David closed the door to his boss’s office with a cheery smile on his face. His heart was beating erratically, and his facial muscles were doing everything they could to defy gravity. He’d finally done it. After years of work, he’d managed to get a senior position. If only he could go back in time to tell his younger self that all the hard work and sleepless nights paid off in the end. He felt as if he was walking on air.

  He took a deep breath as he opened the door to the break room with shaky hands. There stood his colleagues clad in jackets and clutching pursues - murmuring together in small groups. The chatter in the room faded away upon his entry. All eyes turned to him - an unasked question on the tip of their tongues.

  David’s smile grew further. “I got it.”

  A round of applause broke out, and David spent the next couple of minutes sharing in the glee of his colleagues. He shook hands, laughed, and was wrestled into hugs. Eventually, one by one, his teammates filtered out of the room in order to head home for the evening. Soon the break room was empty and David went to his office to collect his own jacket and wallet.

  The door creaked open as he flicked on the lights - strolling into the orderly room with a jubilant stride. He threw on his jacket and stuffed his wallet into one of the front pockets. Then, with a satisfied nod, turned to leave. However, as he pivoted, a flash of white on his desk caught his attention. With a furrowed brow, David turned to examine the object - a pristine envelope with his name written in elegantly looping letters. He picked up the envelope and opened it. As soon as he did, a small object slipped out and fell to the floor with a sharp clang. David, still unsure about the envelope’s source, reached down and picked up what appeared to be an aged coin. The muted light caught on the rusted metal as David examined it. After a moment he turned his attention back to the envelope, There, sticking out of the top, was a small piece of yellowed paper folded in two. David unfolded it and frowned. The paper was mostly empty except for a handful of words in the same looping letters.

  “Use this.

  -Signed, Death”

  David stared at the words - his lips pulled into a thin line. His thumb dragged across the rough surface of the coin as he slowly contemplated the words. Was this a prank? A means of revenge? Who would do this in the first place? A smile crept onto David’s face as questions swirled through his head. One thought climbing above the rest - what a stupid idea. He chuckled quietly to himself as he turned and exited the room. With one hand he turned off the office lights, and with the other, he stuffed the note and coin in his pocket. He’d contemplate the note’s sender and their purpose over a celebratory dinner and movie at home. There was no point wasting his time thinking about it in the quickly emptying building.

  The sky was an indigo blue by the time he made it out to the car. His breath puffed out in front of him. The leaves on the ground crunched loudly with the added layer of frost. He stuffed his hands into his pockets. For just a moment he wished that humans had fur like other animals. Maybe then he wouldn’t be shivering like someone just threw him into a lake.

  There was a fine mist in the air as David drove home. The white fog shied away from the street lamps and his headlights. Still, he was practically squinting by the time he turned onto one of the less-used side streets. The sound of other motorists arriving home late drifted further and further away as he drove. Soon it was just him and nature. On the left, the trees were dancing on the breeze, and on the right the sound of a stream trickling along beyond the guard rails.

  Then, suddenly, a figure standing in the middle of the road. David’s eyes widened as he slammed on the brakes. The tires screeched as they skidded across the asphalt. He was stuck between wanting to slam his eyes closed on instinct and keeping them open in order to attempt to swerve away from the individual. His hands were clutching onto the steering wheel so tightly that his bones felt like they were aching.

  David had never considered what facing death would be like. He’d never questioned whether his life would flash before his eyes or whether he would be surrounded by a bright light. Now, though, with his heart racing in his chest cavity, he wished he had. In those few seconds when the tires screeched across the ground, he wished that something, anything, could have prepared him. Yet, all he could think to do was to stare at the stranger he was about to hit. As if his gaze alone could pull them out of harm’s way. There were no tears. No one screamed. Instead, two people simply pleaded with wide eyes for someone to stop time.

  The breath stalled in his lungs as time seemed to slow. Out of the corner of his eye, David saw the coin. It was floating in the air as the milliseconds drew on - hanging loosely by gravity’s thread like a pendulum of a clock. David, on the whim of a doomed man, let go of the steering wheel. His mind raced as he watched his fingers reach out to grasp the rusted metal. A sub-vocal cry filled his ears as time dragged on before him. Then, with a jolt, David touched the cool metal and everything froze. Coffee hung in the air like a towel out to dry, and papers floated around him like clouds in the sky. It as was as if the Earth itself had stopped spinning.

  For a moment, David simply sat there - clutching the coin in his grasp like a life preserver. Yet, the thundering cry of blood pumping in his ears faded to the background as his eyes turned to the pedestrian who almost ended up flattened underneath the tire of his car. With shaky hands, David hurriedly opened the car door and stumbled on numb legs to wrap his arms around the stranger. Tears started streaming down his face as the young man clung to his rumpled suit jacket. They stood there - gasping through strained lungs as they reassured each other that the other was alive.

  David pulled back to get a better look at the person that he had almost hit. “Oh my gosh, I almost killed a kid.” He clutched the teen’s shoulders. His nails dug into the fabric of the red hoodie the adolescent was wearing. “I’m sorry. So sorry,” David cried as he hugged the boy impossibly closer. “I didn’t s-see yo-”

  “It’s ok, I s-should have been paying attention.” The young man said through quaking gasps.

  “Please, tell me your name.” The words tumbled out of David, his conscious demanding that he know the identity of the person he almost killed.

  “Jo-Joshua.” The teen clutched at David’s suit jacket.

  “I-I’m David. I can’t believe I - that we-” David took in a shaky breath as he drew back to look at the teen’s tear-stained face, “that death was so close.”

  The sound of metal hitting asphalt pulled both of them out of their shock. They stepped away from each other, still trying to gather themselves, as they looked down to see the coin illuminated by the headlights of the car. Joshua, eyes still hazy with shock, leaned down and picked it up, handed it back to David, and looked around.

  “Am I hallucinating, or has the world frozen around us?”

  David turned around to scan the area. His eyes landed on his car. The tires were frozen mid-movement, dust from the road floating at a standstill in the air. There, through the windshield, the coffee was still hanging above the passenger seat. As he glanced around, it became clear that the entire vicinity was frozen. The tree branches weren’t moving. There was a squirrel frozen as it made a mad dash to safety. Even the sound of the stream had disappeared. Time had truly stopped around them.

  “What happened?” Joshua muttered.

  “I don’t know.” David’s thumb rubbed against the ridges of the coin. He looked down at his hand. “Well, I might.” He furrowed his brows, wondering, through the sludge that was his brain post adrenaline rush, whether he was going insane. “I received an envelope today. Inside it, there was only a coin and a note instructing me to use it.” David drew the note out of his pocket and presented the coin still in his other hand. As he unfurled his fingers, there were pink lines from where he had gripped the small coin tightly during his explanation. “It was signed by death. I know it sounds crazy, and it was probably just a practical joke, but I think it might have something to do with this.”

  “I believe you.”

  David jerked his head up and blinked at the boy. “Just like that?”

  Joshua snorted and gestured to their surroundings. “We are standing in some kind of time bubble right now. Besides,” he took a steadying breath as he pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket. Tentatively, he handed it to David. “I found this in my math book. I thought it might have been left there by the last person who had been assigned it.” His gaze fell heavily to the coin held loosely in David’s grasp. “I’ve changed my mind.”

  David’s eyes furrowed as he watched Joshua shuffle his feet. Then his brown eyes fell to the paper and all the blood rushed out of his face.

  There on the page, in the same looping letters, were the words.

  “Heads or tails.

  -Signed, Death”

  “Oh, God.” The words slipped past his lips without his consent. “You don’t think-.” He couldn’t finish the thought. It was too cruel. Too monstrous.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  “That he’s leaving who dies, and who lives up to the toss of that coin? Yeah, yeah, I do.” The teen’s lips thinned out as he nodded solemnly.

  Time passed as they tried to find an alternate solution. They tried simply abandoning the car, but there seemed to be a barrier that prevented them from going too far away. They tried tossing the coin in the stream, only for it to reappear in David’s hand. They even tried calling for help, despite it being almost midnight. Nothing worked and within the hour they were back where they started.

  “We’re going to have to flip it, aren’t we?” Joshua growled as he kicked a small rock across the street. David nodded. “How do we even choose a side?” The question came out as more of a growl. “There was nothing else in your note?” He paced across the pavement like a wild dog.

  “We’ve already been over this,” David snapped. “It said ‘Use this’ and nothing else.”

  Joshua stopped and turned away. David watched with a clenched jaw as the muscles in his body tensed and his hands curled into fists. However, the tense pose only lasted a second. From one moment to the next, all the tension fled from Joshua’s body - his arms laying limply at his side and his shoulders slumping. “There isn’t a right answer, is there?”

  David wanted to say that yes, there was. Surely Death had chosen which side of the coin equated demise. Or maybe the outcome was predetermined, and the coin flip was simply a way to change up the monotonous task of collecting souls. After all, it had already become clear that Death had control of the coin. Either way, there was a right answer. One of them would pick right and live, and the other would die. Yet that wasn’t what came out of his mouth. Instead, he clasped Joshua on the shoulder and said with the feeble amount of strength that he could muster, “No, there isn’t.”

  Joshua scanned his face, clearly pinpointing the lie in the words. Still, he sighed and nodded. “Alright then, I’ll take tails. You have heads.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Joshua laughed humorously and threw his hands up in the air. “We’re having a coin toss to determine who gets to walk away from this hellish experience, of course I’m not certain.”

  “You can switch if you want.”

  The teenager dragged a hand down his face. “What’s the point? Just flip the damn thing.”

  Yet, David didn’t move. He simply stared at his companion. He wanted to say something. Anything really. Some final goodbye or even a comment on the weather, but he couldn’t bring himself to speak. His mind was racing a mile a minute, hyped on a heady mixture of fear and adrenaline. Words, however, were dammed up in the back of his throat. So all he could do was stare and shake as they soaked up the last few moments where they both walked the Earth.

  It was funny, really, how up until this moment the word “death” was to be avoided at all costs. It could be ignored through euphemisms or a well-placed taboo. People didn’t die, they passed on or slipped away. A child was called to God or an elderly person left this life. Soft expressions that failed to encapsulate the reality David was currently faced with. Splattered blood and choked-off screams did not suit the calm notion of one passing away. Cries of desperation and strangled pleas did not equate to the warmth of a god calling their child home. The coin held in David’s shaking palm demanded more from the word “death” than these simple phrases could muster. In the face of this reality, the word almost seemed too mild. He wanted to say so much and yet none of it would make what followed ok because the reality was that while death was inevitable, it wasn’t ok.

  He took a deep breath and tried to smile reassuringly. The expression was warped. Then he tossed the coin in the air. The rusted metal glinted in the headlights of the vehicle. The two men stared at it. It looked so weightless, like a feather that would tip the scales of their lives. One to live. One to die. A simple game for children turned deadly.

  The coin crashed into the asphalt below. Maybe the noise was so loud due to the silence of their environment, or maybe it was their brains recognizing this moment as the crescendo of their lives. Whatever the reason, both of them flinched as it fell.

  “Heads,” Joshua whispered. The word sounded swollen in his mouth.

  David opened his mouth to respond. To provide some comfort. To scream. To cry. Who knows. All that mattered is that in a blink of an eye, time started again. The two entangled souls were torn away from each other like an elastic band taking its original shape once more. David clutched at his chest as he was flung back. His face twisted with pain as the world contorted around him. He blinked back to himself, only to realize that he had landed back in the dark interior of his car.

  He wanted to jump back out. Race to Joshua. Demand that he get out of the way. Yet there wasn’t time. There, sitting in his car, David watched as the world flew into motion. His body was propelled forward as the car crashed into Joshua’s fragile form. He heard the anguished cry, the snapping bones, gushing blood, and then nothing. Blissfully torturous nothing. He didn’t have to get out of the car to know that the boy would not be making it out alive. The weight of the coin in his pocket was equal to a signed death warrant. There was no way the boy survived. Despite this, David, walking on newly broken bones, fell onto the asphalt below and crawled around the twisted metal of the vehicle to look for his companion. His blood streaked across the ground as he dragged his body forward.

  Within the wreckage, looking more like an unsolved puzzle than a human being, lay Joshua. His unnaturally pale skin was highlighted by the blood-streaked concrete that made up his resting place. One hazy eye stared back at David - the other was hidden by the concave skull bones that had hit the ground.

  “Hey, Josh,” David croaked, “don’t worry. We’ll get you to a hospital. Just hang on.” His limbs shook violently as he spoke.

  The boy blinked. It was slow, like a crushed doll winking. Blood dripped off his eyelashes with the movement. A milky film covered the iris as the eyelid uncovered it once more. A final breath slipped from his lips as the boy’s life was ripped from him.

  David sobbed. Pain sliced through his body with each movement. Yet, he couldn’t get himself to stop. The cries were deep and guttural. He reached forward to touch the boy’s frozen face. “Please, please. Come on, wake up.” He groaned as he tried to shuffle closer. “We can do it again. I’ll choose tails instead. Please wake up. Please.” Tears flowed from his eyes, diluting the blood that trailed from one gash or another. His fingers clung to the damp fabric of Joshua’s hoodie as his head fell to the boy’s chest. His conscious mind left him as he stared up into the misty eye of the boy who died in his stead.

  ~~~

  When David awoke, he was surrounded by white walls. For a moment he thought death had taken pity on him and heeded his cries. However, the overpowering scent of hand sanitizer quickly destroyed that hope. His hazy eyes slowly focused enough to see the face of a doctor swimming in front of him. He hardly had time to ask them about Joshua before his brain, being the traitor that it was, pulled him back into the depths of slumber.

  The next few weeks were a blur. Between talking with police and physiotherapy, David hardly had any time to think. Yet, no matter how strenuous the exercise or harsh the words, he was thankful for the distraction because the alternative was far worse. An indigo sky. Blood. Misty eyes. A coin glinting in the headlights. His life was a waking nightmare. If only he could rip the brain from his skull. Maybe then he would get a moment of peace.

  David expected making it home to comfort him. Yet, as he walked through the doors, it felt like he was an intruder. He glanced around. Everything was exactly as he had left it, and still, everything felt wrong. The books on the shelves were for a man who saw more than blood and bones in his mind’s eye. The mirror on the wall could not recognize the black and blue figure. The picture frames on his dresser spoke of a life David could no longer identify with. Everything was out of step with his reality. Mocking him with the innocent life he had once led. And there, in the center of it all, was a folded bundle of red fabric. David reached for it with shaking hands, caring little for how it got there to begin with.

  The fabric unfurled to reveal the red hoodie that Joshua had worn. It appeared completely unmarred, the fabric lacking the dirt, blood, and sinew that had stained it only weeks ago. Yet, David knew with utmost certainty that it was the same garment. Something deep within him recognizing each individual thread. A cry made it past the lump in David’s throat - the shattered sound echoing throughout the hollow room. He drew it close to his chest, his fingers digging into the fabric as if he could will the wearer to reappear.

  As he moved, however, he heard a crinkling sound. David flinched - a newly acquired habit that made itself known every time he heard shuffling paper or clinking metal. Slowly, David drew back, as if the fabric would launch forward and rip into his jugular. With shaking hands, he reached into one of the pockets, his eyes widening in terror as his fingers brushed against paper. Slowly, he pulled the yellowed sheet from its crimson confines. He took a deep breath as he slowly unfolded it, lacking the energy to care what matter of doom was inked across the page. His eyes trailed over the words, taking a large gulp of air as the words registered, as if the oxygen could siphon the words off the page and carry them straight to his splintered heart.

  “Live on,

  Signed, Joshua.”

  Tears dripped down David’s face as he clutched the paper - reading the words over and over again. He fell to his knees, his whole body shaking with the force of his cries. He spent the rest of the night there, the indigo sky veiling him in darkness, barely aware of the time passing him by. It wasn’t pretty, it might not have even been good, but whatever it was, the feeling coursing through him alleviated some of the weight that threatened to crush him body and soul.

  ~~~

  It took time, but David eventually regained some semblance of a normal life. It was not quite the one he had lived before. The promotion he had worked for seemed so meaningless now. There was a distinct awareness of the fragility of life that was somehow both a gift and a curse. He still flinched at the sound of screeching tires or crinkling paper. His entire body would tense, muscle memory pulling him back to a night that slipped further and further away. He learned to laugh again. He learned to dream again. There were goals to achieve and journeys to undertake. He tried to live his life to the fullest, allowing himself moments of darkness, accounting for the scars left on his body and mind, but never letting them control him. They could stretch, and they could ache, but they could never devour. No matter how old he got, though, when he saw a person walking past in a red hoodie, he found himself reaching out as if to cradle them close. His mind’s eye would turn back to another soul clutching a scrawled note under an indigo sky.

  ~~~

  This story was written with a prompt from Reedsy.com -. That prompt was: “Write a story that hinges on the outcome of a coin flip.”