coffee (life 10/?)

Clink-Clunk. Coffee swayed in the pot, the brown liquid hitting both sides as rhythmically as it could, thick as it was. Clink-Clunk. The jug was black inside, stained from the viscous liquid sitting too long, and charred on the bottom from the hob, upon which this jug was never designed to stand. Both of these stains gave the liquid the kind of acrid taste that no one would would ever choose to drink.

Clink-Clunk. The jug was hitting a charred black pan — the only one in the small, smokey cabin — which was as scratched and scarred as any veteran. Clink-Clunk.

The jug was almost pulmonary, its sporadic beat gave the tiny, greasy kitchen more life than almost anything else in the area.

In the middle of the cabin, shifting gently and comparatively silently was a table. A bowl, a clock — its dead batteries long lost to the floor somewhere — a tackle box and a half used book of matches sat around a dying candle in the centre.

Clink……clunk.

Behind the table, at the opposite end of the cabin to the kitchen, a man was asleep. Swaying gently, almost silently, in a hammock. He was covered in an array of blankets.

Aside from the clink-clunk of the pot and the pan, the only other noise inside the cabin was the radio, which provided a simultaneously depressing, and comforting white noise that helped the man sleep at night, and kept him woefully uneasy during the day.

Clink………………clunk.

As he slept, the radio was almost inaudible, a spattering of rain on the windows of the cabin drowning out what little sound it produced from the dead static in the air.

The jug was on a clink, and one of the batteries was charging toward the chair when the radio gave a sharp crackle.

He pulled down the covers from over his head as if he hadn’t been asleep at all, and stared at the small box on the sideboard.

The pot and the battery gave a near simultaneous ‘clunk’, and then the voice came over the radio.

It was a woman’s voice:

“…Please… God……… Shit…”

“…”

“Is anybody out there?”