Here is another of those two-sentence stories with poetry added. Read here for the first one and explanation of why I wrote it and got started on this idea, and search under the category Fiction/Poetry Combination for others in the series.
Caffeine
Light through the half-turned blinds striping the ceiling, I needed a transfusion of hot coffee, compensation for my pain and suffering and the sheer aggravation of yet another day of work at this office filled with zombie paper-shufflers. But I couldn’t leave the safe zone until I got an escort – I didn’t need my head torn off on the way to the break room – and with none in sight, I stared through the bullet-proof glass at the expanse of carpet that, I knew from sad memories the details of which I’d rather not recall, was just too wide to cross while running with a cup of hot coffee.
Java in the veins
A lightning bolt in my brain
I can think again.
(Haiku 362)
12/24/17
“Run Day and Night”, mixed media, 8″ x 10″, 2010.
Claudia McGill Writes Poetry, Did You Know That? 
I love this. A metaphor for many things. (and the colors!) (K)
Thank you. My husband is very very fond of coffee, he’d run across that office, I think – that’s kind of what gave me the idea.
Ha ha I would too.
The haiku was written for me! Your two sentence stories always always grab my attention.
You must be like my husband. He is addicted. I never understand it. I think years of drinking office coffee have done something to me. I prefer iced tea!
Haha, I have a cup of coffee first thing each morning. I’m addicted to that one cup. I like iced tead, too!
As a zombie fan, I very much appreciate the deployment of that metaphor in this story.
I was thinking of you – when I wrote that zombie word, to describe the office, it took the story in a whole other way – and I thought of you and your love for zombies, and that this story could have two different meanings, or maybe one is just an intensification of the other? I don’t know but I liked think about an actual zombie/human office.
It made me think of the movie ‘Shaun of the Dead’ and the way Shaun is oblivious to the zombie outbreak initially because it’s all so similar to the tedium of his everyday life. So, yes, it works as a metaphor and as a potential horror story. Zombies are metaphors for society in any case.
Yes. You know, I am warming up to zombies, the more I read about them. As a note, a friend of mine who works at Glenside library just completed a self-imposed project of reading only zombie fiction for about a year. He enjoyed it (now he’s moving on to Stephen King novels in a marathon fashion). So you are not alone in your zombie existence!
I love coffee!
Love your print, too. 🙂
Butting in on your comments above–my husband and I heard a story on Saturday’s Morning Edition about the popularity of zombies in books, movies, TV–and how the trend doesn’t seem to be dying down at all. They relate it to current events. 😉
Yes, zombies. I am kind of getting intrigued. They do seem to be settling in. I’ve even watched a zombie TV series and enjoyed it. And I’d watch more. I am wondering how this is happening. Interesting, the current events angle.
Yes, I suppose it’s like the sci-fi films and shows like The Twilight Zone during the Cold War.
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