Flash Fiction Friday @ Five PM – 5/18/17 – Kafka Cafe

(For the first post of these I feel it’s fair for a disclaimer. Any views or opinions expressed about anyone or anything do not reflect those of the author’s. The author also takes full artistic liberty to do whatever the hell it wants to. Take your complaining garbage elsewhere, gnave. Now let’s get down to business.)

Kafka Cafe

“Yeah!” Jane says, “I love Blue Dog Monday! I went to their summer concert last year!” She adds with a cheesy smile and a decisive point, as if she just now recalled the band.

She’s not the one, he already knows, as all insufferable hipsters do.

William’s puts on smile stretches to ensure it’s convincing. Jane failed the “fake band” test like so many others. He runs it through with every girl he dates. Give her the name of a fake band, see if she’s a giant fan of it and owns all the albums, and then go from there.

He scratches his shoulder as a waiter swings past their table with the sort of over-doctored coffee and flippantly-cute pastries common to an outdoor mall café. “Wow, I’m shocked!” He says with an awkward shrug, at once showing his surprise and personally shrugging off the thought of a second date.

“Yeah, they’re great… It’s just been such a long time I listened to them, ya’ know? There’s a lot out.” She says this all while taking up the slender coffee spoon and stirring through her decaf salted caramel white chocolate mocha frappe with coconut milk and just a dash of cinnamon.

William assumes this is her way of backing up in case he presses further. He’ll spare her the embarrassment of being caught, and decides to simply go along with it. Last time he called a girl out for it he received a swift slap to the face, as it turned out the fake band name he chose was actually of a real band that he hadn’t heard of.

“Yeah, well you know how it is,” William says with another, neither of them actually knowing how it is. He finishes off his black Honduras— good stuff.

A few minutes of generic date conversation passes. It’s just like she said on her profile, she does yoga. Wow. Likes surfing. Holy shit amazing. And even had the gall to say she was working as something other than an unpaid intern. He finds out a few other facts that are also probably not facts at all, and nods his way through the whole conversation. It won’t be hard to let her go, considering he didn’t grab on to begin with.

And then it happens.

A fly zips around the table and she groans amidst a reflexive swat. The fly didn’t dodge, but instead is just flipped aside. Jane cringes realizing she actually made contact with the fly, an ironic reaction all things considered, and then the fly buzzes angrily.

“What the hell?!” The fly vibrates in fury.

Jane draws back in horror. “It talks! Kill it! Kill it!”

“I fucking work here! I came to get your goddamn dishes you little shits! I literally had this job for one fucking day and already people are going nuts!” He points a really tiny fly leg to the door with a sign on it. “Can’t you read?! This is a super equal opportunity establishment! Any sentient creature can get a job here.”

“I-I’m,” Jane skews her breath. “I’m so sorr-”

Jane’s voice is overpowered by the landing of William’s large mug, crushing the fly beyond recognition.

“W-what did you do?!”

William draws back, steaming and short of breath. “I killed it.”

“It… It worked here!”

“Yeah, so what? It freaked me out!”

“You can’t… Shit!” Jane presses a hand into her face in dread. “Why the hell would the manager think this was a good idea?! The waiter that gave us the food wasn’t a fly!”

“Yeah,” William said, gaze searching for onlookers, “Just a normal person, like they should be, dammit! Why di-”

“Is something the matter?” The original waiter, an enormous, human-sized cockroach says as he bends around the corner.

William’s eyes grow large as he looks at the massive roach. He had thought it was just some old Asian man or something, but no.

“This entire place is operated by bugs!” He shrieks before fainting. He went to jail for aggravated assault, murder, and super racism– good riddance, band guy. Like, ugh!

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Come back next Friday at 5 for some more. Let’s see how long I can keep this up.