All The Darkness You Need

Chapter 1: The Coffee Shop

Prologue

In Florida when people say on the coast they mean on the east coast. If they are speaking about the west coast, or God forbid the coast in the panhandle, they say the gulf coast or just the gulf. There are a few big cities: Miami, Orlando, Jacksonville, Tampa. These are big Florida cities, but not big cities as cities in general go. In the sunshine state there are also countless smaller cities and towns, many of which are on the coast. Melbourne Beach is on the coast. More specifically there is a smaller town on the coast called Indian Harbor Beach and in that town is where our tale began several years ago. It is a story about the choices we make and the results that occur in that quantum stream that exists thereafter.

In life there are many opportunities for helpful actions. And there are many opportunities for irresponsibility. Irresponsible action is what many would simply call freedom. But it is a freedom that comes with a responsible component. Once you choose to be free, you will be forever bound to the responsibilities of that freedom. Such freedom is the folly of youth and the memory of old age for those who somehow make it to that point. In Indian Harbor Beach, Florida there is a fenced off lot right on the beach that holds nothing more than a flat cracked foundation and the weeds that can abide such neglect. The wind blows across that empty lot and there are few now who remember what was there. It was once the home of a great diner.

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Just behind the boardwalk there was a diner called The Ocean View Diner and the menu was deliriously extensive and anything could be ordered at any time of day. The Ocean View Diner was open twenty-four hours a day. Spaghetti and Meatballs at nine a.m. Breakfast at dinner time. And Gyros to die for at the drop of a hat. It was the go-to place for cravings or hangovers or when you were headed to eat with a crew of people because there was something for any taste at any time and the place just rocked. The coffee was strong but not bitter and the people who worked there were friendly enough.

A sunrise on October thirty-first lifted above the offshore breeze and sent long smoky boardwalk shadows that tumbled over the wood railings like fallen curtains and held, in their gauze, patches of lingering dew that the orange streaks of early Sun had chased away in other spots. These variations of dew speckled wood and dry but still-damp timber angled and reached and held joints of rusted braces that cooperated to fashion the back deck of The Ocean View Diner on this freezing fifty-four degree Florida winter day.

On the deck at a light blue plastic table sat two young men in light blue plastic chairs and all the other customers viewed them from inside if they viewed them at all and the only other soul on the back deck was that of an intermittent waitress who made no ceremony about seating them with menus and saying, "Okay," over her shoulder when they asked for coffee and she ducked back inside through the swinging glass door.

Both men seemed to be in their mid-twenties and they pulled their denim jackets tight around their slight frames and their jeans were clean but stained from automotive grease in places. They both wore brown work boots laced up high like mountain climbers with the tops of the laces wrapped around the boot shoulders and one of the men stamped his feet against the cold air.

The glass door swung out and the slim waitress smiled and stepped through the open door with two thick white mugs of coffee in her hands. It looked as if the menus were in the same positions she had left them when she had seated the boys earlier. She looked at the two. Handsome. One buzzed blonde and one with long jet-black hair that swung to his shoulders. All jeans and boots and denim jackets wrapped close and leaning over and watching their breath as if the fog of it was a novelty and indeed in this coastal Florida town it was. She set the coffees down.