Freshly Brewed Venom

Black tea with two teaspoons of sugar, and a dash of oat milk.

Organic Assam tea brewed in freshly boiled water for exactly two minutes.

Add two flat teaspoons of demerara sugar from the fancy glass jar on the second shelf.

Exactly 3 milliliters of oat milk, but if you ask him he’ll say a dash.

Every single morning Saya makes a cup of tea for her boss. Every single morning she has to start brewing it precisely 6 minutes before he walks in. It takes 3 minutes to make and 3 minutes to reach the exact temperature for him to say ‘You have a real talent for this Saya’. The exact amount of time it takes for Saya to be ready for the day to end already.

On a Thursday morning in November Saya leans against the cool tile counter in the break room, and stares out the tall glass windows. A grey canvas painted with furiously swirling water laden clouds, fit to burst at any second. A couple of stories below other office-goers buzz, frantic to be out of the cold. Their hands are gloved and their necks retreat into voluminous coats like turtles in their shells.

Beside her a glossy, red electrical kettle gurgles violently, as steam puffs from it’s mouth. Saya tilts her head almost at a right angle and drags her manicured nails over the tile slowly, walking her fingers towards the fuming device. She feels a kinship with it, as she caresses it, with her fingers over the warm plastic of it’s surface. Sometimes it felt like there was a boiling pool of lava in the pit of her stomach, ready to overflow from her parched lips.

This painful and burning vitriol is what keeps her awake. It keeps her standing. It is the very thing she nourishes when she stands opposite that man who would insult her work and compliment her tea in the same breath. This lovely hatred that brought a smile that tugged at the corners of her mouth. Saya did not know that it was possible for her to hate this much.

Her fingers redden as they traipse over the kettle’s surface, wisps of steam scalding her hands when they dared to draw too close to where it poured out of the kettle. This warmth sustained her through late night rewrites, and embraced her during this regular morning routine.

As the water comes to a boil, the kettle’s aggressive rattling halts and the switch at its base flips down. Saya grasps the handle and tips the still bubbling water into green ceramic mug with a single pyramid shaped tea bag.

She watches the blackness of the tea diffuse rapidly through the shimmering water. A rich aroma wafts into the air of the break room. The quiet of an empty work space in the early morning feels like her own kingdom. For those few minutes when she’s steeping tea for someone else, Saya is both simmering with anger and at ease with her isolation. She can breath.

For a moment the walls of the break room ripples and glow, with aureoles created when light passes through a liquid. Saya could drown in a sea made with the cups of tea she’s brewed for the past two years. It pours into her nose and mouth fueling the magma inside her and merging with her blood. It’s strange. She could be writing reports, answering emails, reading a book, or eating with friends, and nothing could make her feel like these teas do. She exhales and she’s human again.

The cabinet above the counter swings open smoothly to reveal an assortment of snacks, condiments, teas and coffees. Saya mechanically grabs the thick glass jar half filled with sand-like sugar. She reaches for a teaspoon from the tray with cutlery, her warped face stares back at her from its concave. Repetition makes spooning the sugar into the mug muscle memory.

The black water forms a whirlpool in the mug as the metal spoon clinks against the ceramic mug. She can feel the spongy texture of the waterlogged teabag against the spoon. Such a mindless, inane task and apparently it is all she’s good for. Four years of studying, a year of job application after application and endless online courses to fortify her resume, and this is what defines her. Not once did Saya study to pour boiling water over some pretentious, stupidly expensive teabag. Once every morning she does this and it’s the thing she’s most acknowledged for.

She gnaws at her cracking lips, as she sees those beady eyes in the depths of the tea. they make her feel so small. There’s no depth to them. They are not seeing through her. They never even really look at her, not once in the two years that she’s stood before them. It’s just one mug of tea that she can easily carry with one hand, yet when she stands in front of him that mug towers over her, dominating everything that makes Saya herself.

The sound of the spoon against the ceramic sounds more like an unbearable scraping than a gentle clink. On the dot in two minutes, Saya scoops the teabag out of the cup and let the excess liquid drip back into the it. She dumps the used tea back into the black bin under the counter. All the while all Saya can think is how much she hates this damn tea. How she hates all tea now. Such a small stupid thing, and she hates a whole category of drinks and any dish that uses them. She can feel the acid in her stomach rising up and choking her whenever the scent hits her nose.

Saya grabs the oat milk from the fridge door, and splashes a ‘dash’ of it into the mug. The white melds with the black tea to form a pale brown. A neutral creamy colour, the last shade you expect from the source of her greatest rage. She gives it one last swirl with the spoon, which she now has to wash.

Saya lathers soap onto the spoon. She hates when her colleagues don’t wash the spoons properly, leaving little stains on the cutlery. Her teeth reflexively gnash together at the thought, making her jaw ache dully.

Everyday little by little, like building a house one brick at a time Saya builds her frustration and ire. Assam tea is one brick. Demerara sugar and oat milk are two more. Every time she pours boiling water into a green mug she adds a brick. Every time she picks up a fork with dried food in it’s tines she adds five more bricks. Saya cherishes this little house. It’s her shelter from this reality where she has no choice but to make this tea everyday.

She picks up the mug exactly 6 minutes after she poured in the boiling water, and leaves the break room. Tomorrow she’ll do the same again. With every cup she hopes more and more that this growing pool of hate in her seeps into the mug and blends seamlessly with dark drink within. She fears even the poison of her ire will be that same shade of tea brown. Is the rage she bottles the same flavor she brews?