It was a Tuesday. The rain did it’s usual pitter patter on the window as Leonard Gilbert awoke to his alarm blaring. It lay about a foot away from him on his nightstand, and he read the time to determine if it was a valid time to rise. “6:30 AM” the clock read in a glaring infrared, still beeping and flashing in his face. His arm arose to make a haphazard attempt at silencing the mechanic beast which lay before him, but his first endeavor fell short as he instead knocked over his needle and cell phone.
“Fuck!” he exclaimed as he made another try at the accursed object. This time, he not only knocked the alarm clock off his dainty night stand, but he also knocked off his packet of smack. This caused his stash to spill out onto the floor, fogging up a blotch of the carpet in a dark powdery snowstorm. The heroin lay on the ground in a quaint pile, with his precious needle laying about a foot away from it.
Leonard realized what he had done a split second after his alarm made contact with his soft carpet. It landed on the furry forest akin to a skydiver screaming his way the whole way down, and touching ground as graceful as any swan. The alarm’s harmful blares continued to resonate within Leonard’s very being, every ring seeming louder than the last. And then, the headache hit.
A soft moan escaped from his breath. His head felt it had been used as the snare drum for a Neil Peart drum solo, to an abusive level. Migraine couldn’t even describe the pain contained inside Leonard’s skull at this moment. Heroin was not going to do the job for getting him up for work today. No, Leonard needed something a little stronger - some of that dirty, beautiful bean.
A full pound of the bitterest, dankest, and highest caffeine content coffee Leonard had ever done before in his life was sitting in a brown paper bag at the foot of his bed. The bag read “1 lb” in a black Sharpie’s scrawled penmanship. As he propped himself up, finally ending his deep slumber, he stuck his hand in the bag to feel the dark beans against his fingers. They felt like small pebbles, just waiting to be ground up by his premium four chamber grinder.
Leonard sat up in bed, finally coming to his senses a little bit. His head still felt like a deflated balloon, but he at least could comprehend reality. The dark clouds billowed over the run down cityscape that greeted Leonard out his window. He wiped his eyes once, twice and then reached over to his night stand drawer. He pulled out his brilliant stainless steel grinder, still with some grounds leftover from yesterday’s cups. He unscrewed the top section and carefully placed his hand back in the bag, grabbing a fistful of that precious dark bean.
As he ground up the coffee beans, he walked over to his cupboard and opened it up, searching for his coffee maker. This revealed a few scattered boxes of old rice, macaroni and cheese, and some pots and pans at the bottom, nothing special. But the crown jewel of his caffeine addiction lay behind some of those pots and pans at the bottom; he shuffled around the old cooking utensils and pulled out an odd, box-sized black machine and plugged it into an outlet next to his toaster. It was an preserved Keurig one cup brewer, which would make one cup of coffee at a time. Absolutely genius. You couldn’t even find these in the states, let alone set a price on one. It was a gem found while cleaning out his parent’s house after their funeral. Best of all, now Leonard didn’t have to share his stash so often with his pothead neighbors.
He finished grinding up the beans he had placed in the grinder, and placed them into the Keurig. He filled the Keurig up with tap water, quietly shaking from excitement as he did it. He put the illegal machine back on top of his countertop and pressed the button that brewed the biggest cup possible. Continuing to follow the instructions he had found in the box, he then placed his mug under the Keurig, and listened to the wonderful machine do it’s work. It revved, churned, and gurgled as it brewed that delicious black drink which he so ravenously craved. He began shaking again, biting his nails, tapping his feet, just trying to pass the horrible 45 seconds or so that the coffee maker took to brew his cup.
As he continued to try and wait out the seemingly infinite time, he stared at his mug, patiently waiting for the dark fluid to pour from the depths of this machine. His mug had a picture of his little brother Ricky on it, dressed for his first year of varsity football. This was another gem stolen from the ruins of the Gilbert family house. It had a chip on the handle, which would cut someone if they weren’t too careful, but Leonard always remembered to hold the mug exactly right.
The Keurig coughed up a few more heaves, and finally began drizzling out coffee into Leonard’s mug. He jumped out of his seat and began holding the mug, waiting for every precious drop to come out. It drizzled like blood from a fresh cut, slowly but consistent. When the coffee reached a certain point on the mug, the machine began letting out coffee slower and slower. Soon enough, the machine stopped dripping and it let out one last rev of it’s internal guts before becoming silent again, refusing to speak again until called upon.
Leonard picked up the mug, took it over to his couch and sat cross legged. He sipped it, letting the hot beverage burn his tongue ever so slightly. The bitter taste and that quick rush of awakeness was the high he craved. This was the way he liked to drink his coffee.
He thought he heard a knock at the door, or someone outside. As he darted his head toward the door, he sprang up and checked the peephole. Not a thing. Just Leonard, silence, and this delicious dark broth to sooth him over in the waning hours of the morning before he left for work.
