I know about this because I was there. 

The other survivors of the incident, bespeckled and tattooed barristas, have gone into hiding or into self imposed exile, so horrible was the incident that it scarred their psyches for life. 

It was during the blackout. I was in Batdorf and Bronson on Capitol Way, among the yuppies on the one hand, the barristas probably annoyed at serving the yuppies on the other, with a small crowd of unclassifiable freaks, of which I was one, rounding out the crowd. 

Suddenly, we heard a crack and the power went out. No one knew what happened or what to do. Some people made their way to front door only to find that the security system had dead bolted the door shut. In desperation, some yuppies started pounding on the plate glass windows. Unfortunately, Batdorf and Bronson had recently replaced their windows with shatter resistant glass.

Someone checked the back entrance, at the end of the hallway by the bathrooms, but everything had been locked down. We were stuck.

That's when the horror that has lodged itself in Olympia, whose memory even now haunts the peaceful shell that is Batdorf and Bronson, came to be among us. 

At first everything was all right. There were the usual exclamations as people realized that we were truly stuck, people upset about not being able to go home. Some people, in the dark, decided to make good use of their time. Others organized games and sing alongs. There was a profusion of cell phone conversations. 

But as the minutes turned into hours we noticed a strange thing happening: near anorexic state workers and undifferentiated yuppies, deprived of food, started laughing spontaneously. At first we thought it was a natural response to the conditions. Then, from the coffee bar, we heard the sound of broken glass. They had gotten into the pastries. They feasted upon them loudly while the talking and the 'getting acquainted' temporarily stopped: everyone was listening. Then it stopped. 

We assumed that they had collapsed from a sugar high, gone into some sort of diabetic sleep, but they were just sitting there, behind the counter, with their thoughts and themselves and nothing else. From what we could reconstruct, at some point in time they became aware that though their bellies were temporarily full, they were still stuck. The psychological strain of being without their small annoying dogs, the indignity of being without Sex in the City and Carrie Bradshaw, it was too much for them. Sounds of movement started coming from behind the bar, and then the sounds of bags ripping open. 

Some blame one, others another, but one of them started getting into the coffee. 

Muffled sounds of "mmph,ghh,umm," followed by sounds of running water, followed by more "mmph, ghh, umm", more water, a tap turning on, the water being intercepted from falling into the sink, then more "mmph, ghh, umm". Soon, almost tentatively, the sound of more bags being ripped open started. 

Again, the muffled sounds started. "Dear god, they're eating it!" yelled one of the fine young men in the crowd, who I saw had rippling muscles and a cut off...well, anyways, a thought began to spread amongst the crowd, we didn't want to face it, but we had too: hopped up on handfuls of ground coffee swallowed whole there was no telling what these crazed devotees of "the active lifestyle" might conceive of and act on.

The muffling and water....silence. Then screams. "Oww, my arm! My arm!" a yuong voice cried out. We rushed over to the sound. Someone turned on their cellphone light and we saw what we didn't want to see: a bleached blonde with nostrils flaring, grunting, holding a piece of human flesh in her mouth, with blood running down face and neck.

We quickly turned off the light, but not before she made a move for one of our party; at that point we ran back to the overpriced tchotchkes nook, where we were forced to hear the the further screams of the victim and a low growling sound as the she-yuppie devoured her prey. Then the screams stopped. The horror had claimed its first victim. It would not be the last.

From the other end of the cafe another scream rang out; sounds of a body being thrown against the glass. The scent of mass panic began to waft through the crowd as more people realized what was happening. There was a yell and then a sound of a struggle "Get this fucker off of me!"

The crowd starts to move from the front of the store to the back, but that piece of territory had already been staked out by the transformed, deranged, coffee afficionados. They blocked the exit to the hallway leading to the bathrooms and more sounds, as pitched battles started. There must have been a group of about five guarding the exit. There now were two on the other side of us, but we decided that that way would be a better bet. An indeterminate number were still behind the counter, just waiting, for god knows what. 

We moved in a mass back to the front, wary of the intruders. Two people went down to the seating area, determined to make a stand for that patch of ground and, armed with chairs, shooed the were-yuppies first back up to the puffy chairs and then back behind the counter before they were in turn flushed back to the seating area by the full force of the behind the counter contingent of the creatures once human, now, something else, maybe even something more than human.... 

Were we seeing the next stage of human evolution in action? Is this what all those millions of years was leading us towards, this...this...this........(the palpitations, the palpitations...I have to relax, catch my breath). 

Ok, we appointed guards and managed to secure the area from the divider where the big tables are located to the seating area. They were confined, albeit at the cost of guards armed with chairs fending them back like lion tamers. 

Back! Back!

Then an unforseen turn of events presented itself. "Get out of my fucking way, Greener!", shouted a man who in the dim light appeared well dressed, who was trying to procure the half and half container, no doubt for his own nefarious purposes. "What the hell have you done for this town anyways?". He argued back, but more voices turned against him "Yeah, keep your mouth shut you dirty fucking hippy". Like rats, once they had secured their safety, however tenuously,  they started turning on each other. Other voices rang out against the well dressed men: "Fucking scum parasites, stop picking on him!", "Oh yeah!" "Yeah!", and then as the shouting continued I tried to get closer to the anti-well dressed men voices, tenuously moving. Others must have had the same idea, for before the melee broke out I found myself within a concentration of voices yelling against the men. 

While the guards were standing idly by, keeping the creatures at arms length with their chairs, ever so often looking over to us, we fought. Soon it became clear that they outnumbered us, and that if we didn't get out we would be turned into jelly. We needed to get out, but we seemed to be between a rock, the norms, and a hard place, the crazed yuppies. In situations like these bare survival instincts take over. We are not proud of what one of our number did, but in our situation it appeared to offer our one chance for survival. 

A member of our group, let's call him Yuri, caught one of the well dressed men by his collar then turned with him, lifted him over his head, and threw him behind the bar to the pit of she-creatures lurking in the even blacker blackness of the behind the bar. 

An eruption of sound. They start to tear him to pieces, the smell of blood giving them energy and making them bolder. Then, all at once, they climb over the bar, overtaking the guards, and fall upon us. "Shit, shit!", I said, "Come on!", one of the barristas, who had sided with us, whispered in my ear. I feel that I'm in a crowd that's moving, being pushed and alternately being pulled by the people in front, who are trying to get us some place, to saftey.  "Go right!". Someone stumbles over the corpse of the boy who was killed "Jesus....", "Come On!", and I'm pushed into the side room of B&B with about fifteen counter-culturalists total. The barristas swiftly lock the door, then, stumbling around, with cell phone lights as our only guides, we move coffee bags and equipment against the door to reinforce it. 

After the reinforcement we stop, sit down, and listen. Terrible sounds, of bones breaking, screaming, exclamations, and wild howling. Shouts of the norms trying to coordinate strategy, sometimes undermined in mid sentence by a scream "Oww! She's got my leg!". 

And on and on it went. As we were all were nodding off the door shook violently. Something was banging on it. Hard. 

Thud. Thud. Thud. We all held our breath. Another tap, then nothing. 

****

In the morning we started to rise. Amazingly, our fortifications had stood. One of our group approached the door and listened: nothing. We all listen where we are: no one can hear anything. Minutes go by and someone says "Ok, if we don't hear anything in fifteen minutes lets get the stuff out of the way of the door and take a look out". "Sounds good" someone says, and we all genuinely grunt or make strange sounds in approval. 

When the time is up we carefully take the barricade down and then slowly, carefully, open the door just a crack. It's day time  out and it appears that all is still. 

The door opens a little more, and still nothing. One person volunteers to go out and check; as we open the door farther to let this person out the stench hits us.

We wait. He knocks on the door. We open. With tears streaming down his cheeks he tells us "It's safe, there's no one left, no one left...". My God. As we shuffle out we see what he means. The walls are stained with blood and body parts and bodily fluids are everywhere, an arm here, a piece of scalp there. On the coffee bar, in a pool of gore and blood, lies a human heart with a bite taken out of it. 

As we survey the damage we notice that most of the victims are normal people of various sexes and orientations; the anorexic she-devils are almost totally absent except for one who died locked in battle with her normal adversary, them both laying on the floor still fighting in death. Then I see it. 

In the left picture window there is a gaping hole. The large black laquered wooden table by the table is gone. We can only surmise that they used the table to bash a hole through the glass and escape to the outside.

Me and a few friends do not wait for the police: we get the hell out of there. 

The whole incident is covered up. Neither Batdorf and Bronson nor the Olympia PD 

are willing to have the amount of publicity of something like this happening come down on themselves and on Oly.

Everything is swept under the rug, or picked up with sterile gloves and thrown in a very large medical waste bag. 

Nothing more is heard about it.

But what about the Caffeinated She-Were-Yuppies, who escaped sometime between the hours of one AM and sunrise?

We can only surmise that they went back to their homes, and we have every reason to believe, although we can't prove it, that they walk among us now.

Copyright Summerisle 2007