Stuart's thighs drip sweat into the coffee-scented heat haze. His arms tense and strain as he packs coffee grounds, hefts the implement, pulls another thick dark shot of coffee. It is all clang and clash and he reaches for yet another short black glass and the scent of his sweat is acidic. Viral rabies snarls in his blood stream, gnashing it's cellular teeth, causing him to twitch and groan as he sets down a cup of coffee in front of a particularly insistent customer.
Somewhere beneath his shorts there is a damp layer of cotton, ripe with the exertions of a barrista on Christmas eve. The air conditioner has started to blow hot air, and the customers are worn thin by their chafing against family members they rarely see. Stuart's underpants prop up the hurly burly of yet another day. It is their second outing and he is itchy with the juices of 48 hours of stress, but it will be worth it.
Later, at home he unpeels the whole sordid dampness of them from his skin which has begun to chafe and scab up. He opens the zip lock bag, deposits the underpants into it, seals it, dates the little white label on the outside of the packet. 23 & 24/12/08. Christmas Eve.
He deposits the bag on top of a pile of other similar bags each with their own crusted over pair of underpants. People will pay good money for this. He shakes his head and slips into a fresh pair of knickers.
Ours is not to reason why, thinks Stuart as he cracks another beer.
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