Four Thirty Fiction

Because I wasted so much time zoning out on the internet, losing track of time, and unnecessarily staying up until the moment I finish this post, why not some creativity to cap it off?

I present to you, a stream-of-consciousness short story that's possibly going to have some absurdity, little meaning, and a deadpan conclusion. It will be the first fiction I've written since my ill-fated attempt to start a novel about James Joyce's corpse.

THE MISSING SCONE

John anxiously tapped the ashes off his cigarette, exposing the orange embers below to the silent air of the cafe. It was eight o'clock today, somewhat cold, and fretfully absent of Rebecca. Today was going to change.
It all started when John swiveled his forearm up and prepped his lungs for another deep pull on the dying cigarette. Suddenly, the door jolted open. The air shook and glowed as it pushed back from the door and onto the blistering embers. John had not expected someone else to arrive at this time of night, failed to resolve the smoky breath correctly in his throat, and reacted with a violent cough. A genial man in a tweed coat hastily approached him from the doorway, a dour grin of guilt disguising the foppish prig that lay beneath.
"I'm dreadfully sorry! Have I startled you?" said the genial man in the tweed coat.
"Yes," said John.
"Well then bollocks to you!" replied the foppish prig that lay beneath.
Sick of all this bullshit, John promptly collected his belongings and headed for the door. Pausing a second, he ashed his cigarette a second time and dropped it in a trash bin. The foppish prig raised one eyebrow and set about reading his newspaper, while the genial man in the tweed coat worried about the fire in the garbage. In a bitter thrust of fate and psychology, the fire would consume the entire street block. There were eighteen survivors.