The house was old, odd, and off-kilter. Loose shutters rattled in the breeze, and a low hum emanated from behind one of many windows. Spurred on by the cold wind, Laila bustled up the cobbled walk, through the iron gate, and up the front steps. For a moment, she stood just outside the door, numb from the cold and shivering slightly. The house’s crooked spires jutted up above her, obstructing what little sunlight the day had to offer. A large brass knocker, shaped like a raven, stared blankly at her from the center of the heavy wooden door. Suddenly, as if by its own accord, Laila found the door had swung open, revealing a long, dark hallway within. She stepped back in surprise and hesitated for a bit before calling out softly, “Hello? Is anybody here?”
For a long time, Laila stood in the doorway, debating with herself on whether or not to enter the dark house. There didn’t seem to be anyone inside, and her mother had told her never to invite herself in anywhere. This whole ordeal had begun to feel slightly wrong. Maybe she had mistaken the day. Maybe she’d imagined the note. Maybe this whole endeavor was an elaborate dream. Laila began to back down the steps again, ready to rush home and write to Mr. Dense to clarify their appointment. However, just as she reached the bottom step, Laila paused.
“Hey!” she heard someone yell from within the rickety mansion. “Where are you going? You’ve only just arrived!”
At this, Laila jumped. Skittering back up the steps, she drew her bag closer and entered the house. It was musty inside, with a slight, cool draft that carried an odd smell of rust and wet dirt. Moth-eaten carpet ran the length of the hallway, which was lit by dozens of small candles, hanging from brackets in the walls.
“Hello?” Laila called again. Her voice echoed through the hallway, bouncing off the heavy wooden walls, disappearing around dim corners and behind clunky pieces of furniture that littered the sides of the corridor. Laila stood stock still, waiting for some kind of response. Then, she heard the voice again.
“Hello, hello, d-d-dear,” the man said. His voice tumbled out in fits and starts, like the last vestiges of gas sputtering out from an old exhaust pipe. Walking a bit farther, Laila found a large oak door, cracked open, at the end of the hallway.
“In here!” the man shouted. With that, Laila pushed the door hard and entered the chamber. Inside was the strangest room she had ever seen. Books spilled off shelves and onto the floor. Papers wafted through the air atop the slight breeze, drifting between piles of strange objects and stacks of even more books. At the far end of the room was a wall of windows in front of which sat a bizarre machine. It resembled an old fashioned printing press, but there were numerous extra elements, stuck on at odd angles, all of which Laila was positive were not found on normal printing presses. At the top was a small glass orb, containing two dice, which rolled over and over again. Beneath this was bulk of the machine, which spun out sheet after sheet of paper, adorned with strange numbers and symbols. Laila supposed this is where all the floating papers had come from. Attached to either side of the machine were small mechanical arms, which flipped coins every so often. In her temporary entrancement with this strange device, Laila had completely forgotten about the man she was supposed to be meeting. He, however, had not forgotten her at all. He stood up from beneath the machine, hitting his head in the process, and stood to face her.
“Good t-to meet you at last, Ms. Amos. Mr. Quincy Dense, at your service.”
“Well- hello,” she said finally. It took her eyes some time to adjust to the man’s odd appearance. His brown suit was splattered with strange stains, and he was wearing two different socks. His tie was bright orange, and a tuft of bright-white hair sat atop his head like tumbleweed. He wore thick black glasses and a large gold watch, which, instead of numbers, was adorned with images of tiny dice, each rolling in its place.
“I came to talk with you about the letter you wrote me. Do you remember?” Laila finished. Mr. Quincy Dense did not seem to be the sort of person to remember anything, let alone the short letter he had written her a month before. It had read:
“Laila: please do me the honor of providing your company at my place of residence, at the hour of three forty-one, on the afternoon of October 17th.”
Laila remembered receiving it, being shocked at the bluntness of a man she had only ever heard of before.
The feeling of wrongness she had experienced upon arrival to this strange house had only intensified since. Here she was, looking up at a man she had never met before, who wore a tangerine tie and a watch with dice on it. A man who, supposedly, had written her a mysterious letter, unprovoked, a month before. Laila decided to put this feeling aside as the man continued.
“Of course I remember!” he shouted, almost reading her mind. “Th-that was only the most important letter I have ever written. I should hope I remember it!” He glared down at her, obviously offended that she would assume he would be forgetful. He was clearly unaware that his mad appearance and curious watch would make most people wary of trusting his memory.
“Oh,” Laila said softly, taken aback at the man’s sudden outburst. “In that case, what did you want me here for? I don’t think we’ve ever met before, have we?”
“No, no.” he said. “But I know you very well.” Laila stared blankly at him.
“You-you- know me, sir?” she asked.
“Well of course, I know you, dear. I’ve only been watching since your birth, you know,” he replied calmly.
“I didn’t, actually. Know.”
“Well, that’s hardly my f-f-fault then, is it? Now, come. We’ve simply got to get started.” With that, Mr. Quincy Dense turned back toward the machine and began to fiddle with a set of strange knobs on the side.
“Sir!” Laila half-yelled. “You still haven’t told me what I’m here for!”
“Oh of course, Ms. Amos. I do apologize. You are here to take my place. To continue the legacy. To maintain order and balance in the world!”
“With all due respect, sir, I still don’t understand,” Laila said quietly. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m t-t-talking, my blissfully ignorant protégé, about chance! Luck! C-c-co-in-ci-dence! For a long time now, I’ve m-managed all the accidents, f-fortuities, and lucky breaks of the world. However, as I’m sure you’re aware, I’m getting q-quite old. This is a demanding job, and f-f-frankly, dear, I’m tired. All this button pressing and calculating and p-p-printing is finally getting to me. And th-that, my dear, is where you, come in! You have been chosen by f-fate to f-follow in my f-f-footsteps! There is ever so much to teach you, but the main thing is to make sure the m-m-machine is always running smoothly. No matter WHAT, do NOT lose c-control of the machine. This is imperative! One world can only have so many coincidences, you know.”
Laila looked up, bewildered and slightly dizzy,  bursting with a thousand questions, but suddenly, the man was no longer beside her. Nor was he even in the room. Mr. Quincy Dense was gone. Bemused, but not entirely surprised (Mr. Quincy Dense seemed the type to leave a room unannounced- his odd appearance and strange speech had made her question his ability to be completely urbane), Laila stepped out of the room and into the dark hall beyond. She glanced into a few of the nearest rooms, including one that was completely empty, save for a small pink dollhouse, and another that contained only clocks, of all different shapes and sizes, but it seemed that the strange old man had simply disappeared.
Back in the room, the machine was still printing off pages and pages of the same peculiar symbols, but the dice had stopped rolling, and the coins had stopped flipping. Steadily, the papers began to shoot out of end of the device, faster and faster, until the room was a whirlwind of yellowish white. Sporadic clicks and whines punctuated the fluttering roar. Finally, Laila reentered the room and gasped, immediately encapsulated by the tornado of parchment.
Across the globe, deep under the ocean, buried beneath layers of dirt and rock, a tiny tremor echoed out, spreading across the ocean floor until it landed beneath a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific ocean. By this point, the tremor had grown to a roar, a tremendous rumble that shook the tenuous foundation of Punto Rocoso. Suddenly, the tremor burst out of the ground, erupting in a momentous blast that severed the island into two perfect halves. This, of course, was exceedingly unlikely. A perfect coincidence.
Somewhere on the east coast of the United States, there was a dilapidated pediatric speech therapy office. At the time of the machine’s malfunction, a little boy, with wide, dark eyes stood staring at his mother, his doctor positioned behind him, looking down expectantly. Then, the boy began to speak in unbelievable clarity.
“Hi mom. Dr. McArthur is helping me talk better-” The woman in front of him clasped her hands to her mouth as her little boy’s words flowed out like warm water, smooth and clear for the first time in his life.
All over the world, spoons were dropped, touchdowns were caught, and tests were passed. Exes ran into each other in the strangest of places, and raises were offered that employees had no business to expect. Lightning struck in sixty four places at the the exact same time, and thirteen people won the lottery. Countless matches were made on dating websites, four people were arrested for a crime they had not committed, and car accidents occurred by the hundreds.
Laila was unaware of all of this. She only knew about what Mr. Quincy Dense had told her only minutes before. “No matter what, DO NOT lose control of the machine.” Imperative, he’d said. Too many coincidences. This was her job, now. And so it was. Laila batted away the papers that were beating her about the head and neck and carefully made her way towards the machine. The rebellious device was still spitting out papers a mile a minute, but the dice weren’t turning, and the coins weren’t flipping. Laila was at a loss. She’d definitely never tried to fix a chance-luck-coincidence machine, and neither had anyone she’d ever heard of, let alone spoken to (except Mr. Dense, who it now appeared was gone for good). How does one even begin to tinker with a printing press that has hands? Still, Quincy had said it was her job. He surely wouldn’t have appointed her if he’d suspected she was incapable. So, Laila crouched down, beneath the complex, metallic belly of the beast, and got to work.
Hours later, Laila was still crouching beneath the machine, sweaty and spotted with oil. Papers still shot out of the end of the printer, so many of them now that the floor looked dusted with newfallen snow, completely white save for the tiny bit of wood beneath the machine. Laila grimaced as she tried yet again to pry off the little brass plate on the contraption’s belly, this time with a rusty fork she had found on one of the bookshelves. All around her lay broken bits of metal, coathangers, ballpoint pens, and spatulas. Nothing had worked. The brass plate stayed firmly screwed into its place on the machine. She hadn’t even been able to find anything to tinker with, let alone gotten to actually doing the tinkering. She just needed to unscrew this plate. Finally, she stood up, careful not to bump her head on the metal side of the machine. Wading through the paper snow drifts, she found her way to the door and stepped outside.
It seemed like there had to be some kind of special wrench or screwdriver to pull off the plate. What she would do after she found such a thing and opened the machine, Laila didn’t know. One step at a time, she thought flatly. Then, she began to search the house. She opened drawers in old armoires and wandered through rooms that were filled with all sorts of odd things. When she entered the dollhouse room again and peered inside the miniature mansion’s windows, she saw that the dolls were moving jerkily, around and around, like pieces in a cuckoo clock. There was nothing that looked like it could be used to open the machine, though, so she shut the blinds quickly and returned outside. She searched for hours, peering into every nook and cranny. She emptied boxes, sifted through cabinets, and even looked under the fraying sofa in the living room, but still, no strange device, no little metal key. Finally, Laila stumbled upon the attic. Pulling a little black cord that descended from the ceiling in one of the many upstairs hallways, Laila found that a staircase stretched down, opening into a dark space above. Slowly, she climbed up, tiptoeing cautiously on the creaky wooden steps. The attic wasn’t as dark as she expected, lit as it was by little windows that littered the wooden ceiling. Sunlight sparkled in, catching the dust in plumes as it whorled to the ground. There wasn’t much in this room, a few chairs and clocks, a huge piano that sat, draped in canvas, in the back corner. But there, sitting in a little windowsill on the far side was a box. Sunlight gleamed off the dusty wood like it was a mirror. The box was small, no bigger than one that was meant for shoes, and it looked to be unadorned, with only a little brass clasp holding the lid to the bottom. Laila walked towards it slowly. She felt this box was important. When she got closer, she saw that there was writing on the top, etched in what seemed to be black permanent marker. It read “For Emergencies.” Laila paused. She supposed this was an emergency. She bent down to pick up the box and slowly lifted the lid. Inside was a small brass key, with a slim handle and no markings of any kind. The bottom was shaped like a small X, but other than that, the key appeared to be normal. Still, Laila felt that this was it. She took the key, set the box back on the windowsill, and headed back downstairs, towards the machine.
Back in the room, which still swirled with jettisoned sheets of snowy white, Laila paused, staring at the machine. Then, she stepped forward and ducked under once more. There was the little brass plate, screwed firmly to the underbelly of the strange contraption. Shaking slightly, Laila raised the key to the topmost screw. The X fit perfectly. She turned the key, which had begun to feel warm in her sweaty hand, and almost instantly, a click erupted from the inside of the machine. All at once, the plate popped off, landing with a thud on Laila’s belly. And there it was. The inside of the machine. All twisted wires and spinning gears and little prongs of metal. In the center of all the commotion sat a nondescript little placard. It was made of faded wood, and on it, Laila could just read the words “Quincy Dense,” scratched into the surface as if by a thumb tack. Not entirely sure why, Laila raised her thumb to the wood and rubbed hard at the name inscribed on it. Slowly, the words disappeared, fading into the board like it was made of sand, and her thumb was the ocean, wiping the name away. Then, there was a faint scratching. An L, and then an A, had appeared on the wood. After a while, her whole name could be read. Laila Amos. As if it had been there forever. She supposed there was no going back now.