Apocalypse Coffee
Coffee at the end of the
world & top of the mall
Items:
Mocha Frap…………8.49
* Xtra Moch…..0.10
* No Frap……..0.00
* Heavy Cr……0.00
* Choc Driz…...0.10
* ChocChip…...0.10
* CC Crumb…..0.10
* Xtra Whip…...0.10
* Size: Suli……7.99
* *Stir Real
* *Good Like
* *Tiktok
Green Tea Shaker…..5.99
* Lite Sugar…...0.00
* No Aloe……...0.00
* Size: Lili……..5.99
* *Side Water…0.00
Subtotal: 14.48
Tip: 0.00
Total: 15.93
Card: XXXXXXXXXXXX-
XX1F95
Pin: Accepted
Daily Wisdom:
Most dolphins probably h-
ate you. It’s not personal.
Thanks! Have a Great Day
----------------------------------------
Draygon Wynters handed the cold water and cold, frothy green drink to Zoe Butler, who gave him a warm feeling inside whenever he made eye contact with her, then took his own cold brown and white sugar monstrosity. She liked cold drinks, that was something he also liked about her. Truthfully, this wasn’t the first or only girl that gave Draygon that feeling, as his friend Pancho “Flips” Guerrera, who taught him how to ride mountain trails, still called him “Symp Wynters”. But Draygon could feel that this was different, this was… she was special, he knew it.
“Pog.” Zoe said under her breath and a grin split Draygon’s face.
“POG!” He repeated, screaming it to the heavens. That was the fun of the outdoor mall. He could be himself and not get chased out by security - most of the time. He glanced at Zoe, who winced at the noise but smiled at the chorus of chants his group of friends took up at once.
Pancho, of course, but also his homie Trisha “Billie” Billingson and her boyfriend, Quentin “Q” Phillips plus a few homies of theirs Draygon’d met a few hours before and become instant besties with. It started as a double date, but they’d run into some friends and they met friends, some split off, some rejoined - how it always goes. Those that stuck around under the awnings on the top floor were the few that thought ahead and brought thick jackets for the outdoor mall in the predictably rainy Pacific Northwest.
The chants died down as Q, who’d once given Draygon a ride home despite living on the other side of town, sneezed and Billie, who’d hidden weed for Draygon for years because her parents didn’t care, thumped him on the back.
“Damn, dude”, Q sniffled, “this stank got me cooked.”
“Allergies?” Billie asked sympathetically.
“In December?” Zoe asked, her tone more curious than doubtful. She was so nice, not constantly out to dogpile each other like Draygon and his cliche.
“Yeah, Trisha,” drawled Gregory “Greg”, Jackson, “Allergies in December? In this rain? You absolute fool!”
Jeers rose and fell, Zoe looking slightly alarmed at what she’d accidentally caused, but Billie took it in good fun. She gave Greg, who’d never gone in for what he’d called the “stupid fucking baby-gangster nicknames”, a double middle finger salute and went back to consoling Q. He gave her a cheery finger in return and went back to his black coffee and judgemental silence.
Draygon took a sniff of the air himself and nodded, “No, Q’s got a point, it smells funny.”
“You smell funny.” Flip snipped and a laugh rolled through the group like thunder. Draygon laughed loudest, and stole a glance at Zoe to make sure she didn’t think, not seriously, that he smelled funny. He’d been jumping around a lot all day…
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
He would die.
His momentary panic was interrupted as the elevator behind them opened and a grumpy looking lady spilled out onto the floor in a flurry of words he’d only heard his friends say in public.
“You good?” Greg called, glancing back and forth between the woman and the group at large. She responded something weak about a big spider inside and Draygon quickly recognized an opportunity. Save the spider, and in so doing, save the lady from her cringe display and more importantly… save his image in front of Zoe, who helped ducks cross the street before getting on the bus once last spring.
“Oh, say no more fam!” Draygon announced and pushed off of the table, almost eating shit before recovering and leading the charge to the elevator. The rest of the group, those that had their drinks at least, followed eagerly behind to see what he could possibly be up to and if they could squeeze a little entertainment out of it.
The spider in the elevator was, in fact, rather massive, and it took Draygon a few seconds to decide if his first plan, simply grabbing it in a cupped palm, was the best one. Still, with a dozen eyes on his back - with ZOE’s eyes on his back, he couldn’t just do nothing.
“Stand back!” he announced and the group let out a little ooh, then a cheer as the flipped whipped mocha cookie monster went splashing across the cement like a mudslide, leaving froth flotsam and brownie slag behind the wave. He ushered the spider into the cup still dripping with mocha chips and sugar, and strutted past Zoe, who held out an empty water cup slightly dumbfoundedly.
What was her expression? Annoyance? Did she hate him for not using the cup she offered?
Panic sent chills down Draygon’s spine as he pelted down the stairs, keeping an eye on the arachnid that had become mired in sauce at the bottom of the cup.
“We’re bringing it back to nature, we’re bringing it back to nature!” he sang, “we’re bringing it back to nature, it’s going back where it’s from!”
It was a song his sister Shan, who’d shown him how to throw a punch, always sang when she helped moths out of their porch. It was a song his friends, Q, Billie, Zoe, even Greg chanted as the wound around the north stairwell and poured out east, jumping the chest-high wall that surrounded the customer parking lot and jaywalking to the small forest that separated this mall from the megachurch up the hill.
“FREEDOM!” Draygon screamed and hucked the spider, cup and all, into the forest. He turned back to his friends and raised a fist in the sky.
Q sneezed.
Light filled the sky. Brilliant, effervescent undulations of pinks and greens and colours indescribable to the human brain. They twisted and screamed across the strip of sky visible between trees blown back by the sudden winds. The world hesitated for a moment, reconsidering reality in the brief sliver of a second that reached beyond comprehension.
Suddenly, they were standing in the parking lot of a small apartment complex. The plastic cold coffee cup bounced along the pavement a few yards away and rolled under a parked car.
“What?” Greg asked flatly.
Draygon looked around, wondering where they were. A street sign told them 8th, which should have been correct, but there was never any apartments here, just some trees and a gas station across the street. The gas station was gone too, replaced by an oddly angled access to a nice neighborhood.
“Look,” Zoe said breathlessly, “Church Center’s gone.”
First, all Draygon could notice was how she clung to his arm. Zoe, who once asked for his number before he knew he’d even liked her, pointed to a weathered parking lot where a tiny church, same name and denomination, but tiny and empty, sat in its place. It was this seemilngly unrelated discrepancy above all that sent chills up his spine to whisper terror into his young mind. His hands closed around Zoe’s and for a moment, they supported each other in the face of an unstable reality.
Draygon’s gaze turned back down the hill, where a crowd of people were starting to pick their way out of the woods. They stepped over the metal barrier between a steep wooded valley and a quickly moving road, scrambling for the open parking lot of the apartments, each appearing as confused as the teens.
“The mall’s gone.” Billie observed. For once, the brassy voice that always got them in trouble when they “whispered” in class, was hushed in awe.
“No way!” Q began to gibber, “No way, no how, now way, no how.”
But it was, truly and completely, gone. Not just gone as if destroyed, but replaced as though it had never been. Draygon stumbled down the hillside, even the sidewalk on this side of the road having been un-developed and removed from existence.
Sure enough, the mall was gone. He was jostled to the side, further and further, as people, customers and classmates and homies he’d hung out with earlier that day all made their way up the valley and out of the woods. Draygon could see a few on the other side of the valley, climbing fences into people’s backyards and navigating to the small sidestreet beyond.
Surely, though, it had been there before. The mall HAD been real, right? They were all there for some reason, right? It had been there! There were the people, his cup, his - he pulled the receipt out of his pocket, unfolding it furiously to read and reread it - yes, his order, his card number, everything.
So where did it go?
Draygon’s heart slammed in his ears, his limbs cold and shaking.
“Dray, I…” Draygon startled, realizing Zoe, who was just as lost as he, still held his arm. Her eyes were watering, searching the forest for some sense in the situation.
He pulled her into a tight hug.
Not a simp hug, not the hug of a confident bro looking to finally get laid. The hug of a confused, scared teenager looking for comfort in another. He didn’t understand what had just happened, but he knew he had just bore witness, in the rain and the burn of ozone still lingering in the air, to something otherworldly and wrong.