Kraaaw!

So you’re writing in a Starbucks when a woman gets up and starts screaming, and everyone looks at her, then they follow her eyes out the window, and more people start screaming, and now everyone’s shouting over each other and you can’t make out what they’re saying but they’re all backing away from the window, overturning chairs and tables, clutching children to breasts, so you shift in your chair and put on your glasses to try and get a look outside, but you can’t see anything on the street, and you can’t make out anything in the sky, but you figure that you should probably get ready just in case, so you pack your things back into your backpack and tense your legs in preparation, and now everyone is huddled against the back wall of the cafe, so you stand up and sidle over there as well, and sort of lean against a post facing the window, and you wonder if you should ask someone what they’re afraid of, but their faces are all showing such intense terror – crying, screaming, heads buried in their hands, snot and tears mixing together to dribble over their sagging down-turned mouths – that you decide you had best not say anything. By now you are starting to feel a bit anxious, the terror in the room rubbing off on you, so you really look out the window, really pay attention, really follow their bulging eyes to see what they are so afraid of, but it’s just an empty street – it really is, it’s silly – so you decide it must be someone making a viral video, one of those social experiments where everyone takes their hat off in an elevator to see if you do the same, and you straighten your back and walk towards the door, at which point everyone screams at you and a man grabs your leg and babbles something, spit flying from his mouth as he tries to pull you back. “Hey man, get off” you mumble under your breath, and you pull your trouser leg from his hand and skip away from him, facing back towards the crowd (you’re more afraid of them, now). You look back at them arrayed against the wall, a line of grimacing, chattering monkeys, eyes wide and staring. What’s wrong with people these days? What won’t they do for five minutes of fame? Forget it, you’re going, you’re heading out. You’re not participating in this stupid show any more. You pull the door open and the giant translucent eagle that was waiting above the window plucks your head off.