Covfefe

Kensa awoke violently, covered in sweat. Her sheets felt slimy, like she had been thrashing around in her sleep. She peeled them off of herself and her teeth started to chatter. It felt like there was a knife blade being twisted at the base of her skull. She whimpered involuntarily and licked her dry, chapped lips. She sat up slowly and massaged her neck and temples. Kensa kicked through the dirty laundry on the floor, looking for a jumpsuit to put on before she headed to the docks. She picked one up and put it on without so much as a sniff or a shrug. Her fingers trembled as she worked the zipper.

Outside her building, she joined the horde of other early morning workers trudging down the sidewalk to the corner Covfefe Dispensary. Some people jostled and shoved to get a better place in line. But most, like Kensa, just dragged their bodies along, eyes glazed over, minds empty save for the cravings gnawing at them internally. There was no sense in nudging and competing for a place in line. The Covfefe Dispensaries never ran out. And there was one on every corner in the city.

Two armed guards in tactical gear stared out at the throngs of people, their faces unreadable behind their protective helmets and masks. They supervised the covfefe distribution with unnerving aloofness. Or at least, it would have been unnerving, if Kensa had ever dedicated a thought to it. Mostly she just tried to keep her head down until it was her turn, fighting back the pangs of thirst and attempting to ignore the strange, cottony feeling and bitter taste in her mouth.

The people in line ahead of Kensa swiped their government credits, grabbed a cup, and filled it from the distillation tanks, then dispersed. One person, one cup. It was a quick, methodical process and most days it moved along very efficiently. Everyone, once they were out of the way, quickly gulped down the contents. You needed to drink covfefe quickly, otherwise the resin would stick to the cup. Everyone knew this, but you’d still occasionally see some poor soul tearing their paper cup apart with their teeth and hungrily eating scraps of it to get at the residue.

Kensa was only two bodies away from the front of the line when she heard the unmistakable haunting beep of a denied credit. Both guards heads swiveled to the woman standing at the scanner. She tried again. Beep. The woman’s eyes widened. “No, no no no nonononono…” she wailed, her voice sounding raspy and hollow.

The guard on the left stepped forward. “Move along ma’am. You’re holding up the line.”

“Please!” The woman beseeched the faceless guard. “I need this! I couldn’t work last week, my son was sick.”

“Better luck next time.” The guard responded emotionlessly. “Now get out of the way.”

The woman’s eyes looked wild. The guard reached for her, but as his hand closed in, the woman jerked out of his reach and leapt across the barrier, plowing into one of the distillation tanks. The tank careened uncontrollably and then fell forward, crashing onto the sidewalk. Although the tank itself looked unharmed, one of the conduits connecting to it had sheared off at the joint, and suddenly covfefe was spraying up into the air and raining back onto the concrete like from the spout of a whale.

In the span of half a second, the orderly line dissolved into a swarming mass as the crowd surged forward. Kensa didn’t hesitate. She was one of the closest, after all, and she couldn’t give up her good fortune by letting others take advantage. She swiped at the sleeves of cups and grabbed as many as she could clutch in her sweaty hands, holding them up to catch the downpour of brown liquid sweetness. She tilted her head back and opened her mouth like a child trying to catch a snowflake on their tongue, barely noticing the crush of bodies around her doing the same.

As soon as the delightful nectar touched Kensa’s lips, all of her weary troubles and pains disappeared. She felt happy, giddy even, and her body was suddenly buzzing with energy and health. She felt the shower of covfefe droplets kissing her skin. She guzzled one cup, and then another, as fingernails of desperate bystanders raked at the back of her neck, attempting to grab and yank her out of the way so they could get theirs. Someone grabbed a fistful of her hair and pulled her head back, and her eyes snapped open just in time to see a guard’s baton splitting through the air and colliding with her face. An explosion of pain and blood blossoming from the bridge of her nose was the last thing Kensa remembered before everything faded to black.