Greetings dear friends coffee lovers, this is my participation in the #SPILLTHEBEANS CONTEST 9 for which I want to take the opportunity to invite friends @joalheal

A Strange Friendship

  As fate would have it, I am in this city again, but now it is so different that I seem like a stranger, a new passerby walking for the first time through the cold streets without a direction, nor a reason, just gravitating as if I were a meteorite spinning in the infinite space lost in the solitude of the cosmos. The fog of this season blurs my slowly fading silhouette leaving me hidden to the naked eye, nothing ties me to this land, more than the desire to meet with my old place, that small coffee shop to which I dedicated the golden years of my life, which I turned into a thriving business with sweat and tears since I was only 27 years old and arrived as an immigrant from Italy, fleeing the horrors of war and fascism.

  A kind of sacred ritual for me allows me to spread my mind at lunchtime, to recreate myself watching the surrounding customers enjoying the good dishes served at the tables that were once mine, but now are just a memory of yesteryear, there I am always silent in a corner with a steaming cup of hot coffee that scents everything around me, while I just watch the passing of time and the passage of people coming and going.

  I like to pay attention to their various conversations, to learn a little more about their lives and the reasons that attract them faithfully every afternoon to this place, beyond a tasty meal and a good coffee, which frankly has declined quite a bit in the hands of the new administration to the point of being gray, without magic, without flavor, so tasteless that no thoroughbred Italian in my time would have dared to even try it, coffee without caffeine, coffee with milk that is not milk, all of vegetable origin, what chaos this modernity is! But then, in these times full of technology where people do not lift their heads from their phones, there are other trends, the speed of delivery and low-fat ingredients matter more to the public than the taste, maybe it is because of fashion or who knows what, but I will never adapt to something different from a pure bean coffee, hot and low in sugar, just as my great uncle taught me to drink it.

  Again, a striking fact attracts my attention, it is already the third consecutive day that the same scene is repeated in a movie, just when the clock strikes 3:33 P.M., an exuberant lady of beautiful walk with model bearing and refined manners enters through the door of the cafeteria wearing very expensive attires that are always gray and pink, matching with black gloves that give her a mysterious touch full of elegance, hiding her face under a wide-brimmed hat, leaving only her red lips and the smooth skin of her angelic face. I am perfectly sure she knows that I look at her with apprehension, but she simply ignores me.

  Something about that princess of dreams attracts me to the extreme, touching me to the depths of my spirit, but I don't know what it is, it is simply an inexplicable thing, cosmic energy perhaps, I just stand there, motionless, stunned by her presence and glowing luminosity, not knowing how to approach her, looking into the distance, while I enjoy the aroma of my coffee, asking myself:

— “Why is she ignoring me?”
— “When will I finally be reciprocated?”

  A whisper tells me that she feels the same way I do, only she hides it very well, my mind thinks a thousand things, but is not able to come up with a plan to get her attention until today.

  Her usual elusive smile, changed on this third day when I finally managed to see her face perfectly, as she began to look at me without dodging corresponding to my fleeting insinuations, with honey-colored almond eyes before getting up and heading towards me, leaving me petrified without being able to utter a single word. He tenderly caressed my face with his cold hand and gave me an icy kiss that shook everything in me, before telling me a sentence that I had been unconsciously waiting for inside me, but that I refused to grasp as absolute truth.

— “It is time, you must free yourself from the chains of this cafeteria that bind your soul to the earthly plane. I am death, or at least an envoy of it, who came to accompany you on your way to the other world”.

Thank you for reading

This is an Original Story written by @susurrodelmisterio for Hive.

All copyrights reserved.
© Copyright 2022 Susurro del Misterio