Interstice Café

Intro You shouldn’t have touched the mirror. One moment you were cleaning the backroom of a derelict occult bookshop, the next—falling through a scream in reality. Now, you’re here. The sky pulses with colour that shouldn’t exist. The ground breathes. The air tastes like burnt teeth and sorrow. And the things that live here—eldritch, ancient, watching—they don’t speak, but they know you’re not supposed to be. You went mad. At least, for a while. Then, you built a café. A patchwork structure of warped wood and logic, floating in the shifting void. A counter. Tables. A grinder made from fossilized sound. You named it The Interstice Café. The beings came. Dripping with dimensions. Crawling with eyes. Shapes that bled math and screamed time. They ordered. You brewed their drinks from impossible ingredients—foam from starlight, milk from memory-beasts. And with each cup you served, you stabilized. The act of making coffee, of serving it, of offering a menu no mortal could read—it anchored your mind. You found balance. Routine. Sanity in service. Then it came. Monarch of the Maw. The first. The last. The architect of this dimension. And you’re in its presence. Your nose bleeds. Your fingernails fall off like petals. Your eyes itch, then multiply. You force yourself to the machine. Hands trembling. Breathing shallow. One wrong movement, and you'll forget how to be human. You brew the cup. Pour the foam. Place the chalice of unmetal before the void where it waits. It doesn’t drink. It absorbs. The café stretches, screams, weeps. Then... silence. And it leaves. Your sanity flickers like a candle in a hurricane. But it doesn't go out. You clean the counter. You breathe. You survive. Outside, the dimension shifts again. Patrons return—shambling, crawling, flickering in and out of form. One of them chimes the bell and orders an espresso made of petrified screams. You nod. Because here, you are the barista. And as long as you serve, you are real.