EXCERPT:
Meeting My Maker & Other Kitchen Disasters
The Krups KM-7000. It ground its own beans. It made perfectly calibrated coffee. It was, without question the best Christmas present she’d ever received. Bless Tegan. Bless her cute little blonde head full of wonderful gift ideas.
India stood in front of the divine contraption, having added distilled water to the reservoir, loaded the organic cone filter, poured in the Costa Rica Peaberry beans, and listened to the machine create the freshly pulverized, aromatic grounds, begin the brewing cycle. Her nostrils flared with hedonistic satisfaction at the scent, and the anticipation of the first cup, as she swallowed the bit of salivation appearing on her tongue. Her gratification of this ritual had never waned, nor had her enjoyment of the dark elixir that graced her cup.
India had even attached a new deified moniker to this machine. Coffee maker. Maker of Coffee. My Maker. She realized that was, indeed, the closest thing she had to religion. And she supposed that coffee really was her MAKER. She was sort of nonexistent without it. Wait. Can you be nonexistent AND without? Wasn’t that a double-negative? She answered herself with, Well, it certainly was, without coffee. Look at what my brain is doing without it. Rambling like a mental chatty Cathy.
Just as the first precious drops drippled into the carafe, the floor seemed to come out from under her.
In a cinematic slow-motion, she saw the light go out on the Maker switch, heard it gurgle in dismay, and go silent, steam wafting up into the air above, like some miasmic spirit leaving the body of the deceased. Poisonous effluvia. Toxic, because her Maker was supposed to live forever. It was too young to die.
Whah–?
Her eyes dithered back and forth, searching for some reasonable explanation. She glanced up at the overhead light in the ceiling. Still on. Not a power failure.
But her Maker was silent, dark.
Tentatively, she reached out a shy finger and pressed the power switch off and back on. Still dark.
No. NO.
She wriggled the power plug in the outlet on the wall.
Nothing.
Dead.
Her Maker was dead.
Her brain flailed around, and landed on an excerpt from a Stephen Crane poem…
…And God lay dead in heaven.
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Pariahs & Prodigals (Rain Falls #3) — No Comments