The Koffee Shoppe

[Unpublished]

As soon as I entered The Koffee Shoppe I immediately began to wonder why I had gone in there. Had the loneliness of life seized me with its talons so that I was desperate for the company of strangers? Was there a giant people-magnet on the outside of the place and had it pulled me in like a spider to its web? Or was I merely thirsty for coffee? I don’t know.
I sat close to a table occupied by some people. There were three males and three females at the table. The smell of coffee drilled its way into my open nostrils. I listened to the chit-chattering of the six persons and as I did so my eyes fixed upon a girl with large ear-lobes and lanky black hair. I stared at her for some minutes and she stared back at me. I was determined that I wouldn’t look away first and demonstrate my weakness of character and will. I gazed at her so hard that after a while my eyes crossed and there appeared to be two girls identical to each other.
“Are there two of you?” I asked aloud.
“No,” they both replied.
Then the girl looked away and a smug grin hit my face.
I waited for five hours before a waitress came to my table. Her head was a pineapple with ears, eyes, a nose, a mouth, and lots of chins. She informed me that The Koffee Shoppe was self-service and then walked away behind the counter. I got up and bought a cappuccino which I took back to my table. When I got back I was astonished to find a man with dark hair seated opposite my chair. I sat down and scratched my head.
“Hello,” he said.
I said it too, then blew on my coffee which was steaming hot. Everything about the man was black except the color of his skin. He made me very nervous and I tried to ignore him but I couldn’t. Eventually he spoke again.
“Have you ever hated anyone?” he asked me.
I thought for a few seconds. “Why do you ask?”
“Because I want to know.”
I had to ponder over the question for around a minute. I could think of a few people but I couldn’t choose which one to reveal to the man. In the end I decided.
“Babylonius Orgasm,” I said.
“Who is Babylonius Orgasm and why do you hate him?”
“He is a person and I hate him because he has Frank Sinatra’s elbows and I envy him for it.”
“Are you sure you hate him or do you merely dislike him because you wish you possessed these elbows instead of him?”
“It could be that I merely dislike him.”
“So you don’t hate him really?”
“Why do you ask?”
The man in black sat back and let out a sigh. “I want to know if you really hate someone enough to want to actually kill them.”
I sipped the coffee and it burnt my lips. “No, I don’t want to kill anyone.”
“I do,” said the man.
“You hate someone or you want to kill someone?”
“Both.”
“I see. Who is this person you hate and want to kill?”
“You,” the man said.
I felt as though someone had stabbed my heart with a dinner-fork. My head was spinning and I felt a discomfort in my groin area.
“Why me?” I said. “You don’t even know me.”
“I do.”
“Oh yes? Who am I then?”
“You are John Dumbfuck.”
A trickle of urine passed down the inside of my trousers and I cursed the world because normally I was unable to pass water in a public place.
“How do you know me? And who are you?”
“I’m the ghost of Kafka,” he said in a grave tone.
“Do you mean Kafka the writer or Joe Kafka who used to collect my garbage?”
“Is Joe Kafka dead?”
“No.”
“Well go figure.”
I was stunned. I had never actually seen an image of Kafka so I couldn’t be certain that this was indeed his ghost. Not only that, I don’t believe in ghosts at all and so I found it difficult to accept his words.
“So why do you hate me and want to kill me?” I asked in a trembling voice.
He fished in his jacket pocket and pulled out a bundle of papers which he opened up and held in front of me. The sheets were yellow-old and crumpled and contained lots of words in a tight scrawl. I read the title which was in large letters at the top of the first page.

KAFKA: THE ULTIMATE MADMAN
by John Dumbfuck

“Holy hysterectomy!” I cried. “How did you get hold of this?”
The ghost of Kafka smirked at me. “There are ways and there are means,” he said.
“But… I wrote this years ago. I was seventeen years old when I wrote it. My god, that was thirty years ago!”
My heart was beating semi-erratically, like blip blip blip but not so cohesive. I wanted a large reptile to swallow me up and digest me but there were none in The Koffee Shoppe.
“Why are you showing me this?” I asked.
“Because I find it insulting and I don’t like being insulted and so I hate you and I want to kill you.”
“But I was just a kid, it was a thesis I did at school. And it’s not insulting at all!”
“It is. Look at page five. Kafka’s genius is matched only by his madness. What an insult!”
“But that’s a compliment!”
He ignored my plea. “Page eight,” he said. “Kafka’s brain ought to have been left to medical science. You insulted my brain!”
“I didn’t!”
“Page twelve. To insult Kafka is to tear a hole in his soul and anyone who does insult him deserves to be killed. See? It’s down there in black and white!”
“I don’t remember writing that!”
Kafka’s ghost let out a loud guffaw and his eyes drilled fear into my own. I looked around for help but the waitress with the pineapple head was nowhere to be found. I tried to yell for assistance but my throat had dried up completely.
“Are you ready to die now?” asked the ghost.
“No!” I cried.
“Then I’ll do it while you’re not ready.”
“Wait!” I didn’t know what to say to him. I stared at his face and discovered nothing. I was stalling for time, hoping that a Los Angeles cop might enter The Koffee Shoppe and save the day, even though we were in East Lansing, Michigan. “How are you going to kill me?” I asked.
“I’m going to flagellate you.”
“With what?”
“Your trouser belt. Give it to me.”
“No. I defy you.”
“Give it to me or I’ll kill you.”
“How will you kill me?”
“I’ll garrote you.”
“With what?”
“Your trouser belt. Give it to me.”
“No. I defy you.”
“Give it to me or I’ll kill you.”
“How will you kill me?”
“I’ll asphyxiate you.”
“With what?”
“Your trouser belt. Give it to me.”
“No. I defy you.”
“Give it to me or I’ll kill you.”
“How will you kill me?”
Kafka’s ghost smiled and opened his jacket wide. At once I noticed that strapped to his chest was a tactical nuclear missile.
“With this,” he said.
“Holy Roget’s Thesaurus!”
I became intensely afraid and began to fumble around for my belt, but I was astonished when I remembered that I wasn’t wearing trousers at all but discarded pizza containers I had found in Danny DeVito’s garbage and which I had attached to my legs and asshole with super grip elastic bands. It was surely turning into a bad day for me and I emitted a shriek that shook the world before diving into my mug of coffee in order to escape.
The coffee was lukewarm by this time which was a relief to me as I would have surely boiled to oblivion if it had been piping hot still. I glanced up and spotted the dark features of Kafka’s ghost and it perturbed me immensely. I was paddling in the shit-brown liquid, barely remaining afloat, and then something horrible occurred to me. I couldn’t swim!
“Shit, I can’t swim!” I cried.
My arms were waving around and my head kept vanishing beneath the surface. My thoughts wandered all over the place, in and out of my mind like drugged-up ballerinas. I was choking as if overeating on popcorn at the cinema. Kafka’s ghost was chuckling and chuckling as if being entertained by clowns or Andy Kaufman or both. I wondered what was the score between the Steelers and the Falcons. I ransacked my brain trying to imagine who could be winning until I thought my head would explode. And then I remembered that the Steelers weren’t playing the Falcons at all it was the Rams and glug-glug-glug I drowned at this point.