Wings of the Morning

The city coffee shop: pink and brown plastic, stale cardboard, chipped synthetic glass streaked with condensation, the screech of styrofoam grinding against styrofoam, burning coffee beans, fried sugar and faint traces of industrial disinfectants. Everything here, especially the air, is artificial; frosted and coated with candy like the witch's house that Hansel and Gretel knew. A procession of somnabulant automatons in a shambling queue. We are drowsy prisoners in the dungeons of Dunkin Donuts: the Large Black is our jailer, the racks of inflated dough become our prison bars. I knew there was a reason why a plain cruller looks like the knot of a hangman’s rope.
"Do you have any last requests?"
"Yes, could I have an extra Sweet ‘n’ Low, please?"
"Denied. But I can offer you a Nutrasweet."
Coffee drinkers always exclaim that they "need" a cup, never that they actually "want" one. This is not surprising: who in their right mind would want a cup of this opaque sludge?
Imagine the boiling liquid coursing through the organic pipes and valves of your body's digestive system, rather like Dr Jekyll's monstrous potion bubbling mischievously along the copper tubes in his dank, dark Victorian laboratory.
You are paving your aorta with steaming tar.
You have filled your human tank with grade C low-octane petroleum, and you can now insert the caffeine keys into your sphincter and turn your brain's ignition on.
Personally I only delicately sip frothy cappuccino, which I pronounce out-of-sync, Fellini-style.

Comments

[Mrs. Peperium]

We don't have crullers out here because Big Coffee decided living here was enough of a prison.

I understand though that The Donald has the terrorists living in fresh crullers cages at Club Gitmo. The moment they eat their way out, he has them put in a new one. The worse part is, he doesn't give them with Dunkin' Donuts' coffee with their crullers cages. He gives them Turkish coffee. Have you ever tried to dunk a cruller in one of those little porcelian cups. The Donald is an out of control madman.

[DarkoV]

I step out of the QUANTITY line and line up in the much shorter QUALITY line. Small thimble of 3 espresso shots. Quick bolt down the throat. Like shooting starter fluid down a carburetor's throat (don't know if carburetors still exist; they may have gone out with "1 coffee, black"). No need for sugar. Only delays the kick-start.

[Joelle]

I will defend the coffee at Dunkin' Donuts to my dying day. Which will probably be soon, given what this stuff is doing to my stomach lining right now... Still, there's less internal angst and fecal urgency than with Starbuck's, so pick your poison, eh?