For a moment, there was peace.

Though my hands still reeked of the innumerable elixirs of mud-scented caffeine swill, and the litany of sugar waters meant to reside within, I found comfort in this moment of silence there on my bar, the soft humming of a cooling Mastrena before me.

Liable to daydream, I fantasized of better places. Of sun-drenched beaches, sheet-draped beds, and rain-spattered mornings from behind a warm window.

Had I known what this blissful silence preceded - had I known at all what inutterable horrors awaited me - surely I would have fled. For common men should not bear witness to the events that unfolded thereafter.

The aforementioned silence was pierced mercilessly by the ringing of my headset; a new customer had arrived at the threshold of the Den of the Siren. With feigned glee, and performative excitement, my cohort spoke to this unknown stranger.

"Hello, and thank you for choosing Starbucks!" She beamed, the echoes of agony heard only by those with shared experience. "What can we get started for you today?"

Naiveté.

The deluge of words that followed were biblical in their proportion, needle-like in their specificity, and terrible in the truths they hid behind sickening platitudes.

"A Venti Iced White Mocha." The shrill voice began, and my ears were aloft like those of a prey animal fortunate enough to catch a whisper of a broken twig, or black stripes against orange fur in the tall grass. This woman's voice - at least, I could only hope she was human enough to be called a woman - was that of a traditionally white, young individual.

I needn't explain why this particular type of individual bellowing those particular words sent a shiver down my spine, and I was vindicated in my fear in the following moments.

The sheer amount of modifications this... creature listed off were indescribable. A plethora of pernicious petitions; a veritable bouquet of chemically-sweetened poison. From the caramel that lined the vessel, to the two different foams she cried for in her plea; the nauseating combination of chai-based fury in the bottom of the thing, and pumpkin-fueled hatred on the top; the whipped cream stirred in, the whole milk that dressed the concoction's body: it was truly a nightmare unfit for all but the most ironclad of minds.

I had sworn that the end was to be heralded by the blasting of angelic trumpets, or the arrhythmic beating of demonic drums. I was instead met with the truth: Hell comes in the form of a woman named Nicole, and we are hopeless to stop her.

As my hands created the thing, my mind shielded itself from the unholy gravebirth I had unwillingly become a part of. My soul mightn't have been pure before her voice rang in my ears, but it was surely damned after, for I had brought that most terrible of tonics into the world. I would surely pay the price for my role in this most blasphemous of ceremonies.

As the spectre of our torment approached the final frontline, and my sister in suffering slowly handed over the monstrous mixture, shakily and steadily, I was reminded that Hell has layers more depraved that those my mind could even imagine, and the world would bear witness to the greatest evil it had ever known.

"Actually, this was supposed to be decaf?"