Late Night at the End of Everything
Inside, it smells like burnt toast and cheap coffee, the kind that feels like it's scraped from the bottom of a barrel labelled "For Desperation Only." The booths are made of red vinyl cracked with age, and everything has a thin layer of grease—everything except the people. The people, if you can even call them that, are different.
Behind the counter, the cook is a three-eyed man with skin that droops like melted wax. His apron reads, "Kiss the Cook", but there's something unsettling about the way his third eye tracks every movement in the room. His name tag says "Steve," though no one's ever asked him about it.
At one booth, a guy with a VHS player for a head sits alone, rewinding himself over and over. The tape inside keeps sputtering, unable to settle on a moment, forcing him to relive fragmented seconds of existence. He sighs audibly each time it happens, the kind of sigh that makes you think he's been doing this for centuries. And maybe he has. No one asks him about it either.
The waitress, a tired woman in her forties who looks more like she's in her eighties, slides across the floor without actually walking. Her name tag says "Janice," but the way she slinks between tables suggests she's been around since the dawn of time, or at least since people started pretending they had purpose. She pours coffee into cups that never seem to get empty, no matter how much the patrons drink.
A man walks in—or, rather, something in the shape of a man. His features are bland, as though someone forgot to finish drawing him. His eyes are two pinholes in an otherwise smooth face, his mouth a crooked slash like a mistake someone made with a pen. He slides into a booth, staring thoughtfully at the laminated menu, which only has one item: "Eggs."
Janice floats over, her voice a monotone drone. "What'll it be?"
"Eggs," says the man-shape, as if he had a choice.
The cook, Steve, grunts. The sizzling sound from the grill is disturbingly wet, like something alive being seared. The man-shape stares out the window, where there's nothing but blackness. Not night, just… nothing. The universe outside the diner has collapsed into an abyss, but the lights in here keep flickering, like the diner itself refuses to acknowledge the end of everything.
In the far corner, two shadows sit in another booth, though they have no bodies to cast them. They whisper to each other in incomprehensible tones, their conversation an eerie hum of dread. If you listen too long, you start to hear your own name.
A payphone rings near the bathroom. It's been ringing for hours, but no one ever answers it. It keeps getting louder. Somehow, nobody notices except for you, but then, that's the point, isn't it? The phone's ringing for you.
The man-shape sips his coffee, the black liquid sloshing into his faceless void. "So," he says, as if to no one in particular, "do you think any of this ever mattered?"
The waitress chuckles—a dry, brittle sound like old bones knocking together. "Matters to who?" she asks, not really expecting an answer.
The man-shape shrugs. His shoulders slump under the weight of an existential weight too big for his unfinished body to bear. "I used to think it did. Before."
"Before what?" Janice doesn't care. She's heard it all.
"Before I realized everything's a rerun. You know? Like I've seen this episode a thousand times, but I keep waiting for a twist that's never coming."
Steve flips something unidentifiable on the grill. "No twist," he says, his third eye glaring through the haze of greasy air. "Just commercials."
The man-shape nods as if that explains everything, which, somehow, it does. There's no grand revelation, no cosmic secret. Just endless reruns, each episode slightly more worn than the last, the same hollow patterns repeating.
Outside, the abyss presses against the diner's windows. It wants to come in, wants to eat the stale light, the greasy comfort of this purgatory. But the neon sign buzzes stubbornly, like a bug trapped between two worlds. The end of everything can wait for morning.
In the corner, the two shadows laugh, though the sound is more like a scream. You get up, reaching for the door. You don't remember deciding to stand, but now you're moving, the payphone still ringing, louder and louder, louder than anything should ever be.
"Hey," says Janice, her hollow eyes fixed on you. "You sure you want to go out there?"
You freeze, hand on the doorknob. For a second, you're not sure. The abyss is patient; it'll wait.
You glance back at the booth. The man-shape is gone, his cup still full. Steve doesn't notice. Janice stares at you like she knows exactly what you're thinking: the door or the diner? Outside, there's nothing. Inside, at least there's eggs.
The phone rings again.
You stay.