Look, here comes the Intro—slightly strange and distracting from your main goal: "to find out what's going on with those people from the gray and boring world."
It's more of a literary-artistic sketch, while the following narrative will be descriptive (just the way you wanted). So feel free to skip this beginning, fast-forward the "video" to the next episode, and that's where you'll learn exactly what you came for.
The Fall of the Roman Empire
In the center of the metropolis towered a cyclopean restaurant, the size of a thousand "Michelins." Next to it crouched a couple of other skyscrapers—like the president's residence, city hall, and other insignificant institutions not even worth mentioning.
Inside this luxury drinking establishment, everything stood empty, for its owner accepted no clients, maintaining the restaurant solely for his own purposes. Of course, he had staff, and in great numbers, so that employees scurried through the enormous hall, serving only their boss.
He himself was perched at the bar counter, consumed by exhaustion after a hard day's work.
At his feet stood a painted bowl from the Mycenaean era of Crete, where he soaked his legs in lactose-free soda, lazily wiggling his toes. From time to time, leech-therapists clung to them—shipped in from his favorite lake in Algeria. After a long first-class flight, they finally got to do the job they were paid for. The oldest leech had only one day left before retirement and was already planning how she would go fishing with her grandchildren on the lakeside after fifty years of service as a detective.
The boss's body was also steeped in bliss, since he had recently given up the outdated chocolate body wrap and now preferred exclusively the garlic-mayonnaise wrap, otherwise known as the "Salad of the Soul."
From the numerous subwoofers built into the walls came the easy, loungy melodies of Slaughter to Prevail, and his heavy eyelids involuntarily closed, ready to slip him into pleasant drowsiness. On a small stool beside him sat his brother-in-law, frozen in place while holding a glass of Italian liqueur, Limoncello Supreme with a topping of lower-back cream.
Combining pleasure with practicality—that is the foundation of any successful man's lifestyle, provided he cares about his health.
The eyelids had almost fully closed, when in that small slice of still-visible space, the chef noticed the saloon doors slide open to admit a certain creature.
A surprised murmur ran through the staff, and the boss groaned, forced to interrupt his moment of tranquility.
The more his gaze focused on the intruder, the more astonishing details of its appearance came into view. The running figure (most likely a human, though the boss was reluctant to acknowledge such kinship) looked truly extraordinary.
He was very tall, with broad, sloping shoulders draped in two snow leopard pelts that hung down to his knees, concealing his loins. The guest himself, much like those departed predators, often bared his teeth in a grin, and from his mouth jutted sharp fangs that hardly resembled anything human.
A wild mane of hair spilled down to the middle of his back, while a slightly curly forelock fell straight into his eyes, practically covering them completely. How this creature could see at all was a mystery—but apparently, it navigated the world just fine.
How else to explain the fact that, with a snort, the guest headed directly for the bar counter, leaving filthy footprints from his bare feet across the immaculate floor?
The boss instantly lost his calm and shrieked:
— Get him out of here! In a building that contains every artistic style—Baroque, Empire, Wright, and Rococo—there's no place for such an ersatz version of a human being!
By cruel irony, the grim security guards had just left for the nearest shop to buy new e-cigarettes, so there was simply no one to escort the intruder out.
The guest crashed heavily onto a nearby chair. The material cracked under his weight but, heroically, it held. What followed was a one-sided staring contest, since the stranger's eyes never appeared from beneath his hair, while the boss couldn't stop studying every scar left by claws or cold steel across that battle-worn torso.
— Okay. Let's assume you sit here for a while, until my staff call the authorities. Who are you, and why did you come here?
A string of incoherent growls followed. The boss shook his head in confusion.
— Ohh, this is bad! Kid, you've gone way too deep into those LARP or reenactment games of yours. You could've chosen a more civilized era, like the Renaissance. Instead you've gone nuts, overcommitting to this barbarian act.
From the guest's lips slipped some sounds—faintly resembling words. The astonished boss leaned closer to check if he wasn't just imagining it (keeping his head carefully out of range, in case those sharp fangs went for his earlobe).
For a while the intruder only whimpered, growled again, and then finally forced his tongue into articulation, muttering in a rough, uneven voice:
— All this… reminds me of a strange episode… from Jim Jarmusch's "Coffee and Cigarettes"… rrr… or any other stereotypical movie, where two strangers… rrr… meet in a diner and share their stories.
— A diner?! How dare you?! — The boss's brows, which had sat like a humble rooftop, now rose into the shape of the Taj Mahal. He roared bear-like: — What nonsense is this?! This is the finest establishment in the world!
The beast-man bounced several times on his chair, like a baboon on ecstasy, and yet the chair, noble warrior that it was, endured. Then he spoke again, with visible effort:
— And you—are the Archetype of the Typical… Successful Western Bourgeois. Rrr! Boring!
— You're boring! — The boss flared up for real. — You're not all that funny yourself. So, where are you from?
— Rrr… I come from the faraway North… Hyperborea.
— Never heard of it. Is that in Oklahoma? Whatever. Why did you come here?
The guest began to tremble, his features slipping further from humanity. He scratched his chest with long, crooked nails, and the boss recoiled in horror, just in time to hear the phrase:
— Lavender latte… the last thing… that can save me…
Fearing for the safety of his property, and realizing both guards and police were running late, the boss ordered the nervous waiters to fetch several double-cups of the requested drink.
Snatching the cups, the beast-man bent down and slurped the liquid greedily with his tongue—and then, something incredible began to happen.
The pelts shifted into ordinary clothing, the hair shortened and grew cleaner, the fangs and nails receded. After a few more gulps, in front of the boss sat the most average human being—one of the countless everymen this world mass-produces.
At that very moment, a squad of cops burst into the hall, rushing up to the two companions. But the bewildered boss waved a hand for them to halt. He saw that this newly-minted—or reborn—human was staring unblinking at the ceiling, speaking in a deep baritone voice.
The resonance of his voice, as well as the story itself, was mesmerizing. Waiters brought mats, and the cops sat down cross-legged upon them. The boss leaned back, once again drifting into drowsiness, lulled by his brother-in-law blowing a cool breeze into his ear.
And the ex-barbarian himself marveled at the words spilling from his mouth:
— Now I will write a book with spoken words… what kind of madness is this?!