Black Cat Cafe

The room was roaring with laughter by the firelight. It was warm and musty, the upstairs was crowded too with hundreds of drunk men. All with a pint of beer in one hand and a wand in the other. The man behind the counter sighed as he looked onto the rowdy group. He had a waiters uniform on and a small barret on top of his head. How could this happen? He wondered to himself. Spells and hexes flew across the air, oblivious to whom they hit. Cursed coffee dragged men down to the depths of their cups leaving only their watches or their receipts.
One man was sitting alone in a corner at a small table with a small white cloth ahead of him. The waiter walked over to him as if to seek someone normal out of the bunch. Also because the spells and hexes miraculously, never hit the man.
“What do you want?” asked the waiter as politely as he could. The smile he had once worn tonight was fading quickly as his restaurant was transforming into a bar.
“Just a coffee.” replied to stranger. He was leaning back in his chair with a cigarette in his hand. He was wearing a cloak so the waiter could hardly make out his face. He squinted through the dim lights to try to get a look at him but instantly found himself frozen.
“I said a coffee please.” the man said. His voice was still calm. The waiter found that he could suddenly move again. He staggered backwards.
“Yes, yes sir.” he stuttered. He turned around and went into the back room. Why the hell did I open this place? He wondered the whole way back. The ground shook violently and the waiter went flying across the room and landed into an incredibly robust wan who, ignoring the minor intrusion, was now running across the room with only a silk kerchief to cover his nether regions. Only a few of the sober men in the room had realized something had happened.
“What was that?” asked a skinny man from across the room. The floor was still shaking and the walls were starting to creak.
“I don’t know,” came an answer from under a pile of men who had just been put to sleep by a rather strong spell, “Maybe there’s a storm brewing tonight.”
“Yeah, or maybe there’s just something heavy on its way by.” this answer came from a particularly wiry man who was sitting on the ceiling. No one wondered how he had gotten to be up there, or why it was that he had more than three eyeballs.
The waiter got up and brushed off his pants. There were alcohol stains on the white part. Damn. He thought as he walked over to the window. He drew open the curtains and saw nothing but black.
“Hey,” he called to the men of the bar, “ what time is it? Around nine maybe?”
“Nine? Are you serious? No I think its about noon.”
“Noon?” the waiter stroked his full beard and turned to the rest of the crowd, “Do you think there has been a lunar eclipse?” he stumbled as the floorboards began to creak. Mud was beginning to force its way through the cracks. Suddenly they heard it, the man from the corner who had secluded himself for so long, was laughing.
“What’s so funny?” asked the robust man.
“You guys are idiots.” he said softly, taking another draw on his cigarette.
“What?” the exclamation came from many places at one. All at once the air was full of hexes, curses, and spells. All of which had managed to narrowly miss him and hit a nearby man who was drunk to realize that he was now three inches tall and had a nose the size of a cantaloupe.
“Just like I said,” the man was still sitting calmly. “You guys are a bunch of idiots. It’s not a storm, or an eclipse, or anything else you idiots said for that matter.” The men began to look curiously at the cloaked man, as if trying to get a peer under his cloak as if it would help them to kick his face in later.
“What is it then?” asked the wiry man on the ceiling, “Please enlighten us.”
“Here’s your coffee.” the waiter brought it out and set it on the table. The interruption was unwanted and the waiter ran behind a wall to avoid the glares. The man, however, took a long sip of his coffee.
“Well?” asked the man from under the others. The cloaked man put down his coffee and wiped his mouth. He smiled as he removed his hood and laughed to himself as the others in the restaurant gasped.
“Were sinking.” And sure enough as the waiter looked out the window once more, he saw the grim that was beginning to push its way through the glass as the worms came in from under the floorboards, and near the top of the earth on a soggy wet mound next to a gaping hole in the ground, a small wooden sign still lingered on the surface. The words etched in black with a cheap sharpie marker read, “Black Cat Café.”