esoteric-space

[esoteric-space]

The Loveland Pit Stop

The night of Christmas Eve had worn thin enough to see Christmas morning threatening on the horizon when I spotted the Loveland Pit Stop sign floating in the dark. The harsh fluorescent lights buzzed with a peculiar frequency, a sound somewhere between electricity and insect wings. It was an unusual stop on a routine trip. The coffee from three states ago had worn off, leaving behind a metallic taste and a tremor in my hands. I looked around at the parking lot full of cars as I pumped gas into my car.

In the fogged windows of the convenience store, Christmas lights hung unevenly across the dusty frames, their strands drooping where the tape had surrendered to gravity. A few bulbs flickered reluctantly, their dull hues lingering just a moment too long before fading, while others stayed stubbornly dark, leaving gaps in the rhythm. The fog on the glass softened the glow into muted pastels, blending reds, greens, and blues into a lethargic kaleidoscope, as if the lights themselves bore the weight of the empty hours.

Mom's kitchen light would be on, even this early. She’d wake up before dawn to bake, the smell of sugar and cinnamon curling through the house like a warm embrace, spilling out into the frosty air when she opened the door to greet me. It was a ritual as constant as the seasons, her way of holding onto something in a world that kept changing. 

The pump clicked at $14.08. The automatic doors parted with a whisper.

Inside, the fluorescent lights took on a pallid hue, casting a stark glare over the scuffed grey linoleum floor, amplifying the wear on every surface. The store's air was thick, almost syrupy with the artificial pine scent of holiday air fresheners mixed with something older and sweeter, like decades of coffee spilled in places no one had looked. Shelves line the narrow aisles, their contents arranged in a haphazard attempt at abundance: bags of chips with crinkled, faded packaging lean against each other, off-brand candies sit under a faint sheen of dust, and energy drinks in mismatched rows add a pop of color to the otherwise muted display. A whirring cooler hums faintly from the back, where pre-made sandwiches and cartons of milk crowd under a dim light that flickers intermittently. 

I grabbed a basket, its metal edges cold and rough, and moved through the aisles to begin my routine: powdered donuts that Mom pretends to hate but always snags from my bag, a bottle of Advil to stave off the headache crawling steadily behind my eyes, and coffee to fill the hollow ache left by hours of highway monotony. My footsteps echoed oddly, the sound arriving a fraction too late as I moved through the store grabbing the items. 

As I reached for the coffee station at the back, a row of cheap Santa plush toys loomed on a nearby shelf, their beady plastic eyes locked on me as I stood in front of the coffee machine. The digital display didn’t greet me with the usual cheerful prompts for dark roast or decaf but instead cycled through an erratic cascade of random numbers, each flickering with unsettling speed. I tapped the screen once, then again, harder, but it didn’t respond, the numbers continuing their frantic, nonsensical dance. A faint hum came from the machine, a sound that seemed to rise and fall in uneven waves, as if the display itself were breathing.

Turning toward the counter to look for help, I paused as I noticed that the cash register sat unattended. I slowly walked to the front, the air near the register felt heavier, cooler somehow. I froze, my fingers curling tighter around the handle of the basket until the metal bit into my skin. My breath caught in my throat, the faintest puff of it visible in the suddenly cool air. The chair’s slow, almost deliberate sway pulled my gaze, each creak of its movement stretching the silence into something alive. The radio sputtered, a warped voice crooning half a line of a carol before dissolving into static that sounded like someone trying to whisper in my ear. The chair behind it, slightly askew, swayed just barely as if someone had vacated it a moment too soon.

My eyes drifted to the counter, where an abandoned name tag glimmered faintly under the flickering fluorescent lights. The letters blurred and twisted, rearranging themselves into shapes that looked familiar but meant nothing, like the remnants of a dream slipping through my fingers. My pulse thudded in my ears, louder than the soft hum of the cooler or the faint ticking of the coffee machine behind me. I took a step back, my sneakers catching on the sticky floor, the sound echoing loudly in the empty store. 

"Hello?" My voice fell flat, absorbed by the dense, peppermint-saturated air, leaving behind an unnatural stillness that prickled at the edges of my senses. No hum of the cooler or the faint ticking of the coffee machine.

From somewhere in the back came a faint, unsettling sound—a dry, deliberate scrape, like paper being torn one agonizing fiber at a time. The coffee machine sputtered and gurgled, breaking the silence in uneven, wet gasps. My eyes darted toward its polished stainless-steel surface, catching the faint shimmer of my reflection. It was there, but wrong. Its head tilted slightly, almost curiously, dark eyes narrowing with a piercing intensity that sent a shiver down my spine. The stare was unyielding, searching, as though it were peeling back layers I didn’t even know were there. Then, it smiled.

My chest tightened, and my breath hitched as I stumbled back, the basket slipping from my trembling hands. Powdered donuts rolled across the linoleum, leaving trails of sugar-white dust that seemed stark against the dingy floor. The reflection didn’t flinch as I did. It stopped smiling, leaning closer to the polished metal surface, its hand raising slowly as though reaching for me. My own hand twitched in response, drawn by an inexplicable pull toward the gesture.

Behind the reflection, something shifted. Other faces began to appear—versions of me, emerging one after the other, their features faint and fragmented, like sketches left unfinished. Their presence was a ripple, each one more translucent, more fractured than the last.

"Hello?" I said again, my voice thin and wavering. The word felt hollow, swallowed by the thick air pressing in around me.

The reflection’s lips moved silently, mouthing words I couldn’t hear. My heart hammered as I instinctively stepped closer, the movement automatic, detached from any conscious choice. It leaned in, its hand sliding down the coffee machine’s surface, leaving streaks in the condensation like tears trailing down glass.

Then its head snapped up, the motion sudden and sharp, locking its gaze onto mine. The air seemed to collapse, crushing and heavy, as the faces behind it stirred. One by one, they pressed their hands against the invisible walls of their prisons, their eyes wide with recognition—and terror. Their mouths opened, straining in silent screams that I couldn’t hear but could feel, reverberating like static deep in my chest. I wanted to scream too, to break the suffocating silence, but my voice stayed buried, trapped beneath the weight of a truth I couldn’t name.

I turned and ran toward the exit, but the automatic doors didn’t budge. Their glass panes remained sealed, fogging over as though something outside was breathing heavily against them. Panic surged as I banged against the doors, the dull thud of my fists swallowed by the dense air. I grabbed a magazine rack and swung it against the glass, desperation driving my arms. The rack clattered to the floor, its metal legs bending uselessly, but the doors didn’t even crack.

Gasping, I turned back to the coffee machine, my heart pounding in my ears. Its surface reflected only the dimly lit store now, empty and still, as if nothing had ever been wrong. But the silence wasn’t clean; it carried an edge, a tension strung tight like an invisible wire.

The radio crackled suddenly, the static from earlier flipping through fractured bursts of sound. Voices rose and fell, overlapping incoherently until they steadied, just for a moment. A smooth, familiar voice emerged mid-line, carrying a haunting resonance that prickled along my spine.

“You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”

In that moment, the store stretched around me, aisles elongating into infinite corridors of fluorescent-lit limbo. My reflection watched with patient understanding as reality peeled away like old wallpaper, revealing the void beneath. The last thing I saw before the world inverted was my own face, watching from behind the glass, eyes filled with a horror I would soon learn to understand.

Then I was nothing. Not darkness - darkness requires eyes to perceive it. Not silence - silence needs ears to notice its weight. I became an absence, a space between thoughts in a mind that no longer existed. Perhaps I floated there for eons, or for the length of a single heartbeat. Perhaps I had always been there, would always be there, in that infinite moment between being and becoming. Time has no meaning here. Until it does. 

—

Reality flickered back like a fluorescent bulb catching current, starting with the soft whisper of automatic doors. And suddenly there I was, watching myself walk in with tired eyes and trembling hands, moving with hesitation. Christmas lights hung in the same uneven pattern, their strands drooping where tape had surrendered to gravity. The same burnt out bulbs. The fog on the windows softened their glow into the same muted pastels I remembered. The magazine rack I'd hurled at the glass lay undisturbed in its place, metal legs unbent, covers glossy under the fluorescent lights. The windows showed no sign of my desperate attempts to break them. It was as if none of it had happened.

Or perhaps it hadn't happened yet…

I looked toward the counter where I’d seen the abandoned name tag, the swaying chair. There had never been anyone there, I realized now—not tonight. Not any night. I watched myself scan the empty store, remembering how wrong everything felt in that first moment. My hands pressed against the cold surface of the coffee machine, desperate to warn, to prevent what was coming. But like all the others trapped here, I could only follow the script written in time itself. Powdered donuts, Advil, coffee.

I tilted my head, intrigued by the figure approaching, the way her movements carried the weight of something unresolved. I’d seen myself countless times in reflections, but this was different. It was me—my face, my body—alive and moving, untethered from the glass. A rush of fascination gripped me, a strange, giddy curiosity at seeing myself from this side. My breath caught as our eyes met, and for a moment, I simply stared, taking in the contours of a face I knew so intimately yet had never truly seen. I couldn’t help it—I smiled, a quiet, absurd acknowledgment of the moment. The ridiculousness of seeing myself, real and tangible, yet out of reach, tugged at the corners of my mouth like a private joke only I could understand.

The basket slipped, powdered donuts rolling across the linoleum, leaving trails of dust. I pressed closer to my side of the surface, my palm trailing against the cold, smooth barrier as I leaned in.

I watched as I took an involuntary step forward, my movement mirroring mine, both of us caught in the same gravitational pull I remembered all too well. Desperation tingled at the edges of my thoughts—I wanted to warn myself, to break through the glass with something louder than my helpless smile. But the absurdity of it lingered, that same hollow truth whispering that I’d already tried—and failed—before.

A whispered "Hello?" vibrated through the metal between us. I tried to speak, to warn, but my words dissolved into nothingness. When I dragged my fingers across the surface, they left trails in the condensation—proof that I existed here, in this impossible space behind the glass, where warm breath could still meet cold metal. I looked at how the droplets floated against an invisible barrier from my new perspective. Then I looked up sharply, meeting eyes that still held questions I now knew the answers to.

Behind me, countless versions of myself pressed against the boundaries of their reflections; their presence hummed like static electricity against my skin. Their horror, fascination, and acceptance rippled through me like emotions I had already felt or was yet to feel. The air grew thick as reality folded around me. The fluorescent lights above flickered in a rhythm that felt like language, shadows bending and twisting against the edges of the store. Soon, I would join the reflections again, another fragment in the endless choreography of fractured time.

I wondered if anything truly existed beyond these doors anymore. If somewhere, beyond this pocket of frozen time, Mom's kitchen light actually burned—its warm glow cutting through the predawn darkness like it always had, like it always should. If she was still waiting, moving between window and oven in an eternal rhythm, for a Christmas morning that would never quite reach dawn. If any morning still existed at all.