The Last Café on Earth

No one knew why the café still had power.

The world had gone dark six months ago. Satellites blinked out like dying stars. Cities collapsed into shadows. The internet—once a sprawling digital heartbeat—flatlined. Planes fell. Governments vanished. People disappeared, or worse, turned on each other. What remained of humanity scattered like dry leaves in wind.

Yet here it was.
Milo’s Café.
Open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week.

The sign outside still flickered faintly in cursive neon: “Coffee. Comfort. Connection.”

Inside, the espresso machine hissed like an old friend sighing. The lights glowed softly. Vinyl hummed on a dusty turntable. The bell above the door still chimed every time someone entered—though these days, that didn’t happen often.

Milo, a man with silver in his beard and eyes like burnt mahogany, wiped down the same counter every day with the same precision he had before the world unraveled.


---

They came in ones and twos—stragglers, wanderers, quiet survivors. Word had spread somehow. Not through internet or broadcast. Just… word of mouth, carried in footsteps and whispers:
“There’s a café still open, down past the dead highway, across the skeletal city. A place with light. A place with coffee.”

Some believed it was a hallucination. A ghost. A trap.

It was none of those things.

It was simply what it claimed to be: a café.

But that didn’t make it ordinary.


---

One day, a woman named Iris arrived. Her coat was ripped, boots worn through. She carried a backpack filled with water bottles, maps, and a revolver with no bullets.

She stepped inside and froze.

It smelled like cinnamon and roasted beans. Like something safe. A sound—Nina Simone playing softly—drifted through the air like nostalgia.

Milo looked up and smiled.

“Welcome,” he said, like it was any other Tuesday before the collapse of civilization. “First cup’s on the house.”

She stared. “How do you still have power?”

He shrugged. “Solar. Backup batteries. And maybe a little magic.”

She laughed for the first time in months. It sounded cracked, but human.


---

They sat by the window. The outside world was broken glass and overgrown roots. Inside, the world was a ceramic cup and the clink of a spoon.

“You waiting for someone?” Iris asked.

Milo nodded slowly. “Everyone.”

She blinked. “That’s a lot of waiting.”

“I’ve got time,” he said, refilling her cup.


---

More came. A mother and her child. A wandering historian. A mute man with eyes like galaxies. A former soldier who refused to say his name. They never stayed long—just long enough for a hot drink, a conversation, a story.

They left with something they couldn’t explain. Not hope, exactly. Something smaller, but steadier. Like weight rediscovered after floating too long.

Milo never asked where they came from or where they were going.

He just listened.

And brewed.


---

One evening, Iris stayed past closing.

“I think this place is keeping the world alive,” she said, watching dust float in golden light.

Milo raised an eyebrow. “Because of coffee?”

“Because it reminds people of who they were. Who they still are.”

Milo smiled, but didn’t answer.

Instead, he reached under the counter and pulled out a small, hand-carved sign. He passed it to her. It read:

> “All that’s left is what we share.”



She stared at it, heart tugging at something buried.

“Put it up for me,” he said.

She did.


---

Years passed, though no one counted days anymore. Some say Milo aged in reverse. Others say he was already a ghost when the world fell apart.

But the café remained.

And long after everything else crumbled—

A warm light still shone through the windows.
A kettle still whistled.
A door still chimed.
And strangers still found their way to the last café on Earth…

Looking for coffee.
Looking for comfort.
Looking for a place where they still mattered.

And always—
finding it. And always find it .

The End. .