Coffee

Coffee

By Joseph Kassabian

 

I rolled out of bed this morning at 3:30am, starting work before the goddamn sun. Punching my alarm into silence, I pulled my pants on half asleep, fumbling with my boots in the pitch darkness, my fingers not working in the frigid cold. I stumbled out of my corner of our sleeping area, tripped over some kind of metal fucking ridge, and fell head first into the damn tile floor. I screamed something that no one heard, you see, they were still asleep. I stomped through the mud and rocks; I climbed my way into our shower trailer, which is now at about chest height as some asshole stole the stairs. Shaved at brushed my teeth with water I’m pretty sure came from a polar bear’s urethra, it was so cold it caused me physical pain. I saw steam coming from the cooking area, finally the cooks were working, a rare thing around here. People don’t feel happiness around this shit hole, but at seeing this I may have at least smiled. I retreated back to my icebox of a room and grabbed my coffee cup, the only good part of my morning has about to unfold.

I walked into the food area, the cook was still working on food, but coffee was out. Army coffee is unlike any other coffee on earth. It’s not really coffee, it kind of tastes like it, but watered down, not really enjoyable for a normal person. Most importantly there was still caffeine in it. It comes in a giant teabag like device you add hot water too, you wait and boom mother, fucking coffee. Things are never this easy. I put my cup under the little facet, and out came the steam and amazing smell of semi fresh coffee. It smelled normal, it even looked normal. I took a drink.

This coffee threw a haymaker at me; its fist was made of some god-awful taste that was not of this world. Whatever this brown liquid was, it was not coffee. Bile, dip spit, or human waste but not coffee. I took another drink, I guess because I’m a masochist, the taste brought tears to my eyes, either from shear bitterness, or my taste buds died and my body was mourning the loss. The cook stared at me like I was insane. Fuck him. Fuck him for bringing this beast onto this earth. In this, the savage year of our lord 2012, this culinary school dropout brewed Satan, Beelzebub, The Dark Prince, and Lucifer into our realm. The taste of this coffee made me question the existence of God, if he was a caring God he would have not allowed this Folgers’s abortion to grace my mouth, killing my taste buds, and raping its corpse. The book of Revelations came true and I fucking swallowed it.

I spit out a solid chunk of something, god damn coffee grounds, I retched brown spit into the mud. My friend ‘Robot’ was asking me what was wrong, I handed him my cup and pointed at it franticly, my wild eyes glaring at him. He took a drink and spit it out. “What the fuck man? Why would you give me that?” He was obviously mad, I told him because I wanted someone else to feel my pain. He looked at me like I was crazy, fuck him too.

Why has such a beverage been brewed? Why are humans so inherently evil that they would feed this horrible substance to one another? This lone cup of coffee, this devilish liquid, destroyed my faith in the human race and made me hope the Mayans really are right about the upcoming apocalypse. I’m now off to crawl into a dark corner and mourn the loss of my hopes, dreams, and ability to taste.