One Enchanted Morning

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Caroline startled at a voice behind her. She whirled around to see a beautiful woman standing near the tree beside the bus stop. The lady appeared to be somewhat formally dressed for a Thursday morning, but the woman’s piercing green eyes gave Caroline pause.

“You have a most nostalgic smile,” the woman said. She had a faint accent Caroline couldn’t quite place. “May I ask what you were thinking?”

Caroline felt compelled to be honest. “It’s been so hot lately, but this cold front is making me remember how much I loved perfect autumn days like this when I was a child – when the weather was crisp and it felt like anything could happen. I was wishing I could have one of those mornings again.”

The woman smiled brightly. Were her teeth slightly pointed? Surely not, Caroline thought. “Indeed? When was that perfect day, perchance?”

“October 2nd, 1986,” Caroline said, picking a date at random. “The world seemed so much bigger and more mysterious when I was young.”

“Mysterious,” the woman murmured. Caroline had the distinct impression the woman was laughing at her, though she couldn’t have said exactly why.

The bus pulled up before Caroline could reply. “After you,” she said, gesturing toward the bus’s opening door.

The woman shook her head. “It’s the wrong one for me.”

Caroline shrugged and gave her a quick wave as she stepped up into the bus.

The bus was unusually empty for that time of the morning. Caroline sat primly as she always did, her nondescript leather tote clutched in her lap. She noticed the young man in the seat in front of her had old-fashioned headphones on, the kind that went over the head with a sort of adjustable headband, but not the new, chunky kind that blocked out sound. These were the older style of headphones with spongy foam covers over the earpieces, the kind she’d had with her first Sony Walkman. The boy bounced his head in time to the music, which she could faintly hear. Though tinny and quiet, she could make out the chorus to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”

She almost laughed aloud and wondered if this type of 1980s nostalgia had become a craze among the TikTok-obsessed youth. Maybe kids were recreating the “Thriller” dance on the app? Perhaps the boy’s grandma had dug out a well-preserved Walkman and given it to him when he’d mentioned the dance. She expected it was hard to come by cassettes these days. She never saw what device the boy was using, though; her stop came too quickly.

Funny thing about those headphones, Caroline thought as she stepped down to the sidewalk. They looked brand new. She remembered how quickly the foam covers wore out and how many replacements she’d bought at Radio Shack. He had probably gotten new covers on eBay, she decided. They looked to be straight from the packet.

She came to an abrupt halt at the corner. Though she had the walk signal, a careless driver in an orange Datsun pickup had taken a right without looking for pedestrians. She glared at the driver as she made her way to the other side, wondering if they still made those little trucks. Her cousin had had an orange one in high school, almost exactly like the one she’d just seen. This Datsun had to be someone’s vintage treasure – it looked like it had come right from the assembly line with its fresh paint and no scratches or dings. Did Datsun still exist nowadays? She almost shivered.

Maybe, she decided, it was merely one of those days where odd nostalgia confronted you at every turn. She made her way into the office building and took the elevator to the 6th floor as she always did. It looked like someone had polished the elevator buttons, which normally appeared yellowed with age and worn from the thousands of fingers pressing them through the years. They must have shampooed the carpet, too, she noticed when the elevators opened with their usual ding. The floor looked better than she had seen since she’d started working there.

She greeted the receptionist with her customary “Good morning.” The young lady smiled and said it back, but something seemed off. She was a fashionable girl, always dressed to the nines, but with teased hair and shoulder pads, she looked like someone in a John Hughes movie today.

The strange feeling in the pit of Caroline’s stomach intensified as she stepped around the corner to her desk. It was where it always had been, her potted plant on the corner and her brass name plaque gleaming in the morning sunlight. But her computer was nowhere to be seen. The sleek black phone with dozens of buttons for extensions was gone, and a bulky beige handset sat in its place. It looked like the phone at the desk at her first job, which had been old-fashioned then. Was this a joke? Was the entire office playing a prank on her?

She searched through her desk drawers and found stacks of bound ledgers, the lined green pages vaguely familiar. She hadn’t used ledger books since the mid-1990s. Everything was entered into software now and had been for decades. She thought back to the previous day’s entries; she’d paid four invoices. She flipped through the ledger, and four checks were listed there, entered in her own neat handwriting. The vendor names were different, and the checks were for much smaller amounts, but they had paid for the same items.

Her vision began to dim around the edges as she glanced at the page-a-day calendar beside the old-fashioned phone. She struggled to make out the date. Her hand trembled, and her sight abruptly sharpened as she turned to today’s page: October 2nd, 1986.

Caroline’s world, which had curiously turned backward, went dark – and she knew no more.

Happy Halloween! I hope you’ve enjoyed this set of October posts, and remember: You can keep Spooky Season alive in your heart all year long. 🧡

One final important note for my fellow Americans: Please vote. And if you’ve already voted, encourage your friends and family to vote. So much is at stake. Please don’t sit this one out, even if you don’t love Harris. Cast your vote to support the most vulnerable among us. The fascists are no longer dog-whistling. They’re shouting the quiet parts out loud, and we need to believe them. Vote while we still can.

And on that terrifying note, I intend to take a short break and return in mid-November. I plan to start writing a new novella for First Draft Fall and will try to focus on that during the first of the month to keep from doomscrolling. Anyway, that’s it for now. OKAY, BYE! 🖤

2 responses to “One Enchanted Morning”

  1. Elaine Avatar

    FABULOUS story! Love it! I’m not normally a Halloween-y person, but your story is the perfect addition to two I formatted this month: one author friend’s contemporary retelling of an Irish fairy tale and another author friend’s story about a little witch called Hazel (both are free downloads, btw, if you’re in the mood for more).

    1. Sarah L. Crowder Avatar

      Thank you so much, Elaine! I’d love to read both of those. I was already intrigued by the Hazel story from what you told me the other day!

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