“Since you haven’t taken the liberty of answering and have instead chosen to question the seriousness of this encounter, allow me to go ahead and start.”

Drienne stood there motionless. A ringing went off in her ear, not from the chaos engulfing the place, or from anything coming from the mystery man’s call, but instead from the blank abyss in which her mind was falling into.

“I know the matters in which this has been carried out can be seen as…a bit much. Too much I will admit, but you see it’s the only way anyone these days sees or listens to you, unfortunately.”

The words being spoken to her shifted between being processed and not. As there but also not there. Existent but also nonexistent. Every option seemed just as likely as a terrible chill traveled down her spine.

“Let’s say, you’re tasked with something,” an audible click of the tongue came through. “No, let’s say you choose to do this task. You deliberately go out of your way to do it, selflessly, with no one asking or begging you to do it. Imagine you do this grand task, nobody knows it, but this task is crucial for the survival of many. The fate of many lies in you doing this. You put your heart into this, years into it. Blood sweat and tears and guts into it. In the end, would you not want it?”

Drienne’s chest breathed in and out as slow heavy pants took over her. The outside world was still a distant reality to her.

“Would you not want it?” his stern voice repeated.

“Depends!” she blurred out, returning the sternness back while stumbling in her nervous state. Her head snapped back and forth as she tried to ground herself back into the real world.

A scoff came through, “Depends. I see, you think that way.”

Drienne took a second the collect herself, “I don’t know, maybe one can live without it.”

“Sure, in theory one can, but wouldn’t you agree it would be nice to have it.”

She furrowed her eyebrows, “That’s what you’re going off of? That it would be nice?”

“Oh no, I believe it would be nice to start from there, it would be delightful to have it. But ultimately, I would like for it to be seen as nothing but the right thing to do, nothing short of it being the only thing to do.”

Drienne waited, waited for someone to shake her awake and get her out of this bizarre reality. She waited for this to be a nightmare. Like the ones that ended just as fast as they began. But this wouldn’t be the same. She waited and waited even more, but the mystery man she so immensely wished to disappear was not going anywhere.

“Just think,” The mystery man pulled her back in.

What are you even saying? She thought to herself.

“You put your life into it,”

Taking it all in, there seemed to be no end to the agitated scene. More static, more glitches, and even more frantic customers. The situation had gotten to a point where it was impossible to drown it all out. The customer’s shifted between yelling amongst themselves and demanding the shop employees an explanation as to what was happening.

“All this sacrifice,”

A sea of bodies pushing and bumping into each other pulled Drienne out of her motionless spot. A few more shoves later and she was somehow back at the entrance, and that’s when she remembered. Everyone else was so busy being clustered up in the front that it now gave way to a clear view out the display windows. She shoved aside the last stranger blocking her way and cast her eyes to the table in which her family had been seated. She found it vacant now, nothing but a few stray napkins and straws scattered on top of it. Panic rushed through her.

“You do something to protect their little world and it goes unnoticed. No one remembers you; no one remembers what you did. And you see, when no one remembers you that just leaves an opportunity for others to come along and take credit for what you did.” Anger was starting to merge in with his words. “People who don’t have the skills or requirements, the drive, people who don’t understand the importance of this.”

The despair in her being had reached the tipping point to where Drienne turned around and yelled, “The importance of what?”

A high-pitched silence and stiffness dropped in the room. Every ounce of noise disappeared as all the static and glitches seized to exist at once. Everyone flickered their gaze to the images now slowly materializing on the screens. The footage on the screen flickered a few times before it was made clear, and once it was, the crowd could do nothing but gasp.

“The importance of life.”

The man’s voice no longer only came through Drienne’s phone, instead, it now filled the room as his speech emanated from the speakers. A series of news footage played out on the screens as everyone stared in horror. Everyone’s eyes were fixated to the televisions, their figures stiff as they tried to put the pieces together. None of them moved an inch. Not as long as the mystery man stayed there speaking. Footage of various natural disasters and cataclysmic events spreading throughout the Earth filled them.

For a moment everyone wondered the validity of it, whether anything of what was happening was real, but one look at the “live” logos plastered onto the sides of the screens, the new footage of popular news anchors showing to be visibly flustered by their surroundings, and the sound of phone’s going off again was enough to make everyone believe it.

Car horns blared in the background as the crowd looked down and found even more disturbing footage plaguing their devices. Social media grew haywire as terrified users drowned the interwebs. Millions and millions of posts scattered online in so many languages that any single person could barely recognize. A combined tension filled the crowd as the man continued.

“You see, when we don’t look after the balance of life, guard it, put these things in order, this happens. Every day you go about your little insignificant life without knowing that there’s someone out there getting their hands dirty to make sure that Sally can keep getting her perm done, and that uncle Sam can have his little trip to Congo every other Friday, all without no one knowing.

And the people who do the actual work, the people who go out there and get their hands dirty they don’t have a say in anything, when in reality, they should be the first ones to do so. But no, let’s just make way for all those mediocre dirtbags you all have in office. Let’s give way,” a sing-song type of tone invaded his words, “for everyone to go their own way in their little groups to do whatever it is they think will help them sleep better at night.

“You know what happens when you give humans freedom? Chaos. Every single damn time you’ve gone ahead and created an absolute shitshow.” The harshness of his delivery made everyone flinch.

“Everyone just goes ahead and divides themselves into these little groups all these little boxes and all just fails. It would all be easier if it were just one, just one… like it always should have been.”

The next words spoken by him drew such an immense shock into Drienne's mind it might have as well changed it forever.

“It’s nice to see you Miss Degarmo.”

The sound of a click went off as the mystery man disappeared.

The high-pitched silence returned to be the only thing left in the room. No one in the shop dared to move in the seconds after the man’s voice had disappeared.

The ringing in her ears went off again, this time stronger, sharper, and so loud that she couldn’t help but feel it drilling into her brain. Drienne began to hyperventilate as her cellphone slipped out of her hands and shattered onto the floor. The shock and disbelief left in her core was too much for her to move, to react, or to even come to terms with what had just happened. Her train of thought had been thrown into a jagged corner and by the looks of it, it would stay there for a long time.

She mustered enough strength to yank herself from the blank abyss she was staring into and instead, for the first time in a few minutes, looked up, and what she found there, a few feet in front of her, one on each side of the room, were two ominous men digging their eyes into her. Drienne stumbled into the crowd as she stepped back, her heavy breaths taking over her system as the two men began to make their way to her.

The odd scene gathered the attention of the rest of the coffee goers, making them start to rise out of their shocked state and turned to the two mystery men. One bystander walked into one of the men and began to question what was going on, ensuing a tug of war between the two. Whatever ounce of peace left in the room disappeared as one of the men pulled out a gun and shot the troubling bystander.