today, too, but her English boxer/cocker spaniel mix Gidget was in surgery in the veterinary hospital a few blocks away. Peter couldn’t remember whether or not he had tried to visit that place yet. He thought, Could there be something important to fix there? Is that it?
“Oh, you are a nice one,” said Noriko.
Peter blinked, and said, “Wha-?”
“It’s amazing that you have ventured this far away, really.” She leaned over and whispered. “That’s how I ended up here, sort of. Management has already taken notice of your skillset, by the way.”
“What?” managed Peter.
Noriko sighed and said, “What I mean is, pay attention to what happens next. You don’t fully understand where we are yet, do you?” She folded her headphones and dropped them into a backpack the same color as her clothes, shaped like a teddy bear. “They say you have been here a while. I know you’ve tried this already, but sometimes a new friend really can help. That is why I am really here, as much as you are.”
Peter drank from his cup and was comforted by the flavors of burnt sugar and cold coffee. “Are you also trapped?”
Noriko shook her head and sipped again from her drink. Blobs of brown jelly bubbled up through her giant green straw. A slice of strawberry jostled forward against the plastic cup, only to be lost again in the pink slush. Peter leaned his head over to the left and frowned.
She released the straw and smacked her lips a few times. “My drink is not on this establishment’s menu, and that is what is perplexing you right now?”
“Nope.”
Noriko looked around the room. “You must have come here often. That’s it.”
Peter shook his head. “Today is my first time here, I think.”
“No kidding?” Noriko put her drink down and said, “It would be better if we walked while we talked.” She rose and waved to the exit. “Retrace your steps with me, would you?”
“Back,” he said, “to the start of my day?”
“Yes, Peter.”
He looked down. He didn’t remember owning a pair of gray sweatpants. “It seemed best to leave this morning. Every morning. But, when I get here, I forget why. Is it okay to go back?”
Noriko extended a hand. “Yes.”
“Okay,” said Peter. He accepted her warm handshake, and the lift from his seat that came with it. “Thank you.”
“Peter, listen carefully.”
“Mm? Please, if you could tell –”
Noriko shook her head. “Listen, and remain silent. For now. Lead me back the normal way you would go home.”
Peter nodded.
As they started walking towards the exit, she said, “Lately, I’ve been thinking about all of the archetypes that must play out in a space like this, over and over again. I mean, you share the same hobby.”
He opened his mouth, then raised an eyebrow.
Noriko pointed at Marvin and Carmen, still going about their day, if oddly oblivious. “People watching. For me, it’s become a bit of an occupational hazard. Each person teaches us something, no?”
“If you say so. I could never help them,” he said.
Noriko cursed in Japanese. “Sorry, I am still new at this.” They reached the glass doors that led out to the sidewalk. Peter glanced back at the other patrons and the two baristas, all now frozen in place.
“Let me start over,” continued Noriko. “Take me, for example. I fit into one of those archetypes, I guess. I was late for school.”
She pushed a door open and stepped onto the sidewalk. Noriko said, “There was an important test.”
Peter looked back one more time. Their seats on the back wall were bleaching out, becoming little more than sketches of the furniture that had been solid a moment ago.
“Math. Left or right, buddy?”
Peter stared at Noriko, and walked to the right.
She said, “I was distracted, running. A streetlight changed, and, well, the end.”
Peter halted.
Noriko waved her hands. “No. Not, The End. The end of that part of my story. Lead on.”
He walked for a few paces in silence.
“It’s so stupid,” said Noriko. “Like, that’s it? Oh, we’re here. Now is a good time for questions.”
Peter looked up at his apartment building, then down the street. There had not been a single car on the road during this whole journey. The sidewalks were otherwise empty. Peter swallowed and asked, “Where are we?”
Noriko grinned. “I was just getting to that. I can explain more easily when we get back there.”
“Do I have to?”
“We aren’t there yet, are we?”
Peter walked into a space that resembled his building’s lobby. Noriko followed. The wall of mailboxes and the elevator were outlined in rough pencil marks. He chose the stairs. “May I ask another question, then?”
“Yes, Peter.”
“Are you the Angel of Death?”
“No. Would that be any comfort to you?”
“No.”
They entered a corridor on the second floor. The door to apartment 217 was wide open, if a little wispy around the edges. Peter halted again, the fear creeping back. Something felt very wrong, an important truth hanging just outside his reach. He accepted Noriko’s hand again, as she led him inside.
At the door into Peter’s kitchen, Noriko pointed at the body on the floor. Squeezing his hand, she said, “You kind man, you deserve the truth. That was you, but the natural order of things is a little broken at the moment.” Noriko released him and leaned back against a wall. “I mean, you noticed. You just asked after the guy.”
“Pardon?”
Noriko said, “My supervisor claims that Death himself died a long time ago. I wonder if he saw that coming?”
Peter said, “You are serious.”
Noriko shrugged. “That is what trapped you in that state of, uh, endless cafe. Most of us don’t know what to do when we’re dead. But, some of us are different, able to hold onto connections to lives we only tangentially touched, in our last form. Like you.”
“What does that mean?”
Noriko smiled. “It’s what I am doing right now. I was in town last summer on a class trip. You gave me your seat on the number 12 bus.”
Their surroundings dissolved to white mist. Peter shielded his eyes from the warm light shining far overhead, beckoning.
“I could take you there right now, or there is a second option.”
Peter’s face turned pale. “Fire and brimstone?”
Noriko laughed. “No! A job offer, silly. The consequences of no official Death are an absolute bureaucratic nightmare. There aren’t many like you and me, and we could use the help.”
Peter thought about Marvin, about to lose a client and drink himself to death later this evening. And, Carmen, well, she always had a pulmonary embolism scheduled for 2:48pm, never to learn that Gidget survived.
She said, “Now that I’ve helped you, we can help them.”
“Okay.”
Noriko squealed and jumped in place. Together, hand in hand, they walked further into the void.
A common story/plot point, the poor person stuck in a time loop. From the Reddit WritingPrompt You are stuck in a time loop, but you have no intention of ever breaking out of it. After literally millions of resets a new person appears in the loop and asks you why you are still in the loop.