Teri knew who the man was before he finished wiping his feet.
People usually came in the door wet, quick and grateful. Everybody wiped their feet. They didn’t stand on the mat and read it. WELCOME. The man came in slow, read it like a line on a form. That’s when she knew.
She’d worked another site, years back. Closed out. She knew the man’s coat was too clean for the Rust. A gray cuff and a dark green badge. Company man. Corporate green over government gray.
She greeted him with a smile.
“Come in and sit. There’s plenty.”
It was simple, but it was plenty. They made sure it was plenty.
A long table down the middle of the room, and a stew that had been simmering since noon. Mrs Sowande made bread. Lyndon was spinning his tale about the docks to a woman captive to the baby asleep in her arms. A couple squeezed into an armchair in the corner, smiling and holding hands.
A warm house in a dead spot, with the lamps on and a door that always stayed unlocked.
The man came in. Looked like he was counting the people and the room.
“Unlicensed provision,” he murmured into a small device in his hand. “Minors, possibly undocumented.” He looked over at Lyndon, and at the half-set table. “Food distribution without accounting.”
“Sit down,” Teri said. “You can log us while you eat some stew.”
The man raised his eyebrows, and sat. She set a bowl in front of him, and a spoon. He looked at the stew, but didn’t eat it. She pushed the basket of bread in his direction.
The overpass was a dead spot. No signal came in, went out. A person could come in and there’d be no ping to say where they’d been last.
“You know what I am,” said the man. Not a question. His voice was almost kind.
“I knew the moment you stepped inside.”
“But you fed me.”
“You looked hungry,” she said. “Besides, we feed everybody.”
The clock on the wall said 2.44.
“You’ll check in on the hour?” Teri asked.
The man nodded.
They cleaned sites that were off the map. A team, vans, and lines to sort people into. Mrs Sowande’s bread an unverified consumable. The couple not a legal household. The mother and baby checked against each other. A new lock, if they even let the house stand.
Teri had seen it before. At the last place they’d photographed every face. Registered anyone who wasn’t already. Thrown away the bread. By morning, nobody who’d lived there could get back in. Door sealed, welcome mat gone.
She sat down across from him. A kid under the table was pulling her skirt.
“You’re in from Chicago?”
He didn’t answer for a few seconds. His thumb working. Softly tapping a button on the side of the device, over and over. Then he nodded.
Teri reached across the table and took the hand with the device in it. The man’s sleeve pulled back as he extended his arm. An old burn on the inside of the wrist. A kid’s burn, healed bad, decades old.
“Chicago’s not where you started, though,” she said.
The man gave her a blank look.
“Maybe someone logged a place like this,” Teri said. “Maybe even for you.”
The man took his hand back. Pressed the button again.
Ten to three.
The kid under the table let go of her skirt. Teri got up.
“You know how to make us disappear,” she said. “One way or another.”
The man took a spoonful of stew and ate it. Then he put his hand in his coat. He stood. When he got to the door he wiped his feet again. Slowly. On his way out.
He looked down at the mat.
“Thanks for the stew,” he said.
She felt the damp of the outside for a moment when he opened the door. Then it closed behind him.
Somewhere past the overpass the signal would find him again.
Teri cleared the man’s bowl and put it in the sink to soak. She turned up the heater a notch.
Lyndon had started his story over again. But the woman with the baby was smiling.
Three o’clock.
Teri stood with her hand flat on the table. Listened for an engine that didn’t belong. She didn’t lock the door.
This story was my 2nd round entry for the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Challenge 2026. My genre, location, and object prompts were:
Thriller. Utopia. A doormat.
This story received an Honorable Mention in my group for that round of the contest
A story from the Static Drift universe.
Article Photo by Mateusz Feliksik on Unsplash.