19th Century Madam at Starbucks

Anais woke up in a dumpster, her crinoline skirts spread around her and a rotting banana peel entangled in her bouffant updo. 

She lay there in a particularly repugnant heap of trash, looking up towards the heavens and squinting in confusion while sunlight very nearly blinded her.

“Where am I?” she asked her self, finally sitting up right.

She looked all around her, scrunching up her bushy eyebrows. She picked up an empty Starbucks coffee cup right next to her and inspected its logo. One thing was for sure; she certainly was not in Victorian era England anymore. Stumbling to her feet, Anais dusted off the garbage on her skirts and peered over the dumpster she was in.

Glancing around, her eyes almost popped out of their sockets. In the distance, there were strange metal carriages skidding about on the road near the dark alley way she was in. She slung her filthy legs over the cold edge of the dumpster and heaved her self right out. Shortly after, Anais fell into a puddle and squealed with disgust. 

‘I’m nobility for goodness sake, what am I doing in refuse?’ She pondered, panicking.

As she stumbled down the alley towards the light at the end of it, she wondered if she’d had one too many drinks at her betrothal ball.

“Where am I?” 

Arriving at the side walk outside of the alley way, she stepped into a sea of pedestrians. She watched countless metal carriages ride past on a road stretching as far as the eye could see. The noises they produced were deafening. Though she looked around, she couldn’t find horses any where in sight. 

She wondered, “How do they move-”

Just then, her thoughts were interrupted by a pedestrian bumping into her shoulder. Shocked, she glared at him as he walked onwards without even stopping once to apologize to her.

“Have you no manners, you rascal?” Anais yelled at him. “You simply do not bump into a lady- You’re no gentleman!”

He finally looked over his shoulder at her, arched a brow and gave her the middle finger. Her mouth fell open and she let out a sharp gasp.

“Well I never!” she screamed at him. “You ought to be flogged! Do you know who I am? I’ll be sure to have my father order the bobbies to throw you in a cell.”

She gave his clothes a look over, cringing at his peculiar graphic t-shirt and sneakers. “You look like a pauper anyway. With those ghastly rags you have on,”

The man just gave her a look. The sort that looked as if he just saw some worms slithering out of her ears. Even nearby pedestrians shared his exact sentiment.

“God, shut the fuck up lady!” someone yelled. And someone else laughed.

Anais’ mouth couldn’t fall open any wider. So, she settled for a scowl instead. She needed to get the hell out of this strange as well as uncouth city she’d somehow found herself in and find her way back home. And fast.

But first, she needed to figure out what city it was. Begrudgingly, she stopped a black woman in her tracks and queried her.

“Excuse me negro, might I bother you to ask what city we are in?”

The woman glared at her, looking stunned. “Excuse me?”

Anais arched her brow in confusion. She sighed, rolling her eyes. “Look, I know your people are typically uneducated, but I only asked a very simple question; what city are we in?”

“What the fuck? Who do you think you are?” the woman seethed. “I can’t believe it’s 2021 and racist assholes like you still exist. Take your Pride and Prejudice looking ass back to the 19th century where you belong,”

The woman barged straight past her, giving her a poisonous look. Anais just gawked at her in shock. She wasn’t sure what was more mind boggling; the fact that the woman was so uneducated, she actually claimed that they were in the year 2021 and not 1875, or the fact that a person of her race dared to be so disrespectful towards her, a high class lady of nobility.

And of course, there was the fact that the woman looked like a common street walker; she was only wearing what looked like her camisole and petticoats, appearing highly indecent to be out in public!

“For goodness sake! Is everyone here in this dreadful place out of their minds?” Anais groaned, clearly frustrated.

She stormed down the side walk, a grey cloud of misery and confusion looming over her person. 

“I told that silly man that one glass was enough,” Anais shook her head, scowling. 

She recalled the night before at the ball her father had thrown for her arranged betrothal to Robert, an annoying but wealthy accountant. Her fiance had kept insisting that she keep trying glass after glass of wine. So of course, like the good lady that she was, who was she to deny her groom to be’s wishes?

She angrily kicked a nearby empty can out of her way. 

‘I must have gotten so intoxicated that I somehow hailed a carriage right out of London and to...this strange place,’

However, the details that led to that were blurry. She just remembered feeling miserable all night about her forced marriage and she badly wanted to disappear. Then one thing led to another and she'd drunkenly snuck out of the ballroom and into the streets. She stumbled into a dark alley way and…

Anais halted in her tracks as a realization hit her. “Wait, did I get kidnapped in that alley?” Anais scrunched her eyebrows up. “But...why did my kidnappers leave me in that giant box of filth?”

Then it finally came to her. That night, she picked up a strange pocket watch on a nearby heap of trash in the alley, thought of disappearing, and passed out.

“Was it magic?” She considered. How else could she have gotten to this odd city?

Someone barged into her yet again on the sidewalk and she growled. Looking to her left, she caught yet another metal carriage spouting smoke in front of a large banner on the other side of the road.

Slowly, she read the banner’s print; ‘Welcome to New York.’

Anais gasped and exclaimed. “I’m in New York?”

A nearby pedestrian with rainbow colored hair and face piercings gave her a look while taking a drag from her vape pen. “No shit, sherlock.”

No wonder the people here seemed so foreign and vile. ‘The pocket watch was magic, I suppose.’ Anais thought. Either that, or she was dreaming. Just then, someone else bumped into her again and she sighed deeply. 

‘Never mind, I’m really here. The watch definitely was magic.’

However, she didn’t remember seeing the pocket watch in the dumpster she was in. She wondered where it’d gotten to. Shrugging it off, she treaded onwards. She stopped a pedestrian to ask for the nearest carriage so she could find her way to a shipping dock and board a ship straight back to England.

The old man pointed her to a bright yellow metal carriage down the road. 

“But you might want to hurry, honey,” he said. “That’s the last one in the line. Some white-collar might snatch it up soon,”

“Thank you sir,” she smiled. “Glad to see at least someone in this dreadful place shows chivalry to ladies of the gentry,”

“Chivalry? Okay, no need to be so sarcastic, lady. I was just trying to be nice,” The old man frowned, fixing his baseball hat.

Anais scrunched up her eyebrows and repeated in confusion, “Sexist?”

All of a sudden, a woman in a white shirt who was clutching a brief case and running towards the yellow cab down the road caught her eye.

“Oh no you don’t, white-collar!” Anais raced towards her.

Frantically swimming down the wave of pedestrians crowding the side walk, she soon got to the cab before the white-collared woman. The woman glared at her as she smirked triumphantly.

She knocked on the cab driver’s window. “My good sir, I-”

“Where to?” the Japanese cab driver asked in a thick Newyorker accent, opening her window.

Anais was slightly surprised by her race and gender, but brushed it off. She was already getting used to this topsy-turvy city.

“A shipping dock,” Anais smiled.

“That’s pretty far away. You got more than a hundred bucks on you?”

Anais frowned. “Excuse me?”

“A hundred dollars? You got more than a hundred dollars on you for the ride, lady?”

Anais bit her lip, realizing that she currently had no money on her person. “No.”

“I hate when you homeless people try to leech rides for free,” the cab driver sighed, rolling her eyes.

“I am not homeless!” Anais fumed.

“Yeah, keep telling yourself that, lady. You say you ain’t, but all those stains on your dress say otherwise,” The cab driver arched a brow. “No money? No ride.”

The white-collared woman from earlier pushed past Anais and bustled into the cab. And Anais was speechless as the bright yellow metal carriage skidded right past her, leaving a cloud of smoke behind that watered her eyes.

“I hate New York!” Anais screamed in frustration.

“Shut the hell up, Jesus,” a pedestrian said as he walked past.

“You shut up!” Anais barked back. Then she stormed off.

Anais looked to her right and to her surprise, she noticed a familiar looking logo in front of a shop. It was the Starbucks logo that she saw on the coffee cup earlier that day. Hence, she stepped into the store out of intrigue and was greeted by odd stares from everyone inside. People started whispering.

A barista walked over to her, looking concerned. “Can we help you, ma’am?”

“Hmm?”

“Are you alright? Your dress....it’s totally ripped and stained,” the barista said.

Anais, overwhelmed from the horrendously confusing day she’d had, broke down. 

“No, I’m not!” She sobbed. “I don’t know how I got here and everyone has been absolutely awful to me all day!”

The barista quickly ushered her over to a table in the corner and sat her down. “Ma’am, are you saying that you don’t know how you got here?”

“Sort of, yes.”

“Are you on any sort of drug?”

“Drug?” Anais cocked her head.

“Yes, drugs. Or, did you drink at all?”

“Oh, yes I did drink. Quite a lot actually...but I don’t think that’s how I got here,” Anais paused. “I hope you don’t think I am insane, but I believe a magical time piece might have brought me here because I said I wanted to disappear.” Anais threw her hands, exasperated. “But I meant I wanted to disappear from my marriage, not from England entirely! And I didn’t even fully mean it, I was drunk,”

The barista just stared at her for a moment. “Wait right here, I’ll be right back.”

The barista walked over to her coworker and whispered, “Well...she isn’t an escaped kidnapping victim or something, thank god,”

“So, why is she so messed up?” he asked unsurely.

She shrugged. “Maybe she’s just a cosplayer who took one too many shrooms or something,”

“We should let her stick around for a while until she comes down from her high. If we let her out, she might walk into traffic or something,”

So they did. The female barista brought her a free mocha and told her she could sit there at her table till she’d calmed down. Anais absentmindedly nodded while trying to figure out what she was supposed to do with the small green tube that came with her drink.

And so, that was how a 19th century madam found herself at Starbucks one very odd and eventful afternoon.

The End.