The Extraordinary Café - Finish The Story Contest - Week #48

in #finishthestory5 years ago (edited)

Here is my ending version of @bananafish’s Finish The Story Contest - Week #48

Actually, I haven't really written such picturesque stories, with so many descriptive brush strokes. But I think maybe next time I will be more dedicated to expressing that kind of descriptive narration. But, this time, my fantastic imagination went the other way. Let’s see what you think about it.


Source: @f3nix

The Extraordinary Café

by @theironfelix and @calluna

The warm smell of fresh brownies drifted across the cafe, ducking under the tables, squeezing through chairs, urged on by the fans; it flew. A gooey batch, chocolate chips still soft, had appeared on the counter. So loudly rang the placing of the tray, that Matt’s eyes glanced over, his mouth already watering, and so the enticing aroma managed to make him half consider ordering two.

Over Matt’s head, a clock's hand ticked a steady background beat, drawing his attention. For all wandering eyes, it was ten to two; she was twenty minutes late. A huff of impatience escaped his cracked lips, his mind drifting back to the crowded room.

An elderly man sat slouched at the table across from him, his broadsheet newspaper out of place in a room full of faces glazed by the light of phone screens. Matt‘s hand instinctively touched his own in his pocket. If he got it out, his eyes would be glued hard to it, in case the light flashed. His mind knew it would vibrate, but the flash came first. It was an addiction he couldn’t fight. Not to the phone. To her.

His mind buzzed and beeped, unable to fight the itch of wonder…

”...where was she?”

The old man‘s mouth let go of a cough, accompanying the symphony of crinkling as he flipped a page. Matt’s eyes darted up, accidentally catching his gaze, the man smiled at him eagerly folding the paper away.

Matt’s mind shuddered, cursing itself as the man rose, heading towards him. As soon as the stranger came within ear shot, Matt called out trying to put him off.

“Sorry mate, i’m waiting for someone.”

The grin over the worn face widened.

“Someone who still ain’t here yet, ‘ow about a bit of company, to help with the waiting? Whatcha say?”

Put on the spot, Matt’s thoughts already ablaze, he found himself nodding before reason could interject. The flame in his mind was inundated with worries and the urge to call her now - to see where oh where she was. Matt didn’t have the patience for small talk, but it was too late; the elderly man was lowering himself into the chair opposite.

The chair eeking with the slow applying pressure of aching joints, a wry smile found itself on the old man’s lips. In the opposite side of tension: a forced smile began forming on Matt’s dry lips, his hand quivering but extending for an introduction.


My ending version

After giving the elder a respective handshake and introducing himself, Matt decided to go into automatic mode and began to agree to all the trivial comments made by the octogenarian who invaded his personal space while waiting for the anxious arrival of his date. He hated being lucky enough to attract the kind of person who loves to talk to strangers. It was inevitable to say "yes" when he really wanted to say "no". In his mind, he hoped that his phone would give him a buzz or some vestige of hope to explain her delay.

Matt's leg started to shake, protesting unconsciously, screaming at the fact that she wouldn't show up. It had been 15 minutes since the decrepit old man had decided to sit in front of him.

"Obviously, she has stood you up"

That last sentence had broken the enchantment Matt was in.

Upon ascertaining that this time he had all his attention, the old man began shooting poisoned arrows against Matt's self-esteem.

"It has been more than 30 minutes since the scheduled time for the appointment. You haven’t stopped touching your phone waiting for a call or message that will never come. "

The old man's worn eyes kept stalking Matt's eyes

"Surely you’ll think that she has had an unexpected event, an accident, a setback and for that reason hasn’t arrived yet"

Matt held his breath

"Keep convincing yourself with imaginary excuses. As you have done your whole life. Letting yourself manipulate by all people around you, thanks to your excessive need to please others"

"She doesn’t see beyond the pathetic fat man that I have in front, with a simple compliment she already has you in her hands."

His fists tensed until they were white.

"Who the hell thinks this old man is?" Matt asked himself. But the words did not come out of his mouth. The poison was already in his mind. Within Matt's psyche, the memories of a childhood and adolescence victim of bullying resurfaced once more. Matt's gaze fell on the brownies, the desire to eat craved to fill the void of a life of abuses, cruelty, and injustice.

Tears began to overflow from the corner of Matt's eyes.

"Don't you see how pathetic you are? You think whether or not to buy the brownies that make your mouth water so much. As usual, you try to fill the emotional void of your life by feeding yourself wildly, getting drunk with junk food, to hide the hatred, disappointment, and frustration of being who you are, creating a vicious circle that feeds itself, again and again, slowing down your ability to grow and mature. Matthew James Frederick"

His ears could not believe what they heard

"NO!" Matt yelled, running away from the cafe.

The confused and amazed looks from the people were ignored by the old man.

"My work is done," whispered the old man before falling down holding his chest and disappearing in front of all people and his timeline



I couldn't help but think that the old man was a time traveler, screwing his own timeline. It's difficult not to try to scold oneself

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This post was submitted for curation by: @theironfelix
This post was voted: 100%

Dear @jadams2k18

Im glad to see that you're still around buddy.

Hope noone from your family suffered during recent blackout?

Yours
Piotr

Hello, my dear friend! How are you?

They were terrible days! Some of my family passer two days without drinking water, but thank God they found a way to get water.

The worst of all is not having how to communicate. I hope this situation never happens again

Keep in touch

I'm glad that you're alive my dear @jadams2k18

Thanks for all your help, my friend!

Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by jadams2k18 from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, someguy123, neoxian, followbtcnews, and netuoso. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows. Please find us at the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.

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This is such a skillfully tied up ending, I really love how you have pulled the emphasis on the brownies like this, using it the build into the character. Instead of answer the question of why he was so taken with the brownies by them just being good brownies, you use it as a corner stone, allowing you to develop Matt into a really complete character.

I actually really like that she doesn't show up at all in this one, and the way you have gone with it, that she had played him, and stood him up, you give it a feeling of normalcy, like it isn't that uncommon for Matt to fall hard for a girl, and land flat on his face. I had hoped for some time travel elements here, and the idea of him coming back to challenge himself. Extra time travel points for the old man vanishing once he'd changed the time line.

You do a really impressive job of mirroring the grammer and sentence structure from the first half, maintaining the slight sense of detachment as opposed to full third person immersion that allows for more of a narrator tone. The impact of the words the old man chooses, and how hard those phrases hit, i wonder at the life that version of Matt had led, the future that he averted,. The use of 'pathetic' and 'fat' feel like faimiliar nails, the words that hautned him the most, but they aren't being used to drive home the usual message of not good enough they would have.

to hide the hatred, disappointment, and frustration of being who you are

you bring this into a story of self acceptance, of matt being okay with who he is and therefore able to stand on his secure base and hold hands with a future partner, instead of flinging himself at her and clinging on.

A very thought provoking story, you do such a beautiful job of not slipping into the romance, and instead leave me wondering, if i could go back, what advice would i give myself? what words would get through to me?

Thank you very much for stopping by and analyzing my story in detail. It really means a lot to me since it allows me to constantly improve the way I write.

I remember mentioning you in the past (a long time ago), that I always wanted to leave a hidden teaching or something to make you think inside my stories; and in this particular story what would happen if you had the opportunity to meet a version of yourself from the past.

It's a lovely pleasure to read your comments

Some favors do really hurt ;-)

Sorry! I didn't get it...

I know sometimes favors could be difficult... Please, explain

Obviously, the older Matt told his younger "I" a bitter truth. A kind of awakening shocking reality. My interpretation is that this experience was a lesson in self-awareness for the young frightened Matt. Hopefully he will initiate a change after this encounter. After all, you don't meet yourself every day. The kind of favor was really not very gentle and the statements of the older Matt quite painful. Nevertheless, it was a favor, wasn't it?

You are right. The words from the older Matt did change the life of younger Matt since at the end older Matt disappeared. But I wouldn't call it a favor. Because of the concept of the word favor:

Act that is done to help, please or provide a service to a person for kindness, friendship or affection.

I think is more than an obligation or necessity instead of favor, don't you think?

It depends what the older Matt had in mind. Did he appear in order to help or to ridicule and insult his younger self?

Yes, your word definition is correct. But would you have paid less (irritated) attention to my comment if I had used the correct term?

I am married to what is called "systemic thinking" that I also consider a - on the outside - less friendly way of giving someone a wake-up moment of realization to be a "favor". Most of the time, the favor is even more noticeable when there is a moment or time of irritation, shock, and even pain. The most important thing, however, is the intention of the person - from the inside - doing the favor: if there was a benevolent intention behind Matts words, if he had the intention to motivate his younger self to change, then I would still speak of a favor, using the freedom of "abusing" terms. If the older Matt's intention to the younger Matt was of malicious intent - which I so far doubted, however, because, why should you be evil minded towards yourself? - then it would not be a favor but what I said above: an angry impulse.

But then the plot would make less sense to me as why would an angry older Matt leave his timeline? Wouldn't that be a waste of energy?

But maybe I am missing something, that can very well be, as I am not an English native.

Hi! I didn't see your comment early. Sorry.

You are quite right. I guess sometimes you have to slap people in their face to make them react. And, yes, Older Matt's intention was benevolent.

What's your native language? Mine is Spanish. May I guess... German?

Hallo! (I'm just using google translator but I know a couple of words in German)

Can I ask a question? Why your words are sooo looong!??? (I'm joking... but, seriously, why?)

BTW, I recently watch Dark Nextflix series. It was marvelous. And I think it's a German series. An excellent series. I recommend it to you

Thanks for your comment.

Loading...

This is an interesting approach to the story. I'm really glad that you're writing with us, given your capability of immersing the reader in a natural setting with well-crafted dialogue and an insightful third-person omniscient pov. I wouldn't add that comment in the end as it's a narrative element. If you feel that as a possible character's interpretation, then you should find a way to hint at that inside the story or else just leave it to the imaginary of the reader. Well done and keep it up!

Helloooo!!! Mr. @bananafish. Thank for your comment. I like to receive tips to improve my writing

Thank you

(Quick mention, me and @calluna made the story together. So update the intro prompt card please! Thanks!~)

If you were looking for a form breakdown, look at mój Ukochany's (@calluna's) comment for that one. She got me covered, but now lemme cover down a point like the auxiliary I shall be for this entry: la filosofía del texto (the philosophy of the text).

Así, ¿la filosofía del texto? Without going full Spanish, let's actually talk for now in English. The strongest one I can feel (with some other ones which easily can contend) in this prompt is the philosophy of self-help from the future (the Grandfather's paradox but instead of killing we helped our past self). With this tract stabilizing, let's look at how this overarching one works throughout the post (which is equally a strong one contending with other strong but subordinate philosophies that do play a crucial role). The point being is that Future-Matt is interacting with Past-Matt as to correct his mistake to perfect his future even by a slight bit. Equally confirming that this takes on a time theory that there's no alternative universe (or a restricted monoverse) and only one tract which can be modified on the go but makes impossible the other branching paths on these tracts. (For which I subscribe more to the fact that if people can go back in time they either are: a, ghosts which can affect nothing because they can't do anything or, b, materially manipulated a part/whole of the Universe as to get back to a certain spot of time without a guarantee that what has been modified will turn out to be what they were aiming for. But in both cases, future them survives because technically if they were there to begin with they easily survived material manipulation and the Universe is a dynamically/dialectically changing beast instead of a metaphysical one.)

Yet let's get to the other ones, or really the one I wanna talk about: the ugly of life. It's truly funny how I (and @calluna) set it up where we could make the protagonist's love interest a manipulator, hell it fits and repaints the prompt just right enough to make it work. Yet there's a thing where you not only avoid the blurry line of misogyny and "yeah there's bad people" with the love interest, but completely veered away from going on the misogynistic tract of blaming non-males and making innocent males. And I must congratulate you on that, even though it isn't nor should be a hard thing to pull off (I only say this in the light of how often I see this Western / Global North literature having subtle or internalized misogyny, don't get me wrong there's literature in Eastern / Global Periphery countries being misogynistic as well).

So yeah, good job writing this entry; needs more love to be quite honest.

Hablas español??? Wao! Me encantan los comentarios gigantes!!!! (No estoy siendo sarcástico, de verdad me encantan, obviamente, cuando estan dirigidos hacia mi)

Do you speak Spanish??? Wow! I love giant comments !!!! (I'm not being sarcastic, I really love them, obviously, when they're for me)

(Quick mention, me and @calluna made the story together. So update the intro prompt card please! Thanks!~)

Already done!

About the theory of time travel, you need to consider the effect of a black hole that allows you to play with the timeline of your own universe. But I can see that you have studied all the facts about considering a trip in time and its effects. I loved it.

A long time ago, I wrote a time travel love story and it was a disaster

In the misogynist part, I don't consider my stories to be misogynist. Young Matt's psychological problems are to blame. Usually, ALL problems are caused by ourselves, always. In the case of young Matt, for his sake of trying to please everyone (being accepted), as old Matt observes. She never played a part of young Matt's problem.

But thanks for the comment, it is good that I review that part of my being. Although if you knew Susan's secret, you would see that I idolize women,

I'm really glad you took the time to read the story and do an analysis of it. It is not easy to do what you and @calluna do. And, finally, I really feel that I can begin to improve my writing skills.

Thank you very much.

Sí, hablo español. (Yes, I speak Spanish.)

Thanks again for correcting it!

Yeah, it's a tricky topic; there's time travelling worm tunnels and black holes. But has anybody considered a God-esque version where people have the ability to reverse material flow of a galaxy to a previous state (assuming we can "perfectly" do that, thus I off-kilter the error by saying no guarantees of future being exact as a possibility).

I didn't say your story was misogynist, I said that stories involving females and non-males can lend themselves into. Which I further clarified that your story didn't lend itself to misogynist tropes. And of course there has to be an acceptance of an individual, but we cannot atomize the individual because he isn't the only actor in the problem as that lends itself to victim blaming. Because we can extend this problem very easily to controversial subjects like victims suffering sexual violence; are you going to extend that same truth statement to them and say they allowed themselves to get sexually assaulted? I would surely hope not, because the majority of cases, so I swear by God and the Data collected, the victim didn't cause themselves to be assaulted. More-so, the problem extends way deeper than the perpetrator of the sexual violence and goes to whole issues of how people feel they can be justified to commit such actions upon others. (Here we can easily get into the messiness of cultures, how culture reproduces itself and what generates culture to begin with and how that culture can be snapped by that generator if the generator finds the culture to be too dangerous for it reproduce at any given state.)

As it isn't just people's decision-making moving around, but the contingent background pieces and necessary influences which informs people's decision making processes at any given moment; yet one can decide to act against a motion and get support from others to change the motion, which then that feeds back to the setting to create new people and modify existing ones as time goes on. Just the nature of any given situation: pour acid on a thing, thing corrodes but the acid is used up; yet nothing guaranteed the acid would be there nor that the thing cannot still retain the properties of pre-acidified thingness. But neither seemed to be the whole cause of any given situation and everything needs to be accounted for despite varying levels of influences.

But again, yes there needs to be a victim for a problem to exist - but often the victim isn't the sole causing element. She had to find out that young Matt was manipulable and Matt had to present that trait (for which old Matt overcame later on in life in an undetermined fashion), but she had to act on it while Matt had to believe it wasn't a problem for the problem to become a problem later on in life. Or more complexly put: She had to perpetuate the problem (for X reason or Y set of reasons which can be contingent problems in her life which now necessitates this scenario into being) for Matt to suffer, but Matt does play in the role in keeping the cycle up if he (or external actor that internalizes themself into the problematic field) does nothing to bust it up. As we can both see, our philosophies can easily imagine this scenario up and arrive at the same/similar endings - yet I just find it crass to believe that the victim is qua the sole cause for the problem. For me, an outlook where the victim is the sole cause of problems denies basic human decency towards a person's being and, at the same time, denies an efficient response to actually overcoming this problem to begin with.

Well, it's a secret, so don't spoil it! (Just remember to not trophy people, denies a basic human decency for people. However, being infatuated with a group for what they do, can do and will do is whole another subject and more respectable.) ;^

Glad to be of some service, at least to generate some banter.

Welcome again and thanks for sharing the story once again!!!!~ <3

(And before anyone asks, tak I am an Eastern European / Slavic [Polish]; we tend to very much pay attention to the littlest of details, and can often switch between fun mode and serious mode like flipping a pancake.)

Did someone see the license plate of the truck that hit me?

YAY! Another super comment! I love it!

... no guarantees of future being exact as a possibility ...

That's true! Every decision we make generate thousands of possible alternatives, so future always changes itself

I didn't say your story was misogynist ...

My bad!

(BTW, English is not my native language, it's Spanish. Maybe, I was lost in translation)

About the next three big overwhelming paragraphs, you need to consider a very important point: Karma (Is a b*tch, I know), the principle of Cause and effect (obviously, if you believe in karma as I do). From that point of view, not even injustices exist

It's very interesting the way you think. I really like your comments and your avatar too

Well, thanks again for passing by

PS: Is "tak" a czech word?

Hue!~ I did and ain't telling because the truck is already been deconstructed by a giant spaghetti number.

Yay, super comments!~

Welcome to Inderterminist/Dialectics gang.

Nae wories (nae is no in Scots English).

(Sorry.)

Well consider this next point: Karma can only work if there's Eternal Justice floating about and fixing errors of life. But of course this is a point we cannot reconcile due to me believing in the Dialectical Materialist school of thought and you a more Metaphysically inclined school of thought.

The avatar is Ashley from WarioWare btw ~^^~

Post Scriptum: Tak is Yes in English.

That was fast!

... giant spaghetti number.

You're so funny!

Welcome to Inderterminist/Dialectics gang.

Thanks!

... Dialectical Materialist school ...

Fascinating (As Spock would say)

So ...

Tak means yes???? and Nae is No ...

Every day we learn something!

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