The Cafe (Part 1) (A Poll-Based CYOA for Patrons)

( I'm trying something new. We'll see how this goes and how many people are interested in playing along. You'll have 2 days per installment, to cast your vote on the direction of the story and what happens next. )

The Cafe (Part 1)

Life is pretty relaxed and easy-going for you. You're a guy in your early 20s, with a part-time job at a local cafe as a barista. From time to time, you also take orders on DoorDash or other 'gig' apps on your phone, to make a few extra bucks. It's not easy, and the pay is usually awful, but it helps you make ends meet. There's certainly worse situations to be in.

You live with your roommate in a simple and cost-effective apartment with two bedrooms, a bathroom and a living room with an attached kitchenette. Being 21, and a loner, you can't help but indulge in your two favorite activities. Drinking, and playing videogames. Sometimes you just play in your room, online with friends or random strangers, while other times you and your roommate play Co-op in the living room and have a few (or quite a few) drinks, depending on what the two of you have around the apartment. Usually, it's beer.

Before you got home last night, you had an order through an app on your phone, to pick up some things at your local pharmacy. Condoms, some pills, a couple sodas and beers, chips and candy. It wasn't anything too unusual, except this time, after you left the store with the items (already paid for through the app) the order was canceled. With the items technically already paid for...there was nothing to do, but keep them. That's just how these things went. Sometimes you lucked out if the customer (for whatever reason) had to cancel the order. You certainly didn't do anything wrong, but now...you had a bag full of random stuff that you were going to go home with.

So, that night went about the same that most nights did. You played games, you drank, you...perhaps drank a little too much and...well, the memories of that night get a little hazy. You know that you and your roommate were joking around in the living room, playing a videogame online together. The bag of random items you'd gotten was on the coffee table and the two of you were helping yourself to its contents. But by the end of the night, your memories of what happened in that last hour get a bit cloudy. All you know is that you must've made it to bed, because the next thing you know, your alarm is blaring, beckoning you to get up.

As you lean up in bed, a slight headache wracks your mind and causes you to wince from the effort. Memories from the previous night start to stream into your mind. You remember the videogames, the drinking, the joking around with your roommate...a dare...and then, you took a pill from one of the bottles in the bag. Wait...which one did you take? You look down at your body and something is definitely off. You pull the bed sheet back and then blink the haze from your eyes. You glance over to the nearby mirror across from your bed to confirm it. Sure enough, the pills you took on a dare last night, turned you into...