Midnight coffee

Did you know, that if you were to be lost in a desert or a deserted forest like this, without a visual cue like a signboard or a compass you’d end up walking in circles?

What perfect timing! I thought to myself. Dylan always brought up the creepiest facts at the worst times. His face, dimly lit by the moon seemed creepily excited. I couldn’t stop panicking however. It just seemed that a few hours earlier we were living the time of our life! We had started off on a hiking trip across the mainland two days ago. We had planned out everything meticulously to ensure we made the best of our time. Our plan started falling apart last night when we decided to stay back a little longer and unwind. Which seemed like a good thing at that point, we were exhausted and hadn’t really expected that some random actress would be found dead on the way that we planned to go by. The entire area was cordoned off and we had to take the longer way to reach the home-stay we’d booked.

This led to a chain-reaction of events wherein we missed our friends we were planning to tag along with, missed out on having “the morning cocktails with the cockatoo”. Just when I thought that the entire trip was ruined, Dylan came up with an alternate route which would ideally get us to our next place on time. I heaved a sigh of relief and stuffed everything in place. Little did I know that we would be trudging around for an entire day lost in some random tropical forest. The forest seemed quite pleasant with a few platoons of monkeys going about their business occasionally looking at us and making “tut-tut” noises as if looking at us in pity. I really wasn’t as much of a nature lover Dylan was but it certainly wasn’t that much of an adventure getting bitten by random insects. We passed by a shallow stream and I was afraid that Piranhas would start nibbling on my feet. Luckily Dylan reminded me that Piranhas only exist in the South American rain-forest and also added that it would be a great experience watching them do their thing to prey.

Sure! As long as it’s you who’s getting bitten and not me. Well, Day had passed and it was now mostly dark with the moon lending us a bit of her merciful light. It seemed that the reason people got lost/walked around in circles was not quite known but it either involved the fact that the mind added a little bit of cognitive deviation of “What’s straight” either that or the fact that a person’s dominant leg might cause them to keep deviating. Well, thanks for that fact Dylan! I still don’t see how that’s going to help us. We kept trudging on and suddenly we thought we saw lights through the clearing! Beautiful, unnatural, Man-made lights we almost started rushing when the thought hit us. What if this was an expressway? We’d end up smashed like the Wei-lin cosmetics share price last week.

We walked cautiously and though it wasn’t an expressway it did seem like this road saw a lot of speed. Judging by the number of cars wrecked with plants growing through this might have been a regular spot for the BKK street racing gang. We kept walking alongside the road hoping to hitch-hike and get to someplace better than this. The farther we kept moving, the narrower the road grew and the heavier the foliage protruded. We were just about to turn and go the other way round when we spotted what seemed like a restaurant afar. We ran with new-found enthusiasm and hope we could get something to eat on.

Gaia’s cafe

We were almost disappointed when we reached and realized that this wasn’t a restaurant but was in fact a 20 seater cafe. Which meant that there were probably no comfy rooms, and we’d have to put up with some local grub. Beggars can’t be choosers, I thought aloud and stepped in. What’s the first thing you’d expect to smell in a cafe? I’d definitely expected it to smell like freshly ground coffee, but the cafe had an earthy smell to it, the very same smell you’d get after a fresh shower of rain. The entire place had a nature-ish vibe to it. It seemed more of a nursery than a cafe and my heart sank even lower. But Dylan seemed to be having the time of his life! “Wow! This is a Nepenthes! Did you know that this plant swallows up bugs and is one of the few carnivorous plants?” I had put up with his bio classes all day and at this point it seemed that feeding the weird pitcher shaped plant a Dylan-sized snack was certainly not a bad idea.

“Hullo? Anybody home? Is there anyone here?” I asked aloud half-certain that I might not get a response. As if in response a few plants seemed to open up like a curtain and a middle-aged woman stepped out. “Hi there! Didn’t expect any customers to come through so late.” she said as she offered her hand in introduction. “I’m Rhea, I run this place with my mom Gaia, hence the name Gaia’s cafe.” Just looking at her reminded me of my mother, it almost seemed that all our worries were over now that we had reached this place. She continued “My mother, has just started to grow younger so she might not be able to meet you guys.” That pulled up a red flag. Wait what? How does someone grow younger? But then Dylan as usual had an answer. “Oh! That’s right, even my mother didn’t like being referred to as old.” Rhea nodded un-enthusiastically as if she were coming to terms with her mother’s old age.

Well, I was famished so I cut the introductions short and asked for the menu, and guess what? Every single item on the menu was vegan. I shouldn’t have been surprised but I was taken aback by the lack of interesting menu options and in my hunger all the words in the menu seemed to be made up of ancient Greek alphabets dancing around. I randomly pointed to an item in the menu hoping that it would at-least be edible. Within no time we were scarfing down our food, It wasn’t bad at all. The salad seemed like one of the best things I’d ever eaten in life, and Dylan was scarfing down this circular bread with chickpeas. “Hope you’re enjoying the food?” asked Rhea. We hungrily nodded yes, and continued with our food. “I wish mother would meet you guys.” She said. “She always gives out gifts to our most enthusiastic customers.” Well, that seemed particularly unhelpful. Seeing that a gift would only add onto our already heavy and weary backs. “Well, she almost always gives people the gifts that they require the most.” It almost seemed that she had read my mind, Well. In that case I’d rather wish for a fast car which would get us to our destination at the earliest.

She read my mind, that’s the only way this was possible. Even worse she might be a gangster or a sorceress. As soon as we were done with our meal she asked us to follow her to the back of the cafe where there was a shiny green Audi parked. She handed us the keys and told us that her mother wanted us to have it. Well, we freaked out. Why would someone want to just give away a car and that too a complete stranger? What freaked us out more was the freaky warning that she gave us.

The nourishment you’ve received shall suffice you. Ensure that you take neither a morsel nor a meal, either drop or a river of drink until the sun rises and is at it’s zenith on the day after the morrow.

With that warning, we left there without a single thought. We kept driving in the other direction for a day and as she said we weren’t hungry neither were we thirsty. Soon we reached familiar roads and kept driving towards our original destination. We kept alternating the drive, to ensure that we didn’t get burnt out. It was past midnight and the roads were pretty dark. We kept driving through and suddenly we saw a ghostly apparition of a lady running across the road with some sort of stick. Dylan hardly had time to hit the breaks and we almost slammed into her. The lady stopped and stared at us with murderous intent. She suddenly broke into a run and almost hit us with what I now realized was a spade. Dylan reflexively gunned the car and hit the lady. Well, technically the spade and the spade spliced her.

We didn’t really understand what to do and panicked and drove away from there hoping that she was fine. We kept driving to our destination and realized that we had screwed up when we noticed sirens behind us. Before we could react we also had cop cars block us from the front. We got down, raised our hands in the air proactively just in case there was a trigger happy cop there. Within seconds we were cuffed and being dragged into a van but not before we noticed that the bonnet was filled with blood. Turns out that the mad lady was indeed not okay, and could never be anymore. The impact with which we hit her was fatal. As we sat in the van, all I could think of was, if only we hadn’t stopped. If only we weren’t tempted. We might have avoided this, if only we hadn’t been greedy for a midnight coffee.