When you enter the cafe today there's a complete silence. It's a silence that covers everything, that slinks down to your bones and makes you shudder.
Over behind the bar The Manager breaks a conversation he seems to be having with a bar patron to wave to you enthusiastically. You begin to wonder if it's just your ears. After all, there's no sound when you walk, or when the other patrons move. Eventually you walk over to The Manager and attempt to begin speaking but nothing comes out.
You see The Manager laugh at your attempt, though you hear nothing, and you can see that he is beginning to speak very slowly. You're surprised by how rapidly you begin to read his lips. He seems to be talking about a 'Midnight Sirens' or something along these lines. You also hear him say that it will pass soon.
He goes back to his conversation with the strange patron, and you take your usual seat at the bar. You try to follow The Manager's lip movements as he speaks, but he's speaking much faster, now. But based on the conversation between him and the patron it seems as though the conversation is important. The Manager continues to whip and practically dance around the cafe, getting your usual without being asked.
In the heat of the conversation he slams it down in front of you, somehow not spilling a drop. But there's no sound when it hits the bar. Then, hands gesticulating wildly, eyes wide and nearly fierce, all sound explodes back into the bar as The Manager finishes his tirade:
"And, that is the secret at the end of the universe, my friend. Not what you said." The Manager nods curtly and the patron shrugs and rises from the bar, defeated.
When you ask about what The Manager was so interested, he shrugs himself.
"Ah, just some little thing I have in a box in the back. Think nothing of it. How's the drink?"
