Morning, Joe
Twenty-something Joe stepped out of his townhouse
into the sun. Spokes of light bent their way around the few marshmallows in the
sky and brushed the skin of his face. A faint breeze kissed his lips. A few
townhouses down, a car alarm bleated. This was as typical a city morning as one
gets; in the city, there’s always a car alarm going off.
Joe and his neatly trimmed beard slipped under the
cover of his knit beanie. It was still Spring after all and the sun wasn’t
getting up so early that he was awake ahead of his morning coffee. Truth be
told, Joe was never awake ahead of his morning coffee, which is why he was
outside this morning to begin with. The young man’s day never really started
until that bitter black elixir slid down his throat. What is consciousness?
Coffee, if you ask Joe.
The millennial took a step off his porch and
stumbled as if he’d missed the step entirely. He grabbed the porch railing
before slipping down the stairs entirely. Was it a lack of coffee? As his brain
caught up to real time, Joe realized the earth had moved. Something had rapped
against his eardrum but the nearby car alarm had drowned out the sound. Had
there been an earthquake? A sudden volcano appearing downtown? Another thump
followed by a blunt crash set off another nearby car’s alarm. Could this be the
beginnings of an alien invasion? Joe would be ill equipped to deal with any of that
before some black sunshine.
As Joe stepped onto the city sidewalk, he noticed a
few other people looking around in confusion. An old woman across the street
chided her chihuahua for barking up a storm, probably triggered by what Joe
assumed to be explosions. Whatever was going on, Siri would probably know. Joe
dug into his peacoat pocket to wrangle his phone. Another boom came, then another
closer boom, and Joe’s phone tumbled out of his hand and into some dog shit
someone neglected to police.
He knelt down and debated grabbing his phone with
his bare hands. He reached, then drew back, startled by the sound of a wave of
city dwellers rounding the end of the block. They were running from something, their
eyes intermittently thrown behind them to escape the inevitability that
followed them. Joe was right in their path.
The phone wasn’t that important right now. He could
always get a new one. What’s a grand on a phone even though you can barely pay
the rent? A barely-affordable artisan coffee every morning dulls those kinds of
blues. Joe stepped back onto the steps of his townhouse to avoid the rolling
sea of fear.
“What’s going on?” Joe yelled to no one in
particular as the mob raced by.
A disheveled man, not homeless, just uncaffeinated
rang out, “They’re blowing up all the coffee shops!”
“What?” Joe shook his head. It sounded like one of
those unimaginable things, like insurrectionists rioting in the U.S. Capitol.
“All the coffee shops are blowing up!” the broken
man threw his hands in the air. “Probably terrorism! Argh!” he finished as he
was swept away by the force of misery in company.
It took a few moments for the words to percolate.
“Terrorism? Coffee shops? How…how will the economy function?” Joe asked himself
rhetorically. After all, that was exactly the point. No coffee, no workee
the popular meme goes. Nobody will want to work, even less than usual after the
recent worldwide pandemic. Businesses will crash. More people will become
homeless. Damn, only the stock market is safe; that keeps rising no matter how
bad the news gets.
Joe looked in the direction he hadn’t heard any
explosions. Maybe the shop on Galveston, he thought. Boom. Joe cursed
himself for never asking his parents for a Keurig. But it’s just that making
your own coffee takes so long and you have to make sure you have all thirteen
ingredients. There was never much more in Joe’s kitchen besides a few cans of
PBR, a bag of quinoa, and some organic veggies.
Another explosion, off in the distance. The thought
of going out to the suburbs to find coffee had crossed Joe’s mind. Now he
crossed it off his list. He backpeddled up the stairs. His soul protested the
possibility of his routine grinding to a halt. How could he possibly press on?
Suicide was a solution, of course. Joe wasn’t trying
to take such a sensitive issue lightly but it did seem a more reasonable option
than living in a world without coffee. (He figured why would they stop with
just the cafes? They’re probably burning all the coffee bean trees, too. Damn
them, damn them to hell.) A world without coffee – the young man couldn’t help
but think how wrong everyone at work was until he’d finished that first cup. Could
he face coworkers that were wrong all day long?
Another throng of people rounded the corner,
panicking like wild animals, totally not realizing they were using up whatever
energy reserves they had. Your body can only remain in fight-or-flight mode so
long before coffee is required to sustain the fight against horrible bosses. Of
course they didn’t know what else to do, though, their brains weren’t really
awake yet.
Neither was Joe’s. Surely something could be done
about the situation. But what? The answer lie in caffeine but the caffeine was
gone. No doubt someone was making a run on energy drinks right now and that
might help in the short-term, at least until their adrenal glands died.
However, it is a fact that energy drinks are not that ethereal, dark,
bitter(sweet) liquid that is like a new lover in possession of that X-factor,
that undistinguishable thing you would die for but cannot explain what it is. What
to do then? What to do?
Joe’s neighbor, Tina – an Earl Grey swilling
throwback to that second, embarrassing Woodstock – stepped out onto her landing
next door. She pitched narrow eyes at the crowds running to-and-fro.
“What’s going on, Joe?”
He was about to explain when a forty-something man
wearing a tweed jacket ran up Tina’s steps and put a pistol in her face. “You
got coffee, lady?” he growled.
“Yes! Yes! I have a little bit..” Tina grimaced as
she pointed through her door. The man shot her in the chest and stepped one
foot inside her townhouse. He stopped and looked at Joe.
“You!” the murderer locked on. “You got any coffee
in there?”
“No! No coffee in here!” Joe answered. Tina’s
assailant shot Joe in the chest as well. Joe’s hand immediately clenched his
shirt.
You…asshole.
A lump formed in the young man’s throat, like the
one you get when you’re in love or are about to die, which often feel like the
same thing. Peeling his hand off the gunshot wound, the hipster observed the
crimson flow of his internal world. A cascade of life poured out of him.
Joe considered this. Coffee – so seemingly essential
for life – pales in comparison to human blood. What is caffeine next to red and
white blood cells, platelets, electrolytes, vitamins, minerals, fats, proteins,
sugars, and of course, water? Sure, coffee can raise your blood pressure, but
what if you’ve got no blood? Joe realized now that he never valued what really
made him tick. Why do people always ignore the fundamentals?
The question of suicide had been answered for him.
He had spent his life a squirrel, dodging the hard questions. In the universe,
though, the traffic is eventually bound to get you.
Joe’s vision blackened like a dark roast. His mug
runneth empty. He crumpled to the ground in a heap with nothing to pick him up.
…
*Author’s Note – I admit I pun-ted the finale to
this story. In my defense, this story was written completely caffeine-free.
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