an unimaginable punishment
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☕ At The Starbucks In Hell
by Ly Faulk
I don’t know what I did to end up here but it’s 24 hours a day of preteens ordering frappucinos that I’ve never heard of. Every. Single. Day.
They sneer and roll their eyes when I ask for the recipe. I know they’re really demons in disguise, but the rules are such that I have to be nice to them, play the role perfectly, or I’m fired. In hell, being fired means literal fire and torture. I’ve been fired once. Never again.
I take the orders while Billy makes the drinks. I know what Billy did to end up here. He’s a mass murderer from the early 19th century. What I don’t know is what Billy did before Starbucks was invented, but there’s never a down moment to take a breathe and ask him.
He does a good job though so I just try to stay out of his way and mark the cups correctly. He gets pissed if I mess up. When Billy gets angry, he yells and curses and threatens to kill me; then the preteens get upset and ask to speak to the manager, which is, of course, me. I shove some coupons into their sticky hands and mumble apologies until they run out of complaints and finally leave me alone. I’ve never been great at conflict resolution.
We’ve been here, Billy and me, for the last three hundred years. Three centuries of non-stop giggling teenagers and the constant screaming whir of the blenders. I can barely hear the music over the din which is a small blessing because it’s been the same twenty-song playlist on a loop this entire time.
The line stretches from my register to the door; as soon as one teen leaves, another one enters. They snap pictures of their frappuccinos with their phones and linger to gossip about the others. The air is thick with hormones, but underneath is something else, something more sinister. Like brimstone and sulfur.
Everyone I ever knew or loved has died by now. I’ll never know if they wound up somewhere down here or over in the other place. I don’t even know for sure that there is another place. I tell myself this is only purgatory, that I’ll get out of here someday. It’s the only way I can make it through each day. My one consolation, one I’ll never tell the demons lest they correct their mistake, is that this Starbucks doesn’t have a drive-thru.
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