Voltage Coffee is not my favorite but it’s easily accessible, which in Asheville, means they have parking. Its neon sign, tacky by all standards, shows a bolt of lightning striking a coffee mug, and it hums loudly with electricity. It’s probably wired incorrectly. I think I saw it spark?

The sandwich board outside reads: WIFE-OF-THE-DAY: DARK ROAST, FULL BODY, BITTER.

Coffee shops should smell like spicy chai, earthy coffee, and freshly baked pastry. This place smells like the French Broad and wet wool. I’m barely settled into a lawn chair that passes for furniture when I see my husband’s ex-wife gliding toward me. Shit.

“Hey, mind if I sit?”

My foot reluctantly slides a chair out for her.

The man-boy barista, wearing a hand-knit beanie and a Magic: The Gathering t-shirt, slams coffee grounds into a recycling container, pounding four times before deciding he’s done.

“This place stinks of hippies,” she says. “And what’s with that neon sign?”

I manage to smile. Slightly.

 “Is this lawn furniture?” she asks. I ignore the question.

“Oh, well, at least there’s parking,” she shrugs.

Stop making the same observations, I don’t say.

She (I suddenly can’t recall her name) is harshly geometric. She has sharp shoulders, high cheekbones and wide-set, asymmetrical eyes that look level in contrast to the skewed wall art behind her. She has a choppy-bob hairstyle. I have a choppy-lob. She dresses like me too – wool pants, cashmere sweaters, sensible but professional Chelsea boots. Her clothes could fill my closet, and my husband would never notice the difference. Apparently, he has a type.

“How’s Perry?” she asks.

Our dog Perry used to be their dog Perry. I’ve trained him to chew her face off. My husband doesn’t know this. I taped a picture of her face on to a bitesuit.

“Perry’s great. Bit of chewer,” I say while slurping my 16 oz. Ethiopian dark roast with a hint of refined Vietnamese cinnamon.

The neon sign moans and sparks. Sparks! What the fuck is up with that sign?

“I always bring my own Vietnamese cinnamon; it pairs gorgeously with their Ethiopian dark,” she says. I watch her dig out a jar and deftly sprinkle the world’s best cinnamon into her 16 oz. mug. I see she got hers from the same spice merchant where I got mine.

It is at that moment I know I must kill her.

Maybe the barista too. People have to be expecting that. AGAIN, he pounds spent grounds into a recycling container FOUR times.

“God, is that barista annoying or what?” she says insufferably.

THAT’S IT!

“Tiffany, Tiffany, are you okay? You have to come with us,” someone says.

Who the fuck is Tiffany? I wish people would stop calling me Tiffany. My name’s Fae.

“My name’s Trinity and you better take your hands off me,” I say, not knowing why I’ve just said my name’s Trinity. Then several minutes of fanciful kung-fu occurs with me winning. I’m really limber. Neal Patrick Harris arrives and everyone, except a few cool people, becomes suspended in mid-air.

Just as NPH is about to kill me, some dude named Smith arrives and punches NPH so hard he flies over the countertop breaking all the coffee cups. I throw world-class cinnamon in what’s her face’s eyes. More fighting happens, this time it’s even more acrobatic. There are machine guns too. The pacifist, pot-soaked, gentrifiers of Asheville erupt into blood-spewing volcanoes, taking bullet after bullet. Thick-rimmed eyeglasses fly everywhere. A misplaced slice of pizza flies through the air. How did pizza get into a coffee shop?

That goddamned barista is finally taken out. Pound those coffee grounds bitch.

NPH sees a black cat who is controlling the scene telepathically. The lightning bolt from the fire-hazardous sign strikes the barista’s already dead body. Ha! More awesome jiu-jitsu occurs, or maybe tai chi, which one is the really violent one? Never mind. In a spaceship, my alter ego is resuscitated. The black cat is excited by this new development. NPH is in deep shit now. He calls for black squiggly things to come from the atmosphere. Through hundreds of SWAT jocks and exploding hipsters, my husband and I make our way to each other and when our hands touch, a sonic boom takes out everyone we hate, especially ____ (seriously, what is her name?).

We embrace.

Good triumphs over evil.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“I said I love your boots,” she repeats. “They’re just like mine.”

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Candi Joneth is a writer; living, researching and writing from the cold coast of Maine. She is a master’s candidate in Creative Writing and Literature from Harvard. She has published over 200 news articles, over 50 features, for three newspapers. She uses humor to release tension and engage humanity.