The coffee was lukewarm, bitter in a way he liked. Half-empty, the white ceramic cup had this light heaviness to it. The caffeine flowing down his body was anchoring him against the drifting tide of another sleepless night.
Even though he was drinking his coffee outdoors, wearing a very thin brown coat, he barely noticed the cold as he wore it like a second skin.It wasn't just the wind.
Insomnia itself had long ago woven itself into his bones. The insomnia had a certain chill to it as well, distinct and working together with the breeze to send shivers along his body that he ignored.
He told people it was all the caffeine. That's what was keeping him up at night, creating these heavy dark bags that he carried under his eyes like shackles that he didn't have the key to.
The truth was that the caffeine was just a convenient excuse and he just liked the taste of coffee. Even if he went sober with no caffeine for a month straight, his insomnia wouldn't improve one bit.
Just behind his back was a glass, and behind that was a little café; the same place where he got the bitter cup in his hand.
The little café breathed its late afternoon sighs: muffled conversations, the clatter of cutlery, people waiting in line — their thumbs bouncing around their phones, someone ordering their drink, and the low murmur of a jazz speaker that was mostly responsible for the creation of the worn, cozy, and restless atmosphere that defined the place.
Just like the people in line, he was also on his phone, staring at the screen dimmed low enough to prevent the headache that was lingering at the back of his skull from waking up and ruining his day even further.
Another chapter.
Another slog through the same tired webnovel that he had been routinely keeping up with each daily update as if it were a requirement, even though he was free to abandon the novel at any time.
The words of the lengthy chapter blurred, not because he was bored — which he was, but because he knew them too well; he knew exactly where the story contained in the latest chapter would stumble, where it would try and fail to surprise him.
To call the novel predictable would be to claim that water makes things wet.
Obviously.
Still, he read.
He always read.
There was a strange comfort in the predictability. Even if the characters on the digital pages were more hollow than a shell abandoned by a crab, even if the plot twisted into nonsense that threatened to give him migraines — it was something he could rely on.
The badness would be bad. It would be as generic as always. It would be cliche.
Predictable.
In its own ironic way, it was faithful and trustworthy.
As he read the last sentence of the chapter, which was pretty eventful in terms of how many events occurred, a small smile ghosted over his lips.
This smile was a private one. Almost affectionate, it disappeared in the blink of an eye.
Even he didn't catch the smile and only the worker who was happening to clean a table noticed that brief moment where his lips curled up slightly.
"That man knows how to smile? Hmm... he looks better like that," the worker muttered, feeling surprised and a little intrigued by that expression of his she'd never seen before. But with a reminder from her manager, she resumed her duties, quickly tossing the smile to the back of her mind.
Quiet and rapid fluttering sounds approached him.
In the corner of his eye, he watched as a small sparrow hopped onto the table's edge, close enough that its shadow brushed against his cup.
"Hi," he greeted the animal with a fleeting tilt of his head, almost indifferent. The bird stood there, puffed up against the cold, tilting its head at him as if waiting for something.
He thought, absently, that it looked a little too bold on the table to just be passing by for no reason. Was it perhaps hoping that he had a snack to feed it?
"Sorry bud. I don't have crackers on me."
A second passed.
Then another.
The sparrow moved closer towards him and tapped its tiny beak against the ceramic cup — a soft and deliberate knock.
Once.
Twice.
Furrowing his brows slightly, he didn't move as he observed the bird; after knocking, it stared at him with one bright black eye.
The moment stretched strangely long — like time itself was stalling.
The wind quieted, leaving only the chills of his insomnia to keep the cold shivers going.
The air thinned.
After what felt like a while, he blinked once slowly, breaking free from the strange moment he was trapped in.
The sparrow flapped its wings once, flew past him, even pushing strands of his hair back as it was mere millimeters away from missing him. And just like that, it was gone, becoming a sharp flicker against the sky that was a little too pale.
"That was strange," he muttered.
That was when the clock hanging on the entrance of the café began ticking out of rhythm. Even though he was outside, he was still able to hear the faint ticks.
'Does no one else hear that?' he pondered. He took a brief look around and it seemed that only he seemed to notice the strange ticks of the clock.
Although he felt that this change had occurred right at that moment, perhaps he was mistaken and the clock had always been ticking in that weird cadence since he entered the café to order his coffee.
"..."
'No. It just changed at this moment. Did it break somehow?' he wondered. It wasn't impossible for a clock to break even without the careless touch of a human.
About to move past the strangeness and return to the task at hand, which was finishing his cup of coffee, the clock ticked one more time, twice — then froze.
The hum of the overhead lights that were illuminating the outdoor tables sharpened, pitching into frequencies too high, too low, sounds he could feel more than hear.
Words spoken inside the café and in his nearby surroundings stretched into long underwater-like groans.
He remained seated, observing all the changes while as still as a stone.
It wasn't panic holding him there in place like a statue; instead, it was this hollow, almost resigned patience.
He had the quiet look of someone who had long suspected the possibility of something like this could happen to people on Earth, although he never imagined it would be him.
The air thickened.
Tables shifted in the corner of his eyes, moving when he was not directly looking at them as if they were alive. He could hear it happening behind him as well. The sound of metal scraping across the concrete floor and the flutter of the cloth laid on top of the tables.
The smell of coffee twisted into something coppery and wrong. He picked his cup up to get a better smell before placing it back down on the table.
The sparrow from earlier returned and began knocking on the ceramic over and over until the cup broke. No liquid poured out as if it never existed.
It tilted its head as it looked at him. He mimicked it slightly.
Then, more sounds of wings blurred across the sky. Beaks snapping wildly above him. He looked up and saw about a hundred more sparrows flying in circles, counterclockwise in an orderly fashion.
The clock that he had been fascinated with earlier due to its strange ticks, fell down from the wall. It looked to be still intact at first, but there was a long crack that traveled down the middle.
Only then did he stand, steady but slow.
Gravity tilted.
The color of the world once vibrant drained, becoming streaks of gray and sickly green.
Voices collapsed into silence.
The bird on his table vanished.
His last thought, dry and almost curious:
'...Interesting,' he thought.
The floor beneath him split and he plummeted into darkness.
When he opened his eyes, his body had been repositioned to that of someone who had been sleeping on a comfortable bed.
The ceiling above him wasn't one he'd ever seen before. It was clean. Too clean.
Sitting up, he could immediately sense that there was a difference in the length and strength of the arms he had planted on the mattress.
Turning his head to the right, he saw a door. Then he turned to his left and saw a glass door that led to a balcony.
Faint but visible from where he was, he saw the reflection of a stranger.
"Fuck."
The word he muttered wasn't anger.
It wasn't fear.
It was simply the most accurate word left to use after what had just occurred.