Super-Short Fiction: Emancipation

She sits alone in a corner booth, the coffee shop before her quiet and empty. Her fingers slowly tap her booth’s table, one by one, each hand, from pinky to thumb. Tap, tap, on and on she taps, beating a steady rhythm as she stares into the middle distance, the shop’s windows ink-black dark. She closes her eyes and imagines another world; a different coffee shop, one filled with light, laughter, crying, espresso machine whirs and drips–anything but this silence. Her fingers clench, fists forming, her nails digging into her palms. 

“This,” she says, both hands bleeding, “is not what I asked for.”