End of cafés and all other things - A “Coffe and meaning at the end of times” prequel

The young woman stands outside her ex-favorite café. Or her favorite ex-café, both epithets being of equal quality. She is debating whether to go in or not. The choice might be life altering, so she is giving it ample thought.

Not long ago, entering your favorite café would not require this level of deliberation. In the first few days trying to understand this new dangerous world, weighing every decision as if your life depended on it, and mainly just staying alive, was exhausting. It is amazing though, how fast you can adapt if you have to. Now, maintaining situational awareness is a reflex; she is doing it at all times without even thinking about it.

While she stands there, debating the merits vs the dangers of entering, she can’t help but think about how this situation came to be.

Everyone loves a good origin story. She certainly used to. Some, the ones who like her, favored apocalyptic fiction of any flavor, lived for the story to reach the genesis of the current drama: the origin. The retrospective that explained everything, that set the scene, introduced the characters and identified the obstructions to be overcome. (In the beginning, when being in full panic mode, she did some pretty horrible things in her desperation to stay alive, so she is not that fond of her own version of it.)

The stories in her formerly favorite horror sub-genre generally followed the same pattern: from the first cough, the classical sneeze in the cinema theatre, the bite from a deranged monkey, or the avian flu cross breeding with man-made pathogens to form the perfect storm.

The focus in the stories then normally shift to the protagonists, first some every day scenes in their pre catastrophe lives, then quickly shifting to them being assaulted by their new reality, then adapting, then overcoming. Add a few more twists usually themed around the morale of humanity and then the story is basically over. It had a start, a few drama curves, and an end.

Alicia tries to glance inside the soot-stained windows of the café and can’t help but reflect on her former propensity towards enjoying catastrophe themed fiction and how it actually played out in real life. When the shit hit the fan, so to speak. For one thing, the absurd misogyny normally inhibited by apocalypse authors were thankfully nowhere to be seen when it happened in real life. No nurses swooning upon seeing blood and gore, no mothers breaking down in incompetent hysterics.

If nothing else, the slightly higher risk aversion normally exhibiting the female part of the population had increased the female ratio of survivors quite significantly. Juxtaposed to this was the instinct to act, combined with the willingness to accept risk. That scheme had turned out to be both fruitless and terminal in the beginning, when no one had really known what they were up against.

The other in Alicias mind great exception from the stories was this: there is no end. There is no fucking end to any of it. Just endless days of boredom and survival.

Alicia is done weighing risks and rewards of entering the former café and reaches a decision.

-“Goddamnitalltohellwhatthefuck”, she mutters and reaches for the door handle. No one remembers a coward, she finishes with a thought and opens the door.