“The Button Collector”
In the quiet town of Pendlebrook, where nothing exciting ever seemed to happen, lived a man named Horace Thimble. Horace was in his late sixties, wore corduroy trousers year-round, and was known for one thing only—his obsession with collecting buttons. He had thousands of them, each labeled, categorized, and displayed in old tobacco tins stacked to the ceiling of his dusty little cottage.
The townsfolk found Horace odd but harmless. Children dared each other to knock on his door and run. Teenagers whispered that he talked to his buttons at night. Even the postman smirked when delivering yet another parcel of vintage fasteners.
But on one gray November morning, everything changed.
A storm rolled in—unnatural and sudden. It wasn’t just thunder and rain. It came with a deep, pulsing hum that rattled windowpanes and made people clutch their heads in pain. The sky split open above Pendlebrook, and from the chasm descended something the world had never seen: a tower made of black glass, humming with energy, landing right in the center of town square. From it poured creatures—silvery, faceless things that floated a few inches above the ground. They didn’t speak. They only scanned and recorded, their presence warping time and space, making clocks spin backward and dogs bark at their own reflections.
People fled. The army was called but couldn’t get near the town—the tower emitted a pulse that scrambled electronics and made compasses spin.
The town was on the verge of being written off.
And then Horace Thimble walked straight into the square with a rusty biscuit tin tucked under one arm.
You see, Horace wasn’t just collecting buttons out of hobby. For years, he’d been receiving strange messages through obscure collector’s forums and coded patterns sewn into vintage coats. He had long suspected something was coming. What no one knew was that his buttons weren’t just buttons. One of them—an ancient mother-of-pearl clasp from the 1600s—was a key.From it poured creatures—silvery, faceless things that floated a few inches above the ground. They didn’t speak. They only scanned and recorded, their presence warping time and space, making clocks spin backward and dogs bark at their own reflections.
People fled. The army was called but couldn’t get near the town—the tower emitted a pulse that scrambled electronics and made compasses spin.
The town was on the verge of being written off.
And then Horace Thimble walked straight into the square with a rusty biscuit tin tucked under one arm.
You see, Horace wasn’t just collecting buttons out of hobby. For years, he’d been receiving strange messages through obscure collector’s forums and coded patterns sewn into vintage coats. He had long suspected something was coming. What no one knew was that his buttons weren’t just buttons. One of them—an ancient mother-of-pearl clasp from the 1600s—was a key.
Goforit 