Anvil

When I pushed the door open, a bell jingled above my head and hinges squealed. I stepped inside and the door slammed shut as a frigid draft blew through the room. The door clattered, the bell rattled, until they both went silent and sighed.

   The lights inside were drastically dim, and each had flies buzzing noisily against the warm bulbs. There were only mustard yellow booths with upside down coffee mugs and cheap vases with fake flowers leaning against the walls. There was a bar with nine floral stools, and a singular man huddled with hunched shoulders, staring emptily.

   I took a seat in one of the booths and turned a mug over. Like the huddling man at the bar, I too stared emptily into space. Too much was soaring through my brain at once, distantly painful memories and embarrassing monstrosities bombarded an aching, quaking, brain and each thought sent another throb through my head. I was so utterly full of everything, of imagination and intellect, that I was completely empty and devoid. All of creation flowed through my mind but I had not the energy to comprehend it.

An old woman with curly, fair hair walked slowly over with a pen and notebook. Her thin hands with spindly veins shook almost violently.

   “What can I get you?” She had a raspy voice that trembled out of her dry red mouth, her eyes were blue but the whites were rather yellowish, and around them was a frame of pinkness. Her nose was running, and she faintly swept at it with one of her long sleeves.

   “Just a cup of coffee,” I said to her. She scribbled in her notebook quickly and turned to walk away.

   “Wait,” I looked down at the table, confused at myself. But I continued. “Would you... would you like to join me? Have a cup of coffee?”

    The woman turned back around and peered at me with a strange, simple look. Her sadness, relentless and fierce, showed perfectly in her forlorn eyes. Then the corners of her mouth turned up by the tiniest of degrees, and her eyes seemed to look imploringly into me. Finally, she smiled with a tiny breath of relief. She bustled away, grabbed the coffee pot, and strolled back. She clambered into the seat, turned a mug over, and poured herself a cup.

    “So, what has you down?” I asked her with a gradual sip. I pulled tentatively at my sleeves.

    And as the coffee drained down to the last drop, so did her sorrows, until she was left shaking and shivering, but smiling nonetheless. All that remained of her was the core of who she was, the foundation and structure of her vivid life, before her ankles were tied with weights and the anvil was hung above her head, like a torrential rain cloud that poured doubt endlessly down. And when the coffee was completely gone, she looked deep into me, into the edges of my imploding soul, with gratitude that outweighed the anvil.

    “May I join you?” The hunched man whispered from above. I moved to the other end of the seat and the hunched man slid into the booth. He wore a wrinkled and faded suit with socks and no shoes. Gray stubble infested his chin, and both of his arms seemed to sag delicately at his sides, as though he had simply no use of them and so he did not. His curling eyebrows were drawn tightly together and almost hid the darting greens of his eyes.

    Without preamble, the man, too, told his tale of truths, and when he was finished, he was no longer the hunched man but rather the colossal fellow who stood taller than the things that troubled him, and stared down the overpopulated diseases that tensed his muscles and tore through the fabricated hopes that had ceased. The woman and I, we demolished every demon that he spoke of and watched as his swinging anvil nearly dissolved before us.

    And then both man and woman looked to me, waiting, knowing that my turn had come. But I knew without looking above me that my anvil was already falling, that my toxic raincloud had already spewed its degenerate acids, my demons were far too tall for me to peak, and the cruelties that plagued my life were far too gruesome, too devastating for another human to bear. So I stared into my empty coffee cup with my shuddering hands clasped tightly in my lap, and out of all of the swooping, hollering thoughts that clashed in my brain one was comprehendible. My doom awaited me, as it awaited all. Our anvils always hung over our heads from thin ropes, and all of us would eventually succumb to their weight. But I realized then, one thought screamed louder than every other, that there were remedies, that there were solutions.

    Two people sat patiently in front of me, two doomed people who were perfectly inclined, almost eager, to help support the weight of my disgustingly heavy anvil.

I opened my mouth and unleashed my evils, letting the darkness inside me pour from my lips.