“…anyway…my aunt Millie had an extra finger on each hand and lost them both in separate chainsaw accidents…….hey! Are you even listening to me?” He tugged on my sleeve as he asked.
“What!?”
“MY AUNT MILLIE HAD AN EX…”
“Are you fucking kidding me right now!?” I yelled incredulously.
I couldn’t catch my breath. My brain was on the verge of crashing from trying to process all the information pouring in and this guy hasn’t even looked up.
Wait…that young couple three seats down. Was it that close? Jesus Christ. They were right there. Now… They were somewhere behind a concrete wall with a huge hole in it. What do I do? I can’t think….air!….brains need air to work. Breathe man! Breathe!!
I vacuumed air into my lungs like taking that first breath after being underwater for as long as you can hold your breath.
What I was looking at started to make some sense. A vehicle of some kind had crashed through the front window of the coffee shop.
The window, counter, stools and young couple who only seconds ago were seated at the counter, muffling cruel laughter by placing their hands over their mouths as they, not quietly enough, made fun of people in the shop. None of them had any affect on the vehicle’s velocity. I knew the make and model of the car instantly. It could have been my very first car’s twin. A car I had loved so much I cried a little when it died and my only option was to sell it to a scraper. It was an old, green Buick LaSabre. It was covered in rubble and roughly 3/4 of the way through the huge hole it had made in the concrete wall behind the counter. All I could see was the back end.
“I’m ok…I think. Yea I’m ok.” I took another deep breath “yup I’m just fine” I wasn’t but I was miraculously scratch-free.
“Are you ok?” I asked the comically oblivious man next to me. He violently jerked his head towards me to meet my gaze. For some reason he looked angry. Everyone reacts to traumatic events in their own way, I guess.
“Look man, I’m a pretty big deal around here, I don’t have to be here talking to you…I got tons of friends in this town.”
He’s Definitely angry and somehow, I’m the source of it but it still doesn’t seem like he’s noticed the car crash that just happened 10 feet from the pancake and syrup soup he left on his plate. Does this guy just have zero situational awareness? Could he be blind? He’s definitely not deaf. Was he joking? Am I on a fucking prank show? I got out as many words as I could before he cut me off
“Did you not just see or hea….!”
“Is standing up, turning your back and then yelling at people the polite way to end a conversation back on your home world!?” He barked
I had known this lunatic for about 15 minutes. He was a large man, vertically and horizontally. How he squeezed between the stool and counter is a question better left to physicists to explain. He was around 6’7, well over 300 lbs, maybe 400. He was bald on top with a greasy black hair around the back of his head that cascaded down his ample neck fat. He was wearing a Bob’s Burgers T-shirt That was way too small for him. That shirt was the ignition source of this fiery conversation. I said I liked his shirt because I love that show, I am now wishing I had never seen it.
“I’m out of here, I…..don’t fucking need this!”
His words seemed slightly impeded by the visible tears in his eyes he was holding back. Was he in shock? He stood up, pulled out his wallet and threw a few bills on the counter to pay for his meal and then a few more on the counter in front of where I was sitting, I assumed, to pay for mine.
“Better man!” he proclaimed proudly, pointing both of his thumbs towards himself. He turned and walked towards the door with all the grace and agility of a bowling ball and left.
My mouth was wide open and my face was contorted into an almost painful look of disbelief. I kept my eyes on him so if he decided to come back, I’d have some time to start running. He was big but I was fairly certain I could outrun him.
The big guy made it to his car, an old, green Buick LeSabre. What are the odds? Nowhere near impossible but unlikely enough that the more imaginative parts of my brain were trying to assign some sort of deep meaning to this somewhat unlikely coincidence. I hope he’s ok, I hope he makes it home.
I saw it out of the corner of my eye first, one of those things that your brain immediately knows isn’t right and will turn out to be something totally different once you give it full focus. I turned my head but it was the exact thing I thought I’d seen…I froze
It made no sense…that car it…what the hell is happening? The coffee shop was now in the exact condition it was in when I first walked through the door. The customers were eating and laughing like nothing happened. The counter and wall behind it were both completely intact. Did I imagine it all? Am I losing my mind?
I suddenly realized how crazy I looked. As still as water in a glass, standing in the middle of a crowded coffee shop, staring, slack-jawed at the counter like it was a magic counter that could be smashed into pieces and then heal itself.
I’ve got to get out of here, I need to see many doctors immediately. I started towards the door.
“Yup…that’s perfect” I said to myself out loud. The green LeSabre was back. He may have come to back to apologize but I sincerely doubted it. It didn’t matter, I needed strong psychiatric medication and for this place to become a confusing memory I could come to terms with later, most likely in a place with soft walls. I pulled my hood up over my head, covering as much of my face as possible, dropped my head and broke into a sprint-walk that would only seem casual in a meth house. I pushed the door open, turned left and headed down the sidewalk towards my car. So far so good. I pulled my keys from my pocket and unlocked my car’s doors with the fob. I had my hand on the door handle when I heard it.
Laughter, evil laughter. Judgement filled snickering dripping with teen angst. The type of laughter that can only come from humor at the expense of others.
Turning around was the last thing I wanted to do right now but I don’t think I really had the option not to, I had to see. I turned my head slightly…The split second it took to turn my head towards the laughter in the corner of felt like an eternity, during which, the last hope I had for a life on the outside of a mental institution was slowly but completely obliterated.
It was the young couple from the coffee shop. Now laughing at full volume, otherwise, the exact same people, in the exact same clothes. The same couple I had just witnessed being smashed through a wall by a car doing about 60 mph, alive, well and horrible, getting out of an old, green Buick LeSabre…with the same license plates as my first car.
D’end