Tea for The Rest of The Time
Today the world is ending, power's still on though. I'm not sure what's happening, that is to say, I don't know why it's ending, or how.
I found out when I visited the local gas station in midtown. People were gathered about a tv broadcasting a news anchor trying to remain calm.
Overall, I figured out that the shit was hitting the fan, and we were all lucky enough to still have the privilege of a cup of coffee or tea before the looting began.
Time to get out of my head.
Everyone ran North. They looted big appliance stores, then food stores to the left, and there was a general din throughout the city which sounded like a bee hive.
Edmond had chosen his coffee, side-stepping from one gas-station cappuccino flavor to the next, he enjoyed a premium blend of flavors. This had been his routine for the past few years. Wake up, get to the gas station, catch the morning news, and get a big cup of overly-sugared gas-station-swill.
Though he had been raised on tea, coffee seemed more and more appropriate for the hectic times he lived in. Everyone was killing, dying, stealing, lying and that was before the world even began to end.
So everyone ran from whatever the terror was. While re ran with his coffee in tow, he overheard panicked women speculating over aliens or demons. The radio that someone took with them announced the more realistic possibilities of terrorism, meteorites, or dinosaurs.
Why all the panic over something so uncertain? Uncertainty certainly fuelled fear. What else fuelled fear was the approaching seismic footfalls to the south. An overcast sky was helping fill the tank too.
Like a heard of buffalo, hundreds of them corralled into a suddenly-appearing cavern, which was filled with the stench of bat droppings.
The giant uncertainty got closer. Edmond stood in the middle of the mess. The crowd was dispersed from wall to wall, a vibrating mass of frightened people. In his button-up blue shirt and mud-caked work slacks, he sipped his coffee. Sweat now beaded upon his upper lip from exertion.
A woman near to him looked his way, brow furrowed at the calmness that he maintained. He tilted his cup toward her after catching her eye, in greeting:
"Coffee sure is perfect for the end of the world."
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It was situations like these that I miss the times where everyone was calm enough to sit down to a cup of tea.
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