by A L Hart
Contents
Entry #1556
Part 1
Ch. 1
Ch. 2
Ch. 3
Ch. 4
Ch. 5
Entry #1535
Part 2
Ch. 6
Ch. 7
Ch. 8
Ch. 9
Ch. 10
Entry #1540
Part 3
Ch. 11
Ch. 12
Ch. 13
Ch. 14
Ch. 15
Entry #1543
Part IV
Ch. 16
Ch. 17
Ch. 18
Ch. 19
Ch. 20
Entry #1545
Part 5
Ch. 21
Ch. 22
Ch. 23
Ch. 24
Ch. 25
Entry #1547
Part 6
Ch. 26
Ch. 27
Ch. 28
Ch. 29
Ch. 30
Entry #1550
Part 7
Ch. 31
Ch. 32
Ch. 33
Ch. 34
Entry #1556
Book of Broken Creatures
Ch. 1
“You closing up by yourself again?” the beautiful woman at the bar asked.
I took the rag to the counter harder, scrubbing the cool granite of marble swirls until the coffee smear admitted defeat. Around me, the 1948’s All American Coffee House was officially closed for the night, the staff packed and somewhere en route to their homes to unwind and prepare to do it all over again tomorrow, while, yes, I closed up by myself. Again.
My gaze flicked briefly to the aforementioned beautiful woman in front of me who now nursed her protein shake at 8 pm in the night. I had two options here, and that was either to pretend Natalie hadn’t said a word to me, thus evoking her to say more words to me, or I mustered up a reply, thus evoking her to say more words and start up the same tired discussion that left me wishing someday I followed through on my threat of a restraining order.
“Oh please, Peter. Nothing can restrain me, especially not some flimsy, court ordered piece of paper. Have you seen my biceps?”
Countless times. In action. Generally when she dragged me out to the club on Friday nights where poor, unfortunate souls got it in their heads to grope a woman who, beneath all of those flashy designer clothes and heavy eyeliner, was someone with a background in everything from krav maga to some strange affinity for hardcore wrestling.
“I said nothing about a restraining order,” I murmured, moving to wipe the east wing counter.
“Yeah, but you were thinking it.”
And beyond her Scotty 2 Hotty spirit, the woman practically read minds. Not a bad quality to have. It was likely the only reason she was my last standing acquaintance—
“Friend,” she corrected.
—Because it was exhausting wearing a mask everyday for the public, and with her there was no point in trying. No point in stretching my lips into a smile just to make it through another sunrise. Or boxing up the past pains, wrapping it in feigned indifference, then topping it with a bow of icy regard before gifting it to the sweet place known as Yesterday’s Hardship; Today I’m Fine.
Except, today I was fine. It’s been five years since I lost them. According to some book I got on bargain titled ‘The Five Stages of Grief’, I’d graduated from the misery. Passed the threshold of mourning. You were now looking at a man with a Bachelors of Grief Survivorship. I was officially stable enough to be wedged back into the magnificent, self-cannibalistic mill of society. At least, that was what Mitchell Steele, Doctorate of Psychology from Yale University said in one of his online seminars. What more could I ask for?
Seriously, what? Because this woman wasn’t going to let me rest until I figured out the answer to that question.
I had my father’s old coffee house going for me. Situated on a corner lot in the small town of Wamego, Kansas, it was admittedly a nifty shop, described with your run-of-the-mill adverb: character. Ask someone what they thought of it, and after a hesitant pause, they were bound to go, ‘Well, it certainly has . . . character.’ Five years ago, it’d been hanging on its last nail, teetering the edge of foreclosure as my dad fought tooth and nail to save it by applying his same old rudimentary financing means. He’d been unwilling to adapt to the reality of the situation: today’s generation didn’t want to come into a place that only served four options of coffee and played music strictly from the 1900’s.
But I’d saved it. I’d changed it in ways Dad had been reluctant to. Starting with scrapping the constant loop of 90’s hits and swapping it for Spotify’s Top 50. Couple that with a little furniture change and interior remodeling and the place had been revived.
But the fun facts didn’t stop there. I also had my mother’s old books which I sometimes read in the morning, and my sister’s old journals, which at night I continued to write in from where she’d left off.
By those standards, I had plenty.
And yet—
“You don’t have them,” Natalie finished, taking a swig from her shake.
Scowling, I started on changing up the coffee machines’ filters. “At least buy a coffee if you’re going to be here sucking up AC after hours.”
“Caffeine causes lack of sleep, and by extension, wrinkles, but that’s beside the point. Peter, you know you can’t keep going like this. You have to get out more. And I don’t mean sulking in the corner of a club until patrons think you’re some serial killer fishing for victims like last time. I mean outside. Heard of it? It’s that open concept space you encounter when you actually leave this glum-dumb shop of yours.”
“I get out when I have time to.”
“Which translates to never because you’re always working instead of just hiring more staff as needed.”
“The place is never busy enough to warrant paying another hand.”
She gave a pointed look around the shop.
The crystal light fixtures in the ceiling rafters were dimmed and trickling down over the scene sparsely, leaving more dark than light in the eight o'clock nighttime. The coffee barrels sat in the corners with their lids off. The dining tables and bar area mocked me with their used plates and emptied coffee mugs. The sweets station needed to be refilled and the floors had yet to be mopped. “Fine, yes, it was a little busy today, but I don't mind closing alone.”
To be exact, I preferred being alone in everything.
“You know what you need?” she began. “You need to stop being alone in everything. It's sad, not to mention absurdly pathetic. What're you now, 55?”
“Twenty-six.”
“Those gray hairs say otherwise. Either way, you're old and shriveling. You need to get back onto the dating scene. Smile a little more so you can find yourself a girlfriend before it's too late and you actually are an old man.” Her look sharpened. “You know the options single old men have: they’re either destined to be a creepy loner or a wrinkly sugar daddy. Is that what you want, Peter? Do you want to grow to be a wrinkly sugar daddy?”
“It’s been my dream since I was a wee lad,” I remarked drily.
She sipped her protein shake and watched me over the carton, unamused. Her thoughts, swirling a thousand miles per minute, could be felt. When I did nothing more than stare back at her, she sighed. “Come on, tell me, how’re you really doing? I do worry about you, you know? I know you don’t like hearing it, but seriously, look around you.” Protest rest at the surface of my lips, quickly put to an end by her forceful, “Just l
ook.”
I did.
Ice cubes floated lazily in the sweating glass of a long-gone customer’s maroon, herbal drink. The vintage, vitric glass, angled as it was, cast an ethereal glow atop the counter, congested with shadows and vaguely removed from the bright atmosphere that the 1948’s Coffee House had always drowsily possessed. The nearest windows were several feet tall and far out of reach, slivers of the moon’s lustrous illumination touching the two of us in threads. This small city never did get a lot of road traffic, and even when it did, the sound was diminished by the bar’s near rural location. Above, I’d left the speakers going, Willie Nelson’s Buddy playing dolefully.
It was all irrefutably, sympathetically, lonely.
I set my lips and moved to the other end of the counter to wipe it down, only to remember I’d already done so. “I’m fine,” I said, scrubbing the rag over the surface anyway.
Natalie said nothing.
“I’m fine,” I ground again.
“I heard you. Except that you’re not.”
Her knowing tone, ascertained eyes, they peeled through my denial, peering at the truth as though I hadn’t hidden it at all.
I scrubbed harder. There was nothing to say here. There was never anything to say. Not anymore.
“You keep going like this, you really will wear yourself down. I’ll say it again, you need to get out more. Occupy yourself with something new. Maybe get a dog or a cat. Do something—anything other than this mindless business you have going here. Peter, you need to . . .”
I discarded the rag in the bin below the cash register and turned a look on her. “Need to what, hm?”
Her lips pursed, but only for a moment. “You need to grieve properly so you can move on.”
“I grieved plenty.” Should really get my Certificate of Grief framed. Just for her.
“I’d bet a stranger’s soul you haven’t shed a tear.”
And she’d win that bet.
“I mean, I get it. You’re Mr. Tough Man, intent on running your father’s business because you feel guilty, like you owe it to him. But fact concludes the debate: you lost a part of yourself when that accident happened, and this—running yourself ragged—won’t change that. I won’t pretend to know how it feels to lose both my parents and a sister, but I’ve had my share of loss. Crap hurts. And it’s easy to get drowned in yourself. But I couldn’t live with myself if I just sat back and watched you choke.”
“Then look away. Isn’t Camille waiting for you?”
“She’s at work, but nice try on the subject change. I’m only saying—”
“I know what you’re saying and I’m asking you to leave it alone, because you’re right, you don’t know how it feels.” Why did everyone insist on dredging up emotions? My family’s death was over five years in the past, and though Natalie might not have thought so, I was in fact moving on. Had moved on, I thought as I started on removing the last machine filter. Life happened and you moved on, as fast as you could, because the moment you stopped was the moment you lost.
As I held the coffee-caked, far-from-vintage funnel in my hand for cleaning, in my peripheral, I barely caught as Natalie placed down her shake in capitulation.
“Sure,” she said, “But don’t forget, Elizabeth may have been your sister, but she was my best friend. I only hang out with you because someone’s gotta make sure you don’t go all hermit for life. Or kick the bucket from a ceiling fan—not that it’d support your goliath weight.”
Why was this woman so persistent? I bore in a glare, notching my head to the door. “Order something or leave.”
A dismissive hand waved. “You’re closed for the night, your cash register is locked. Try another tactic.”
My nonresponse drew out a sigh from her as she hopped to her feet, downed the remainder of her drink, and closed in on me from the other side of the bar. She was an exuberant disciple of good intentions as she stopped dead in front me and smacked a red fingertipped hand on my shoulder. “I’ll stop by tomorrow afternoon, drop off a few things and maybe convince you to come with Camille and I. We’re going to see a play.”
What on earth about me said I would be interested in something like that?
“Don’t give me that face until you see it.”
No wasn’t an option when it came to her, so all I ever really had left were my expressions of ire. I had no interest in going to see a play, or leaving the shop at all for that matter. I would be a third wheel. That poor guy who couldn’t get his life together, instead relying on two effervescent women to do it for him.
I scraped the wet coffee grounds into the trash bin.
Did I have a choice in the matter? Was I going to risk losing the last person who bothered to stick around? At our cores, no one ever truly craved solitude, did they? I sighed. “I’ll think about it.”
She brightened in an instant, because in her book, that was a yes.
But before she could go on an entirely different tangent, I pointed to the shop’s door. “Out.”
This time, she complied. She grabbed up her purse and left what she considered a pity tip on the counter, before offering me tonight’s words of wisdom. “You may have gotten rid of me this time, but remember, Peter: smile. You don’t wanna be a wrinkly sugar daddy.”
She was gone before I could threaten to file a restraining order.
*****
It was half past twelve when I collapsed back atop the springy mattress, fatigue woven into my finally unfurled spine. Up above the coffeeshop, this was the place I retired to every night after closing up. The place Natalie routinely berated. Understandably. The floors held tightly to their visceral shadows of the night, drapes always closed. A lone desk lamp sat across the room between the wall of chipped and worn bookcases sprawling east and west. The gloomy yellow bulb flickered ever so often, begging to be changed, oblivious of just how tight of a budget I was maintaining. Such a tight budget, that my breakfast, lunch, and dinner had been one bowl of tomato soup which sat untouched on the nightstand, made exciting by a lonely slice of wheat bread on the platter beside it.
I was no ouroboro; I never ate my shop’s produce, and that often resulted in canned soup or other quick access foods. I wasn’t complaining. Natalie did that enough for me.
Across the room, the light flickered. Change me.
No.
I rolled onto my side and stared aimlessly at the bookshelves. And then I was staring at the desk. And then the upright picture frame I was sure I’d turned downright. The photo sat between my work laptop and the periodically spazzing lamp. Strokes of the dim effulgence bore onto the four faces that were Dad, Ma, Elizabeth and me. 2011, Six Flags. Elizabeth had been so excited to go, as if she were still that sixteen year old girl with a taste for a rush.
Why hadn’t I smiled back then? Why hadn’t I pretended that standing in line to ride the Superman was the thrill of my lifetime?
Flicker. Flicker.
I closed my eyes, but opened them when I saw the glaring, enlarging headlights of the semi truck.
Flicker.
Sucking in a deep breath, accepting that peace of mind was unattainable at the hour, I rose to my feet and closed the distance to the desk. I turned the photo on its face first, then looked to the bookshelf nearest. It had belonged to Ma. This coffeehouse had been the origin of my parents. She’d loved to read an assortment of things with no one preference. But more than that, she’d loved to have a nice, steaming mug of coffee to get her through the expedition. Where better to read and enjoy a cup of coffee than the one place that was always peaceful and mellow? She’d come into this shop so many times, that the owner, Dad, had eventually given her a free pass. And eventually his heart. Then he’d given her Elizabeth, and finally, me.
It was romantic. The type of thing that really did only happen in books.
From the tall, full shelf, I pulled down a hefty binding whose publication couldn’t have been any later than the 50’s. I was steadily making my way through all of the books Ma ha
d once held dear, hoping to someday have read them all. If only I weren’t an exceptionally slow reader, or an even busier man. Still, progress was progress.
Rolling my shoulders, I moved to sit and dive into what looked to be an encyclopedia of mythological creatures, only to stop when the lamplight flickered with a fuzzing current, reminding me of its flaws.
It flickered—
And then it finally went out.
I stood there in the darkened room, staring through the dancing blotches of afterlight in my peripheral. I didn’t have any new bulbs. Not for upstairs. There were those downstairs in the supply closet, but those were strictly for the shop.
Another infallible sigh. A trip to the store tomorrow then, and in the meantime, I could borrow one from the shop. The way all bad habits started. But I wouldn’t sit in the dark with nothing to do. It was the perfect trap to lure me into self-reflection, an ideal setting for thinking when all I wanted was to read until I passed out in exhaustion.
Standing, I went out into the hall, the steps leading down to the main floor of the parlor just paces to my right. I’d walked these floors for years too many, so that navigating through the blackness came with no trial or effort. In fact, I knew virtually everything there was to know about this characteristic—there was that word again—old girl. From the lay of its insides down to the sounds it made at night.
The sound of a thump from below brought me up short.
That was not one of the sounds the weary shop made.
My first pessimistic thought as I stood there: rats. Large, ovate rats filling their rodent bellies with my merchandise.
But that was impossible. I’d exterminated the place just three weeks ago and had a clean bill on the shop’s inspection. I always passed inspections, because just like the monthly imported products from Berlin, there was never any skimping when it came to quality. That was bad business, and that was the one thing I wouldn’t falter in.
But if not rats, then what?
Beside me, I flicked on the lightswitch I seldom—if ever—used.
Nothing happened.
Were all of the lights out? I’d for sure paid the whopping energy bill, and had even opted to prepay next month’s. There was no storm either, especially at the end of summer in the suburban edge of Wamego.
