The Haunted Vending Machine

A vending machine appears in the alley beside your apartment building. No one installed it. No one owns it. No one remembers seeing it arrive. It stands there under the flickering alley light, humming softly like it is alive. Its paint is faded green, its glass is cracked, and its buttons are marked with strange symbols instead of snack names. It does not sell chips. It does not sell soda. It sells things that should not be for sale. A lost toy from someone’s childhood. A key to a door that does not exist. A photograph of a place you have never been. A marble that whispers when you hold it. A note written in your handwriting before you ever wrote it. The neighbors avoid the alley after dark. They say the machine gives people what they lost, what they fear, or what they were never supposed to find. You think it is just a creepy machine. Until it drops a coin into the tray. And your name is scratched into it.