Work Text:
Kafka didn’t know how long she had already stared at the blank document in front of her but a quick glance at her ashtray let her know that it had been too long.
She lit another cigarette.
A couple of years ago words seemed to go from her mind onto the page almost seamlessly, her fingers acting as a mere messenger.
Now the words couldn’t even be forced out of her thick skull no matter how hard she banged against it. Ideas floated aimlessly and she had no way of catching them before they drifted away into obscurity.
Time to shut her laptop down. A coffee would be nice. Or a glass of wine.
On further consideration a bottle of vodka would be mighty fine.
The coffee shop down the road had only recently opened and she had heard that one of the baristas was very good at making all kinds of beverages.
Upon entering the small establishment the bitter smell of freshly made coffee greeted her, along with the light ringing of a bell and a breeze of lavender scented candles.
It seemed cozy, lonely almost. No one was around except for a red haired woman at the counter.
“Hello, I would like a coffee”, she said, doing her best to sound polite, though she had a hard time knowing what that even sounded like.
“Oh hi! Of course, what kind and how big should it be?”, the woman answered. Her voice was like pollen dropping from flowers. Kafka should’ve written that down.
Or not. Thinking on it further that line sounded stupid even for a corny romance poem from a few thousand years back. Maybe she needed the vodka after all. And she really needed to answer because the very beautiful woman in front of her was starting to look at her strangely.
“Uh, a coffee? Black?” She had never ordered coffee before. Was there a rule to this? Or did you just wing it and hoped that the very nice and probably ready to end it all underpaid person in front of you didn’t judge you too hard because they had probably seen worse shit in their life. This was stressing her out. She should’ve just made the cursed coffee herself, best new coffee in town be damned.
“Alright, just a moment.”
Now what?
Was she supposed to wait or was this a ‘sit down and I’ll bring you the coffee’ kind of thing. This was going poorly. She should’ve gone home.
With nothing better to do and no better plan in sight she just sat at the best looking seat in the room and stared at the candle.
It was barely lit anymore, fighting for its life in the world. Time would show if this candle deserved its shot or if it was destined to simmer down into nothingness. Forgotten.
Maybe she should write that down.
Kafka hastily grabbed a napkin and a pen she had on her at all times to write down some barely legible letters in hopes that it would make her want to spill out her thoughts on the matter of life and death and form it into some kind of manuscript to be enjoyed by people who also liked to contemplate matters of no real importance to the now. Maybe not enjoyed. Maybe it's more of a consumption of thoughts people are too afraid to share with their peers or before the light of the day has bid its farewell.
No use dwelling on it if she couldn’t even write the damned thing.
“Here you go! Hope you enjoy it.” A coffee was placed in front of her, interrupting her construct made out of strings of words that had no hope of making sense anytime in the near future.
“Thank you, you too.”
She did the thing.
Kafka wasn’t a person to get embarrassed at all. She could however recognize that this was something most people would feel embarrassed by and this situation was already uncomfortably outside of her comfort zone.
The red haired woman however just laughed good-naturedly and bid her farewell.
Eager to get out of this situation she took a sip of her coffee and wow.
It tasted awful.
She had done it.
About four hundred thirty-two words were staring at her, from her soul onto the paper back into her eyes.
It was shit.
It was shit and it took almost an hour.
It was shit and the only thing she thought of while writing it was honey. Honey dripping into a pool of blood. Her soul was painted in honey and blood and she had no idea who the artist was.
It was shit and the coffee she had the misfortune of drinking a few days ago was shit as well
Though for some ungodly reason it gave her the motivation to put her scrambled thoughts into words. However few and shit they were. At least they were. At least they existed, until she decides to delete it all and tries to forget they, along with her gold-red soul, ever existed in the first place.
Maybe she needed another awful coffee to quell her starving artist. Was this her thing now? Drinking coffee too bitter to be considered safe for consumption and spilling out her shrinking soul onto a piece of document forever to be remembered on her not so forever laptop?
She packed her things, including her laptop, lit a cigarette and headed out.
Upon entering the place of her nightmares, though that might be a little overdramatic, she immediately spotted the culprit.
Not just for the coffee, but also her soul. Honey-coloured eyes and blood-coloured hair. Well, this was new.
Feelings proved difficult for Kafka. It was not as if she did not feel them. Dissecting them and realizing what a feeling even was, was a task she was not made for.
She might have been able to formulate them into words on a school worksheet a couple of years ago but now they slipped away from her like leaves dancing in the wind.
Feelings might have proved difficult for Kafka but she was pretty sure this could be classified as attraction of some kind. Maybe a muse. Maybe this woman with her sweet eyes and bitter coffee was the muse to her starving artist soul.
Or maybe she simply wished to have sex with her.
Ordering a coffee this time around felt safer and even though this time it tasted no better, the words she was able to put down onto her ever growing document felt like a small victory nonetheless.
After that fateful day of realisation Kafka would visit often.
Often enough to find out that the woman’s name was Himeko and that Himeko only helped out on days where the shop was not as busy and the people coming knew and, to Kafka’s horror, even liked the coffee she served.
And sometimes Himeko would sit with her and talk about things Kafka had no real interest in.
She still listened, because she was raised right and because Himeko had a nice voice. Mainly because she had a nice voice.
“Are you a writer?”, she asked one time.
“Trying to be.” Kafka laughed and took a sip of her coffee. After her many times here she got used to its taste.
“You better give me a copy of your book when it comes out.” Himeko laughed as well.
Himeko’s laugh would join the blood and the honey inside of her and mix itself into a big puddle of feelings Kafka had no real interest in dissecting at that moment.