Re: Cass & Alex: the (bad) diner
Little paper carcasses he'd skinned of saccharine were stacked. It was neat, and it was also very like a child to find order in disorder. She'd many customers who came in who enjoyed the simplicity of throwing things about and having someone else to pick them up. Smears of condiments, chewing gum lodged under the rim of the booth, even old papers, receipts and curling newspapers. Cass didn't think they had much in the way of it, outside of a diner that was cracked plastic leather and scorched coffee. She drank hers black. Necessity, you see, in the places Cass had been and also because Cass liked the truth. Absent sweetness, there was only the coffee left to consider.
"You're right," she smiled over the lip of her coffee cup. "A little, to flavor. Too much and it overwhelms." Which was true, although there were creatures who couldn't breathe, without salt in the water, who couldn't live. Perhaps she was that. Cass thought of the depths of the lake, the black, starless dregs of it and shivered. She'd no future of her own to see, you see. Not presently, not with the clogging, dusty taste of drugs in her mouth. "This place is strange. But I like it," she acknowledged, putting her elbow down among the sugar packet pot and the condiment tray. "There's so much that isn't known. It isn't predictable."