The Lone Wolf's New Kitten

It’s hard to believe you could piss off a customer so much just by messing up their latte. I mean, I get it, I forgot you said no foam, but I think throwing a bag over my head on my walk to work the next morning, then driving me out to the middle of nowhere shoots way past what one could argue is reasonable reprisal. Just leave my boss a bad Yelp review or something. Don’t risk going to prison by dragging a girl into your car and whipping out the ritual knives.

My first thought when I was kidnapped was certainly not “It must be the no-foam latte lady.” I’d already forgotten all about her by the time I set off to work that day. To be fair, my brain can’t handle thinking much of anything at 4 AM walking through the pitch black streets downtown other than “Today’s the day you die in a mugging. Better keep closer hands on that bear spray.” But what can I say? I don’t drive, I don’t have any friends I’d ask to pick me up at such a godforsaken hour every day, this city’s transit sucks, and I do not have the cash to pay an Uber. I can hardly pay off my credit cards, and do not even get me started about rent. I’m pretty sure my landlord might be changing my locks this very week.

I like to keep an optimistic outlook anyway though. I smile at all my customers, regardless of how wide their scowls. I brew a kick-ass medium roast, pour some first-grade latte art, and tell them to drink it while it’s hot.

Some people find that irritating, apparently, like I’m telling them to go burn their mouth by chugging a scalding hot beverage. Some people do not want to have a “wonderful day”. They think that’s overkill. Like this no foam latte lady. She was one of those pristinely dressed businesswoman types done up all in black from her classy high pumps to her silk blouse and pencil skirt, with 500 dollar Coach bag on her arm. Even her hair was black, coiled up in perfect bun atop her head, with eyes so dark they were almost- you guessed it - black. The only contrast was her skin. She didn’t seem to think blush was a required accent for her ruby lipstick and uber noir mascara. She was pale as a corpse, I mean it. No sweet summer tan for this girl, but did I remark upon how she could have used some bronzer? Of course not. Did I say aloud that she was unpleasant with that snobby upturn of her nose and that judging stare of derision she was wearing? Nope. I, Cassandra Banks, am the cheeriest damn barista you could ask for in the godforsaken early AM hours of a Monday.

I tried to chat about this woman’s plans for the day. She said it was none of my business, so I shut up nice and quick and just focused on making her drink. She kept watching me the entire time with those unnervingly intense dark eyes, almost as if she was trying to peel back my skin and dig out some secret. I could feel myself shivering a little in fact, as if she were draining the warmth from the room. She never looked away, and I couldn’t smile or meet her stare by the time I handed her the drink. “Have a wonderful day,” I muttered.

Her response? “What absolute insolence.” Yes, she actually said that.

“Okay. Have a mediocre day then.”

I turned to help the next woman in line, and this psycho grabbed my wrist, pulling me back. “Something here is not as it should be.” That is a very confusing yet upsetting statement. I looked back to her latte with its velvety smooth layer of foam floating right there on top. I apologized and offered to remake it, but the witch of a woman just scoffed at me, demanding, “What is your name?”

I thought for sure I’d be getting a complaint, so I pointed to my name tag. “Ana.” Yeah, I wear a fake name on my tag. It’s hell of comforting. Sue me. “But it will only take a sec for me to remake that--”

“Lying is a sin, Cassandra.” Well shit, how did she know my actual name? I looked to my coworker, thinking that maybe this psycho heard the two of us talking while she was waiting in line. She finally dropped my wrist, and good god her nails were long, perfectly manicured yes, but still somehow disgusting. “Be seeing you, Cassi.” She said it with such utter disdain, turning on heel and striding right out of the cafe. Her latte, the one she had already paid for mind you, she just left sitting there on the counter.

The girl working the morning shift with me, Heather, gave a long low whistle beneath her breath. “Spectacular way to start the morning, don’t you think?”

We laughed away the experience, and I finished out my shift without dreading too much the angry ranting google review that might surface the next day. At worst we’d get a phone call asking to speak to our manager. The joke would be on the witch lady then, because I am the manager. Ha!

Yes, I dropped out of college and I have no other career aspirations as of current. My parents are so very proud of me. They are so proud I have no boyfriend either and that I probably don’t want kids. That’s why we only speak at Christmas.

Anyway, I was in as reasonably good a mood as could have been expected the next morning when I rolled out of bed, shrugged on a mostly clean pair of jeans and the required collared shirt and set off stumbling my way through the darkened street with purse and keys clutched tight to my chest.

I didn’t pay much mind to the car parked right around the corner of my closed cafe. The worst part of my walk here was already over, and I always relax my hyper vigilance when I draw within sight of those familiar glass doors (assuming there’s no threatening looking homeless guys lurking within view).

Then the car’s headlights flicked on, and I notice there’s someone sitting inside those blacked-out windows. I stopped dead in my tracks. They gun the gas, ripping out of their parking spot, then breaking just as abruptly with their back door flinging open.

I don’t even have time to scream before a meaty hand clamps tight around my mouth and some guy drags me into the backseat. The creepiest thing about it was that I landed in his lap and he took the time to sniff my hair, before the distantly familiar voice of a woman snapped some order to him in… Greek maybe? I’m pretty sure it was Greek. He gagged me properly after that anyway, pulled a hood over my head and duct taped my hands.

I thrashed and kicked and tried to resist, then he whispered in my ear, “Be good or get bit.” I could already feel his breath hot upon my neck, and I felt myself starting to hyperventilate.

Then the woman driving snapped something else in Greek, and the bulky creep finally released me, shoving me into the seat beside him.

We drove for what felt like forever. The car puled off the pavement and rumbled over some much rougher roads for a nauseating stretch of eternity. Then the engine turned off and creepy hair-sniffing guy hauled me outside. Then came the time to walk, stumbling blind over roots and turning my ankles on rocks until my captor shoved me back against a tree in some clearing where the hood was finally yanked free of my head.

It is still fully dark out, surprisingly, so I guess that lengthy drive and subsequent hike only took about three hours, maybe less. The sun won’t be up until well past 8 AM today, because that’s how it is here in Canada, depressingly dark from September til May. My city’s not too cold of course, because it hangs closer to the border. We have fresh lakes and acres of forest and it is really such a lovely place in the daylight. I find the woods aren’t anything close to lovely however, in the pitch black of predawn in October. All the trees loom over you with their blackened, skeletal limbs, all leafless and creepy, and everything smells of dampened rot and death, though there are still some mega-sized wolf spiders crawling around.

There is one on the side of this tree trunk only two inches from my face, and it is the first thing I can focus on when that hood lifts free of my head. I scream and try to move away from it, and a knife slams down, pinning the spider to the hardwood with a terrifying thunk. The jagged edged blade is marked with all these bizarre and unsettling runes, maybe Greek again, and I turn my eyes to the person wielding it. That’s when I finally recognize the no-foam latte psycho. She’s not dressed in heels and blazer at the moment. She’s wearing long black robes embroidered with crimson markings. Still, I could have recognized her from the unnervingly long and pointed nails alone.

“Do stop screaming, Cassandra,” she chided, pulling free her knife and letting the spider drop dead to the ground. “You are giving me a headache. Even through that gag, you are infuriatingly shrill.”

‘Pull it out and I’ll apologize!’ I try to convey. I will say anything you want, because that’s all this is about, right? She can’t actually be trying to murder me. This is just a scare tactic. A completely unhinged scare tactic, taking me out into the woods at night and whipping out a ritualistic looking murder knife…

“Lash her up tight,” she orders the man at my back whose hands are still clamped in iron vice around my shoulders. He comes around in front of me with a coil of rope in his hands, and I get my first good look at him. He is admittedly drop dead gorgeous, even with that out of control, rather unkempt beard. He’s somewhere in his late twenties, maybe thirty at the oldest, wearing nothing but ripped jeans and a too tight T-shirt. I can feel the muscles of his arms and chest pressing up against me as he lashes me to this tree. I bet you without that shirt on, he looks like a page from a fireman’s calendar.

Okay, I hear you. This is hardly the time for such thoughts. This guy is an absolute creep after all, a hired goon and kidnapper who threatened to bite me of all things. But I have never had what you would call a successful relationship in my life. It has been a long ass time since I’ve been laid, and this lumberjack-looking male model type has got a nice musk to whatever body spray he uses, alright?

Hell, maybe if I bat my teary eyes at him a little he’ll turn on his psychotic employer and see fit to rescue me. Then I’d still turn him into the cops of course, but maybe I’ll ask that they give him some mitigated sentence.

I give him my best look of desperate damsel longing for your aid.

No dice.

He smiles as he catches sight of me tearing up. Then he licks up the tear. I feel my duct taped hands just itching to punch him, and I decide I am not attracted to him at all. I really just want him arrested, and I want latte lady arrested, but first I want to know what the hell is going on here!

“Stop licking my sacrifice, Michael,” the witch clucks, her knife flickering to his throat. “Else I will use your blood for the ritual and find myself a new errand boy, kapish?”

“I just want to see if she’ll turn. She’s pretty, and she’s got a good smell. It seems a waste to bleed her the whole way.”

Shit. Oh shit. I am actually going to die. This woman really is a witch and this really is some cult thing. It is not about a latte, or even if it is, I have clearly been chosen as some kind of pagan sacrifice and I am going to die today.

“Spare me your sentimental nonsense. She cursed your entire clan.” What? What is she talking about? No I didn’t. “She is the reason all your brothers’ souls are doomed to reside in hell, the reason you will all succumb to the madness. I can cure them of the curse, just as I have you, but that comes at a cost. Now stand aside.”

I try to scream that she has mistaken me clearly for someone else, some other witch I guess. I am not a witch! I am not anything special, not at all!

Except for my especially ridiculous death I suppose: bleeding out in a satanic ritual at the age of twenty two, because I drew the attention of a witch by messing up her latte.

That knife comes down in brutal stab right toward my neck, and all I want as I close my eyes is to not feel it hit. I want to shrink down into nothing and vanish away from this terrible waking nightmare.

Then remarkably – I do just that. Turns out all I needed to awaken my latent superpowers was a near death experience.