He groaned as he flung the coin towards the blackness. ‘To the right, like father told me.’ It hit the rim and a high-pitched ping echoed back as it began its run around the edge. He smiled.

‘A good toss. This might be the one to make it.’

What had he done differently? It wasn’t clear but the coin was rolling higher, without question. His mind itched to feel pride, but that seemed a foreign pleasure now and came with an aftertaste he wanted to avoid.

The coin’s speed picked up as it gained distance. The last tosses hadn’t gone this far and as it raced counterclockwise, he squinted, anxious. It was disappearing, but it always did when it reached the back. He could still hear it, though. A whistling pitch broken by the tiniest tings of a bump or a notch, something he’d missed on its edge, giving it a distinctive voice.

‘That might be the death of it.’

Had he not run his hands carefully enough across its smooth face to feel it? Was it an imperfection his skin was too rough and calloused to notice? He could taste dread rising in his thoughts. Dizziness approached. Then he heard the coin’s song again. It had continued on and was well past the noon point now. It was returning.

The congratulations started whispering in his ear again.

‘No. Stay the course.’

He strained his eyes, searching for it. Where was it now? Only a few had gotten this far but their pitch had been much lower. Then he saw it coming around the bend, past the ten o’clock, to the nine. It was still high on the black lip. Now a friend’s hand to another’s could take it up again. But his smile started to fade. It was starting to fall.

“Please, just a bit more!”

But as it rounded to eight, it would have taken the hands of two fathers to two sons to grab it. To seven, below the house he’d built and lower than its foundations. It came beneath him, to the six, and he gripped the narrow plank he sat upon and thought, ‘Might I beat it to the bottom?’

With the funnel’s maw swallowing his final hope, he peered after it, then let loose his grasp and fell into the hurricane of blackness wondering of the coin’s sound, ‘Had I ever really heard it?’