Cakeybiscuit

This was incredible. I stopped off at a motorway service station. I was thinking about my past. I decided I'd get a cup of coffee, premium coffee - you know, a giant pail of superheated milk with a couple of dark dirty shots straight from the shiny metal coffeeteats. There were no other customers at the coffee counter. In fact, apart from the two baristas behind the counter, the place was eerily deserted. So I went straight up and ordered my coffee. Barista A took my order and relayed it to Barista B who milked the machine with noisy malice, banging the Gaggia with manic metal-udder-clanging rancour. Barista A just stood there, seemingly oblivious to the noise behind her, staring wordlessly straight at me with a faint smile on her face.

Eventually, with a slow, calm deliberation, she asked me for the money, which I gave to her. She collected the change and held aloft the receipt from the till.

"Here's your receipt" she said, holding it still and level with her eyes. "This is your receipt," she whispered slowly, leaning forward, "once you take this... that's it... it's all over... we're done." Then she jerked back into an upright position, gestured to the counter and said brightly "unless you want a cakeybiscuit! Do you want a cakeybiscuit?"

I declined the cakeybiscuit, cupped my coffee, scooped my change and reached forward with an almost hypnotically bemused caution for the proffered receipt. Gripping it between forefinger and thumb, I tugged gently at the little strip of paper but Barista A refused to let go. I noticed that Barista B had crept up to the counter and was looking up, with a wide-eyed anticipation, at the receipt held mid-air. He let out a little, snorting laugh of excitement.

"Remember," said Barista A, "once you take it, that's it - no going back."

I nodded in agreement and Barista A deftly released the receipt, my hand snapping back a little where I had been unconsciously tugging at the paper. Confused and hotly uncomfortable, I crumpled the receipt in my hand and started to turn away from her as she held me in a gaze of cruel amusement, Barista B also watching me intently with a noiselessly gibbering grin.

"You think that's your receipt, don't you?" said Barista A, and the two of them began to laugh. "You think that's your receipt! That's not your receipt! That's not your receipt!" Then her face darkened, she took a long deep breath and screamed: "THIS IS YOUR RECEIPT!" and she held up a scrap of paper as the two of them shrieked with wild, grotesque laughter. "It's not over," she wailed, "it's not over - this is your receipt - I've got your receipt right here!"

I felt a cold dark mess slumping into my guts. Barely keeping a grip on my coffee in my left hand, I opened my right hand to look at the 'receipt' I had taken. As it unfurled, I could see written on it in large, black capital letters:

'CONTER SPILL: CHOD-TINTED CONTER SPILL'

My head reeling, I stumbled back a step and backed into someone. I turned and saw that, where there had been nobody, there was now a long queue of people for the coffee shop, all staring impatiently at me. A whistle sounded behind the counter and, as one, everyone in the queue took three steps forward, feet marching over the tiled floor in perfect unison - stomp, stomp, stomp! As they trudged forward, their collective gaze snapped to the counter and, in an uncanny monotone, together they chanted "cakeybiscuit, cakeybiscuit, cakeybiscuit..." a baleful crescendo, "cakeybiscuit, cakeyBISCUIT, CAKEYBISCUIT", ending their fearful incantation in a sudden, synchronised silence.

I felt my breath catch in my throat, too fearful to make even a movement with my lungs. Then, a small boy in the queue started giggling and cried with falsetto glee "cakeybithkit, cakeeebithkeeet!" His mother, white with fury, bent down and slapped him across the face with such force that he fell to the floor with a noise like crunching chicken bones.

With a palpable shudder, my nerve gave completely. I dropped my coffee. The cup buckled and exploded as it hit the polished floor, vomiting out coral-shaped ejecta of milky-brown froth. I turned and ran, ran with a frenzied intent, struggling to get air into my fear-frozen lungs - the only sound behind me the mocking, sing-song voice of Barista A: "you've forgotten your receipt, come and get your receipt..."