Nina loved thrift shops. She could spend hours digging through racks of forgotten clothes and shelves of chipped glassware. But what caught her eye that Saturday was a pair of sunglasses.
They were round, with gold rims and dark green lenses, tucked into a cracked leather case. The tag said $10. She tried them on, grinned at her reflection, and decided they were perfect.
When she stepped outside into the afternoon sun, she noticed it immediately.
The street looked different.
Not the storefronts or buildings — those were the same. But the people… they weren’t dressed for 2025.
Women in long skirts and gloves walked arm in arm, men in bowler hats carried canes, children chased hoops down the sidewalk. A horse-drawn cart rattled by where a bus should have been.
Nina yanked off the glasses.
The world snapped back to normal — traffic lights, honking cars, people in jeans and sneakers.
Her pulse quickened. Slowly, she put the sunglasses back on.
The world shifted again.
She stumbled down the block, torn between fascination and fear. The air even felt different through the glasses, as though thinner, warmer.
Then she noticed something worse.
Among the vintage-dressed crowd, some people were staring directly at her. Men with pale faces and hollow eyes, women with stiff postures. They didn’t move like the others — they moved toward her.
Heart racing, Nina ripped the glasses off. The crowd disappeared. Just normal strangers checking their phones.
But when she glanced at the store window’s reflection, she froze.
Even without the glasses, she could still see one of them. A tall man in a bowler hat, standing right behind her.
