Cup of tea, was it?

Sitting soaked on a terrible 1970s plastic seat inside what can only be described as the remnants of a once busy café, I stare emptily at the dirty glass windowpane, wondering where in the hell they are. Literally pounding away onto the glass, the rain decides to create a curtain of water which makes it even harder to spot the blurred figures going back and forth in a hurry. I notice my hands start to shake on the steaming cup of tea I ordered three minutes ago.

It’s ridiculously hot, or am I just bloody freezing? I don’t know, or care.  All I know is that I’m waiting here for a person to show up who’s already 25 minutes late, and this worries me, and makes me overthink, spouting dumb rhetoric like ‘What happened last night?’ , or ‘Am I at the right place like they said?’. Instead I try to distract myself.  Putting my hand into a pocket, I look for my iPod to try and pass the time, but then I realize I left it  at home. Shit.

I sigh, then try to inhale some of the sludge they serve in this dingy and dilapidated café, whilst still trying to pretend to look comfortable on these unfitting chairs. The radio blares away some static like pop drivel from an American artist picked top of the mundane week’s releases, and ignoring this as background noise, I focus on everything and nothing around me.

I notice how everything is beige. The Artex walls, the doors, the chairs a faded brown and even the laminate carpet they left behind from the 1950s still lingers. Even the food and drink looks and tastes it. I keep on checking my phone every half minute or so, lying to myself that I missed a text or a call, and then keep on putting it back in my coat pocket, whilst repeating this same routine for say another ten minutes.

There’s nothing here except some middle aged couple who also remind me of the same colour that suffocates this gaff; a sense of life faded and gone askew, somehow living an average life with some average experiences, an average house, an average job, an average car, average friends, average, or as I call it, living an existence of nothingness.  

They seem to be stuck into a deep conversation at the far righthand side of the greasy spoon, yet don’t even bat an eyelid towards each other. Both seem to have given up on even speaking in terms of eye contact, their words seem to drop onto the table and drag themselves towards the other, and vice versa.

The table is an ADD’s paradise; one all symmetrically aligned, cups all facing towards each other and everything lined up, even the plates where their disgusting Full English once was also shows this eerie symmetrical pattern. A couple objects of no importance also seem to be next to the woman, with a re-read Take A Look magazine spread sitting plump next to the condiments they used for their breakfast.

All they do is just sit their silently, just mumbling wordless speech towards each other, and I still feel entranced. Just looking at their blank gazes and cold faces, I listen to what they’ve got to say. When one of them moves their hand the other one coughs and then she jumps out the chair screaming, yelling at him those six simple yet shocking words.

‘I wish I never met you.'