#261
Café Suicide, Part One
Florida isn’t just the Sunshine State, and that nickname
itself is bullshit because Rain Fucked State would be more like it, it’s also
the state that felt The Florida Impact, it’s the state of that unknown to most
is routinely visited by Elementals, it’s the state that has two individuals who
could be the next Pledge and thus become one of the most powerful beings in
existence, and it’s the state that has weird and wonderful growing out of its
butt.
Even though it looks like a wang.
Out of its butt.
Miami is one of those examples of how America’s surface
being all everyone is beautiful and the underbelly is standing in the shadows
whispering “I’m the one who touches you when you are asleep.”
Miami’s surface is rich NBA players, former alien royalty,
and tattoo shops catering to celebrities, and artificially enhanced men and
women showing off a nice bit of skin. The bright colors and painted images of
what Miami disputably wants to be has become the official representation of
what people think it is.
Underneath you have the shadows of Miami which is mainly
closeted bigots, supernatural destinies, and one or two pretty twisted places
to get drunk. Being afraid of shadows is a way of trying to control those who
have to live in the shadows but it’s also a warning because all those stories
you have ever been told about the darkness that sleeps within shadows is a
forewarning you should heed. Be careful because even though not everything is
bad or evil there are still reasons those things live in those glooms of gray.
If you haven’t been to Miami and know nothing about it you
would probably buy fully into its glamorous image of beautiful locals,
beautiful people, and beautiful culture. And that’s ok. It’s not reality but
its ok unless you live there. You can think there is no crime in Canada and you
can leave your doors unlocked but doing so when you live there would make you
one dumbshit fuckhead.
A place very few know about, an example of Miami’s poor
among rich, is the Café Suicide. In Miami the rich can reach out and touch the
poor but they wouldn’t. It would get their hands dirty. The poor could easily
reach out and touch the rich too but then they would just get the urge to
strangle them and it leads to paper work and people trying to get them to
explain things.
The café is stuffed among the starving. Literally, it’s
between a homeless shelter bakery and a fortune teller.
The outside of the café and its neighbors are crumbling
among newly built buildings as rich developers are trying to buy everything up
and make it a hipster walkabout.
Enough to make you puke.
If you have ever heard of the café you might only hear about
the good things but it’s a really dangerous place to be. It’s a shadow place.
Anyways, the name kind of gives away that it’s not a place of sunshine and
roses.
Café Suicide is located in South Beach. A stretch that was
once known as a lineup of dregs and now is remodeled to be safe for the rich
and snow bird alike.
And the very talented basketball players hated in Cleveland.
And now in Miami I guess too?
Though public records and local people’s perceptions have
the place being in South Beach for about ten years, the Café Suicide has gone
pretty much unchanged for a hundred years. It was here before the body
builders, before the tattoo reality shows, and even before Shaq came to town
and left with a ring.
It’s also gone pretty much unnoticed for the same length of
time. It’s called magic and its way cooler than the Orlando kind.
It’s a small place about the size of most french fry
restaurants. The café is owned by an illegal immigrant from… well, even he
can’t remember but not this reality. When he first came here he worked as a
traveling trickster. But after a few years of doing that, as in a few decades,
a lot of decades, he retired to run his café house. Though then it was more a
tavern.
He’s still very much a trickster.
At the moment the owner of Café Suicide goes by the name
Mank. Why he took it on and what it means isn’t of any interest to anyone. It
isn’t of interest to anyone because he let a drink lover of the time pick out
the name for him and he just kind of got use it.
Mank looks like an old sumo wrestler and smells like an
oversexed ogre. He is jolly in a way that scares people and his smile makes the
hairs stand up on the back of your nick. If he gets angry with you pray that
something else will distract him from gazing at you.
Most of the visitors to the café walk among the planets dark
corners but then again who else would visit a place like this? A few actually
come here willingly to hang out. Sort of like the people who use to attend hangings
for the ambiance.
Shane Crabtree came into the café on a very busy day. All
the regulars were there. The Luthor Triplets, always talking about the good old
days in The Darkness Bite. Never trust twins missing the same eye and never
trust triplets from The Darkness Bite.
Mike and Roma are in-between jobs and for two universal bounty
hunters they talk politics a lot. Just don’t ever try to choose a side because
that’s not too much. They’ve been out of work for a while. It sort of ruins
your standing with the type of people who hire universal bounty hunters when
you turn on someone who hired you.
There are always a large group of mer people from someplace,
I can’t remember at the moment, in the café. They’re usually talking about
Aquaman comics but right now the subject of conversation is the upcoming Summer
Olympics.
The rest of the café crowd Shane wades through on his way to
the ordering line is made up of a forgotten mischief God, lost soldiers from
throughout time and space, and one young warlock who never talks to anyone, his
name is Nikolaj.
After waiting in a line for a few minutes Shane ordered a
plain coffee and a piece of cake. He usually doesn’t drink plain coffee or eat
cake but it just felt like the thing to do. The café really doesn’t offer that
many options to its customers. The menu besides daily specials usually only has
plain coffee, cake, cookies, and someone of the best homemade vanilla wafers in
North America.
Twenty minutes later they finished his order. It was handed
to him by a one armed barista with a name tag that said Single on it. She had a
nice smile that made you forget all the scars and the small skull on her neck.
Half an hour later Shane found a small table between the mer
people. The group gave him a little look before going back to talking about
swim trunks versus swim suits.
He sat there quietly drinking his coffee and eating his
cake. When the last drop and last crumb were gone Mank appeared in front of the
small table. He does tend to do that to customers but if you’re a regular you
get use to it.
Well, not really, how do you get use to someone appearing
out of thin air when you’re not expecting it.
‘Can I get anything else for you?’ Mank asked
Shane slowly looked up. His head felt like he had a weight
attached to it, ‘I don’t know.’
Mank threw one of the mer people out of a chair and sat down
beside Shane. That mer person left knowing he was no longer welcome in the café
and his friends just went back to talking without even a glance towards Mank.
‘Individuals come into my café when they are at a loose end.
They in time make a choice. But first they always want to talk because everyone
has a story in them,’ Mank
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we can continue with the credits and copyright and legal and stuff that people
just don’t ever pay attention to unless it is pumping their own horn.
An Original Publication of System* Publishing,
a Tin Universe book published by System*Publishing, a
division of System*Productions, Melbourne, Florida. This book is a
work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events
or locales or persons, living or dead or living dead, is entirely and very much
so in the coincidental.
Smashwords Edition Copyright © 2015, Brian
C. Williams, System*Productions. Tin Universe Daily, and
all related titles, characters, and elements are trademarks of System*Productions.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions
thereof in any form whatsoever. While unauthorized reproduction is sometimes
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Written by Brian C. Williams
Edited by Brian C. William
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