Not too long ago, the manager of Coffee World decided to lock himself in the break room and refuse to come out. He wore a grey polo shirt and a pair of jeans underneath his green Coffee World apron. The man wasn't too tall or too short. He had long black curly hair, pale skin, and carried a hint of intimidation for most people to stay away from him. Other than the facade he was trying to present himself with, he was average in every way possible. This helped him to avoid sticking out most of his life. It was up until now that this was about to change.
Dark red marks in the patterns of a cloud trailed down Nathan's neck. He laid down the cup of whiskey in his hands on a nearby table to inspect it further. Nathan curiously uses his thumb to touch the edges of the sun burn causing him to wince in pain.
He heard Abigail begin talking to Ivory outside of the break room gossiping at what he really could be doing in there? Initially he came in here like most people did during work to have a drink and forget any of the terrible things going on in the world.
Unfortunately now he was in the middle of dealing with a new precarious situation. Nathan stared at his neck for a moment and wondered just what the hell this could have been. Could this have been a variant of the sun burn? He heard about the spread of sun burn cases going around but the young man hadn't expected himself to get it.
He had been the manager of Coffee World for a year and tolerated his job. In fact most people in the world currently tolerate their jobs. The majority of the world wouldn't spend even a second on what they really loved to do. The world had become lifeless by people focusing on being productive rather than focusing on their passions. The word productive in itself had started to make his stomach churn.
The environment changing has led people to lose the spark in their eyes. The wonder. The imagination. The young man had decided when the world shifted into an unknown land that the only way to survive was to adapt. Nathan had most likely told himself this to act like he still had a sense of control in the world.
In most people, losing control was the thing they feared most beneath their surface level fears. The fear of insects or the dark was nothing compared to the fear of living in a world that you couldn't change. He looked into opportunities in research immediately after the readjustment period that were studying what was going on in the world but no one would hire him. In all of the interviews he'd been to, he was rejected.
Most of the companies ended up carrying a similar response, "You're great but we already found the right fit for the job."
The constant rejections to be in a field that would allow him to find answers to the mysteries of his world made him upset. It wasn't just the fact he got rejected that infuriated him but that no one would even give him a chance to show them what he was capable of. In the end the man was forced to work at a coffee shop as it was one of the only jobs available at the time.
The research jobs looking into what was going on in the world were managed by the government. No ordinary civilian could get a job like that. The council liked to have interviews still open to the public so it gave them false hope for a field they could never hope to get into. Injustices were spreading across the world for a radical change no one consented to and yet some refused to look at the ones right in front of them.
The council existed for this very reason. The public wanted things to change so they relied on other "more qualified" people to change things for them. He wished instead that the government was more collaborative during this time with the public. Society could face the drastic changes of the world together. The government didn't need to bear this weight alone.
Nathan had wanted to go out and see the world at one point in his life. He wanted to make a difference. Now he had been stuck in a break room with a sun burn trailing down his neck. He fished out an orange bottle of sun screen from the pocket of his jeans labeled SUN NO MORE.
The sun screen acted to decrease the immediate effects of the sun burn and prevent future cases of it. He gently rubbed it on the areas of his neck where the red marks showed up. The marks didn't show any sign of reduction.
Nathan slammed his fist against the break room wall muttering under his breath, "Damn it. What would his cow workers think of this?"
Ivory and Abigail would definitely not let the young man live it down. He had to find a way to remove the mark.
Nathan furiously started to apply more of the sun screen on his neck but to no avail. The red mark stayed the same.
He sighs and whispers to himself, "Is this really what my fate was going to be? I'm going to be made fun of mercilessly if I don't get rid of this."
A throbbing pain began to radiate across his head. He stumbled a couple of steps toward the mirror and noticed the red cloud patterns started to spread across his face.
Nathan gripped the wall to keep himself steady, "Shit. I don't feel so well."
The young man wondered if he should call for help or let this feeling pass? If he didn't call for help, was this where he was going to meet his end?
Nathan began to feel a tingle in his fingers as sparks of electricity shot out of his finger tips. He saw light shades of yellow and blue intertwining as they sparked and shot out at a short distance in front of him, approaching the mirror slowly.
Nathan says in an anxious tone to himself, "I didn't drink too much… Did I? It must have been how I was seeing any of this. There really is no other explanation."
The moment he was going to inspect his hands more thoroughly, a single large bolt of electricity shot from the palm of his hand and shattered the mirror in front of him. The red cloud-like marks on his skin and face following this sequence disappeared leaving the young man speechless.