It's been the end of the world for about a hundred years now, give or take. A magical apocalypse something or other, and nothing is the way you and I remember it.
Except for a Starbucks. There's always a Starbucks, even when there's no world to adv...
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Song: Hunter — Ken Ashcorp
"My heart can't take much more, constantly repeating every single beat I've felt before."
I made the old man his latte, and he wouldn't let go of my hand. Melissa smiled from across the cafe in sympathy, but she had a line of customers out the door. I stared—anything to avoid his eyes. The incongruence of the scene would be striking if I hadn't seen it every day. Imagine oil-polished bookshelves, plush velvet couches, and soft ambient jazz sprinkled (haha) over recorded rain. And then imagine the customers: most were in their underwear and hid their faces. Spiked helmets, bandage wraps, studded eye patches. The skin visible was blood-cracked and peeling, and the air reeked of sweat. Of rotting meat.
It's hard to find a place to take a shower in the apocalypse.
The man cleared his throat, and I bit back a sigh. I couldn't avoid him for long. His yellow eyes skittered across my face, pulling me back into conversation. His voice sounded like a knife being scraped along the inside of a plate. "You're a lovely little thing."
"Aw, thanks." I didn't feel very lovely at the moment. I couldn't stop staring at the dirt crusted under his fingernails as he rubbed his thumb along my knuckles. I will gauge your eyes out with a spoon. I will kick your ribs to splinters.
I hadn't fought anyone. Not yet, anyway. But they were nice thoughts.
He was still staring at me. He was wearing a black hood, which did give me 'evil' vibes. But evil people liked me. Were drawn to me, even. Maybe because the women who worked at the Starbucks didn't take shit, and I did. These women had found their way to Starbucks and had scavenged and killed their whole lives before it. I'd lived here for as long as I could remember, among the rich coffee smell, gentle jazz, and lovely books. I couldn't have even told the man his mouth smelled like onions. It would've made me feel bad.
"Um," I added after the chasm of silence. "That's very nice of you."
He sipped his latte with a free hand, winced, set it down, and then slipped that same hand into the neck of his tunic. "Has this place ever been robbed?"
"Nope!" I popped the 'p'. I had a script to lean into. Thank God. "You're perfectly safe here, sir. The co-owners have a strong magical bond with the Goddess. If anyone were to try to harm us, she would smite them to ash."
I had seen it. Multiple times. I'd swept up the dusty residue and put my cat on my lap afterward to forget it. I'd had nightmares at first, and then, it was just my life.
"The Goddess." He nodded. His hand in his shirt became a fist. "A woman's deity."
"Well, yeah."
"And you're a young man."
"Well, yeah." I tried to snake my hand out of his, but he clenched it. I bit back a startled yelp. Melissa had long stopped looking at me; I wasn't at the counter. I'd taken pity on the old man, draped wheezing against a plastic chair, and had brought the latte to him. "Um. I pray to Her, too, though."
