Customer Service

Customer Service- Ed Chaney
“Gawd, I NEED a frappucino!” Beth moaned from the passenger seat.
You need a frappucino, please, thought her husband. He kept his eyes forward, gripping the steering wheel. He knew what was coming, but damn it! They were almost home, for chrissakes!
“Henry-kins?” her voice was all sugary sweetness, but underneath it was cold with greed. Like chocolate syrup on a sunbaked turd.
“Yes, honey?” Henry wasn't really asking. The phrase only voiced his submission. It was tired and quiet. He turned left at the light.
“Thank you, Henry-kins.” she said, acquiescent, the sweetness still there, if a bit thinner now. No need to try and butter him when she knew she was going to get her way.
Henry-kins. He hated the name and the old-whore knew it.
He pushed the car on. Where the hell was a Starbucks when you needed one? He drove a but faster, pressing the peddle instead of squeezing his wife's gray neck.
“Henry, don't speed now.”
He gritted his teeth. I've been driving since I was 14 years old, he thought rebelliously, been driving your fat ass our entire marriage. He pushed the car forward like a pouting school child. I'll do whatever I please, the action said.
His wife turned and looked out the window. Fine, she thought, he can pay his own damn ticket. She smiled smugly at the image of Henry, red-faced, ticket in hand. The cop would lean down and smile at her. Maybe he'd give Henry a good lecture too. She could see it.
“And why would you be speeding with a lady in the car, sir?” he would say.
He would be in his twenties and with a fairly country demeanor. She would wink knowingly at him and he would smile. It would be a private joke between two strangers. My isn't he funny? So red faced and furious! He would be frustrated and helpless. This isn't work, she would think, can't chew his ass, now can you?
She continued to stare out the window, the lights passing over head. She looked at her reflection as it passed. The sunken eyes. Small curved mouth. She saw the young girl who used to be able to tease and flirt with cops. She saw, under the lines and flesh, the girl who used to kiss boys just to confuse them.
She looked at the face that reflected back at her in the tinted mirror. The flash of a street lamp illuminated her and she saw herself older than she was now. She couldn't imagine it. It's hard to enjoy life when you always figured you'd be dead by thirty five. She glanced over at the speedometer. Still speeding.
Gawd she needed a frappucino.
After pushing the white bronco around for four blocks, Henry finally spotted some Mom and Pop drive- thru coffee house.
He looked at the clock on the dash.
9:54.
Please be closed, he thought.
Just because she doesn't get what she wants, doesn't mean you win, a voice spoke up from inside himself. It was voice he didn't want to hear. A voice that told him that he was getting older and unhappier at an uneven rate. He didn't give the voice much thought, in an ironic juxtaposition. It was a voice that had spoken up a long time ago.
Jesus, do we have to drag our past around with us every where?
The voice came from a part of himself that he had known in high school. It was the part of him that always said 'Yes' to certain things. Yes to horror novel instead of the biography. Yes to the movie marathon instead of studying. He could only remember a rare few occasions, before the long apostasy of marriage, when the voice had said 'NO'. NO it said to the position at his father's accounting firm. NO to the Abba record.
It had been years since it had spoke last. The voice tired and worn, as his had become, but not from the old ball and chain. No, this was a wearing in the moral and ethical sense. The voice had spent so much time throwing itself and its advice at the wall of his conscious and unconscious mind, it had become bloody, ragged, and half dead. It had cried and shouted at him to stop and turn around, not take this sort of direction with his/their life. But Henry had either not listened or pushed ahead, so sure in the present bliss. After a while, the voice had grown tired and sad, scarred and quiet. It grew cynical and hateful, as had Henry himself.
After awhile, it didn't seem to talk at all, only to mutter and whisper, as a man who as learned to talk to himself while in a room with his best friend.
A memory struck Henry, light pouring into the car in a brief splash. He clicked his signal on to make a U- turn. It was very blurred and misted over, like a Polaroid developing on the screen behind his eyes.
It was one of the last times the voice had spoken up, loud and clear. One of the last time's he had clearly heard it. Before the separation, the blood and the silence, before the virginal resplendence of a young man is turned to the hard thorny soil of an man's life.
It began much like this night had.
“Come over!” she had saucily asked him, “I'm house sitting!”
She was beautiful and knew it, in the years before such a thing as frappucinos every destroyed the life of our modern society. The world was not perfect, that was true, but people did not yet know the pleasure of sucking down five hundred calories, when babies could find none.
She sang her siren song to him, he the most recent in a long and unbelievably distorted and sordid line of “boyfriends”. She liked him well enough. He was taut and hard in all the places young men are known to be. He was sweet, she thought, so out of her amazing depths of kindness, she would do him a favor.
For some reason, unbeknown to her, he still clung to his idealism of a man and woman united in marital bliss. This, she knew, was silly. So she would sing to him sweetly and in return (for there always is a return, as for the genie, with women like these) she would get what she needed.
“It'll be fun! I promise” she cooed. She giggled girlishly and he had no choice. She laughed as she hung up and shared something with her future apparition: greedy longing.
He hung up the phone and wandered to his bedroom in a daze. He dreamily went to his bottom drawer and slid aside all the forgotten toys of his childhood. He had every thing from the World's Largest Collection of mismatched Legos to the always funny, Whoop-EEE cushion. And, boys and girls, guys and gals, if you slid these things aside you found a very special box. An old army style bullet case. He opened it and turned it over so the prize at the bottom of his cereal box would fall into his hand. And so the condoms did.
“NO!” said the voice from the void. The tone and phrase shocking Henry out of his stupor. He stared at the plastic and rubber in his palm. It was like so many thrown away candy wrappers. It looked flimsy and he was suddenly very disgusted with the whole idea of using it. The evening hung for a moment before him and he knew for a farce. He knew in his heart that he didn't love Beth. He didn't even know if he liked her. Sometimes when she talked, he just tuned out and waited. He found this sort of melodrama oddly stimulating, for some reason. He shook his head and his view of his past and future closed in on itself.
There was only now.
“Hi! Welcome to Coffee Champ! What can I get for you folks tonight?”
As Henry had swerved into the parking lot, he saw that the light was still on inside the small brick building. A light was turned on outside and it shone on crimson block lettering:
24 hours
Henry grunted and pulled the car around in a wide casual arc. The car moved around the coffee shack, circling it like the tiger and a man/cub. With a quick twist, he brought himself even with the window.
The coffee shop looked like a new one, the milk steamers and espresso machine looked brand new. He looked around as he shifted his weight to dig a slim wallet from its compressed state under one butt cheek. He grunted again, louder this time, hoping to alert some sort of employee/coffee fairy to their presence.
“You sound like a bear.” his wife said dryly.
You snore, he shot back, to know one in particular.
He turned and looked at her.
“You know what you want?” he said almost lovingly.
She put a finger to her mouth in a manner she still believed to be endearing and looked for some sort of menu. She already knew what she wanted, but she felt that some antagonism after his brief pouting stint was necessary.
“Hi!”
Henry turned quickly back, a breeze forming about his short cropped hair. A boy/man, perhaps twenty or twenty-one, stood there before them. He was clad in a black colored polo, with a black undershirt. He wore black slacks with a black leather belt whose clasp shone in the glow of the outside lamp. It seemed to reflect in Henry's eye's, agitating him.
“Welcome to Coffee Champ! What can I get for you folks tonight?”
“Just a second, please!” Henry said, in a way that was almost friendly.
He looked at the kid. The kid had short black hair and and quiet eyes, which gleamed with something like...anticipation? The man thought they seemed gray, but as he turned, they flashed a yellowish brown.
He turned to his wife exasperatedly. Her little show had gone on for long enough, damn it.
“You know what you want?”
“Yes,” she said shortly, “ I would like a venti caramel frappucino, extra extra caramel, no whip, and please add two pumps of mocha.”
“Uh, we don't have Starbucks sizes, but we have a large if that's alright? It's still a 24 oz. Drink.”
Henry glared at him.
“Yes, fine.”
The boy disappeared and noises began to emanate from inside the small shop. Clinks and clangs. Henry carefully slipped his credit card from his wallet and held it out the window. The expression on his face was one of sardonic patience, as if to say: Yep, STILL waiting, got my arm right here, ready to pay, but I'm STILL...
The card was deftly snatched from in between his two fingers and returned. He looked at it. Strange. It was like it was almost instantaneous. He felt the card slide, but...
A loud blending began in the background.
“Did you need anything, sir?”
He looked at the kid, the malevolence returning. Why did you take me card if you thought I would order something, schmuck?
“No, no,” he said offhandedly, “that will be all for tonight.”
“Alrighty, your total is 4.65.”
He looked at the kid confused. He wanted to shout at the kid that he had already used and taken the card, but why would the kid lie so obviously? Was he trying to pull one over on him?
“Just give him the card, Henry! Jesus!” Beth cried.
Looking bewildered, he leafed it out of the small black wallet and handed it over to the kid. The boy's eyes twinkled a dark green at him.
He watched the barista ring it through, casually rejecting his receipt. A clever scheme occurred, but he didn't really feel like messing with the help tonight. He just wanted to get home, gawd damn the woman!
The barista returned, a large picturesque blended coffee drink held aloft in one hand. The barista slid his body from out to their car. He handed Henry the drink and a straw. Without looking at it, Henry passed it to the eager hands of his mistress. He looked back at the dude, who presented him with his credit card. He decided to go for a little mayhem.
“Could I get my receipt, please!” he semi-shouted, hoping to scare the nonchalance from the boy.
“You have it, sir.” the boy enunciated, not even a wrinkle appearing on his youthful brow. His eyes shone darkly and although the boy's expression was blank, a smile played about somewhere on his face.
Henry's thunder slid out from under him as he looked down at a wrinkled slip, which he had crumpled in his right fist.
“Bleh!” Beth said, dramatically, “Does this have mocha in it?”
The question was rhetorical, a stab to try and make the barista shuffle his feet.
“Ah, sorry ma'am, here I'll remake it.” The boy reached out to the car, his face like that of Michelangelo's Sistine ceiling.
“Thank you.” Beth spurted shortly.
Henry once again passed the up from his wife to the boy at the window. He placed it snugly in the outstretched hand. At the last moment, when Henry let go, the hand opening wide, like a foot shooting out in a schoolyard prank. Henry watched on the in the same sort of morbid fascination, as the drink fell and splattered on the asphalt.
“Hey, what gives!” Henry shouted, his public pretenses keeping him from swearing at the kid. He looked up and saw the dude's back.
“Hey! What's the deal, asshole?” he barked. This seemed fine, because ass was a word they used on TV nowadays.
The kid turned and cocked an eyebrow at him, as the unmarred drink sat in his gentle grip.
“Henry, what the hell are you doing?” His wife snarled, the greed and gluttony for her drink shining bright pinpricks in her stare.
He shook his head and muttered:
“Sorry...”
The blending once again resumed, and in another uncomfortable instant, the drink was back. It wavered in the air, laughingly menacing to fall again. Henry snatched it and handed it roughly to his wife. She began to slurp it eagerly.
Henry turned to look at her, when he noticed a smell. It was a sour moist odor. He looked at the drink and saw that their was whipped cream on top. What the hell, he thought, as he turned back to the window.
When he saw the boy standing there, straight and tall, a smile now blatant upon his face, something in Henry squirmed. He heard a gagging from behind him. He watched a moment longer as the boy stood in the window. Then the light went clicked out, but Henry thought he could still see the eyes gleam in the darkness.
The outside light turned out and indeed, the whole block seemed to wink out, for the bronco was bathed in shadows. His wife gagging, it was a wet sound.
He turned to look and saw the coffee drink running down her chin as her throat worked. She seemed to almost be in tears. Finally the levee broke and she vomited forward onto the dash. Henry's nose caught another whiff of the sour odor. He could almost place it.
He looked at his wife and saw something that brought everything dizzyingly together. As his wife vomited another dark batch of bile, he looked at his wife's chin. In the coffee drink, there seemed to be what looked like...grass.
Bile rose to the top of his throat and he held back his own gagging. He reached over to her lap where she still clutched the drink. He pried the to off and pushed the cream aside.
“Oh Gawd!” he moaned. He gagged and bile came out over the dam of his lips. It was shit, manure, feces; Good GAWD, she had drank it!
He himself presented his pre-chewed lunch and dinner to the steering wheel. He felt very tired, very tired indeed. The stench was every where, now mixed with their vomit. He moaned.
Beth was getting it back together and she looked at her drink. It had become very hot in her hands. She looked at it and saw a great brown bubble, flecked with dirt and grass, rise. She stared at it and fear closed over her heart. It grew larger and larger, a great boil on rich blended coffee turd. A great eye winking it's love to her.
It popped with a splash she would not have believed possible. It splashed out over her arms and face. She grimaced and fought the urge to let her stomach go again.
And that was when it moved.
She looked down, hoping that the soft nudge had just been her hand as it shook. She looked down and watched in horror, as a head wriggled its way from the crater left by the bubble. It was small and furry, rat-like, with large pointed ears. A wing rose from neath the mud and gripped at the side with a long curved finger. It pulled itself up and grappled at the side with it's other wing/claw. It had pulled most of its body out of the muck, when it stopped and shook itself. It wiped at its small head in away that would have been cute to Beth, if it hadn't been such a wretched animal.
It blinked slightly, opening its great glassy eyes wide and looked at her. Its mouth opened and she shrank at the sight of so many small pointed teeth. It seemed to grin at her, pulling itself out of the cup and falling in her lap. It crawled upwards on her sizable stomach, looking at her frozen face all the time. When it made a mad dash towards her mouth, she started to scream.
Henry turned and looked at the macabre scene before him, unbelief and fear crowding his thoughts. He saw what looked like a large black bat, trying to fight its way into his wife's mouth. You ordered it, a voice spoke up in his mind. Henry clenched as he saw more bats begin to stick their wings and heads out of the cup his wife amazingly still held. These looked about, first spotting her, the seeing him.
Henry turned and pulled at the lock, the door slid open, but he had parked too close to the coffee shack, his door hit the brick counter, on which the servers passed the drinks. He pushed at it and felts something land on his back, its claws tiny spots of pain.
What if it bites me, he thought, and rolled over quickly, hoping to crush the tiny animal. His heart sank and he began to scream himself. The cup had emptied like a bee's nest, covering Beth with black biting bodies. These spread to the dash covering every inch of the car with their large luminescent eyes and their glistening mouths. An army of the them.
His wife no longer screamed as she tried to fight the bats from racing down her throat. She gagged and felt a claw grab the back of her throat. Her hand, finally too frightened to fight, unclenched with despair. The cup hit the floor with a thud.
At the contact, all of the bats rushed to the air, flapping in a great cyclone. A typhoon of beating wings and warm soft bodies. Henry and Beth briefly made eye contact in the dimming light, and found no solace in each others wretched gaze.
It grew dark in the bronco, and darker still, as the bats seemed to cover every space of light. Even the windshield was covered over with the animals, although Henry knew that it was impossible for them to cling to such a surface. The light faded, until finally he sat in the black void that he had once believed was his bronco. He felt very alone and very afraid. It seemed that miles stretched out from his seat, every direction a great desert of darkness.
He heard breathing. His own? His wife's? Was he even alive? Yes, said the quiet voice from the sitting room behind his eyeballs. But this isn't over, it said. When I say 'Yes' you say:
“Yes”
When I say 'No', you say?
“No”
When I say 'Boo', you say?
Henry was about to answer, when a large pair of yellow eyes began to glow from the backseat.
After an eternity in the void, the light turned on to find Henry and Beth sitting quietly in the trembling car, as the engine idled before the Coffee Champ. Henry was looking at the boy in the window. The boy clad in black, the small smile still in place. The waves of fear and menace slowly abating.
Beth was stared at the floor. A bead of sweat from the drink in her hand came down and touched her index finger. She moved carefully and quietly set the drink in the cup holder. She folded her hands in her lap and continued to rattle slowly towards insanity.
Henry had always had dark blue eyes. It was his best feature, he thought. He turned them on the figure in the window, hopelessly begging with them to be allowed to go. But the face was hard, waiting.
Something clicked and Henry moved quietly. He took a five dollar bill and carefully folded it. He reached out a trembling hand and set it carefully in a small cup which read:
“Tips! :)”
He looked again at the boy. The boy nodded and winked.
When the eye opened it was dark blue.