Fiction: The Sleeping Barista

This month's Words for Wednesday prompts are provided by River at her blog here. This week's prompts are: chicanery, wicker, curly, prissy, superb, uncommon.

Fiction: The Sleeping Barista
Time wouldn't be important to Emily if she doesn't have to worry about falling asleep in the middle of catching a bus or being awake for 15 hours for no reason. Around her neck on a chain, hangs a small, two and half inch pocket watch. It is a thing of great beauty if it doesn't has the ability to control the times she is awake and when she is not.
    The watch does not have dials to turn or change the hands but it has a mind of its own. The single silver hand moves clockwise and at the same speed like any watch but when it is on the blue side, it means sleep time. And if it's on the red side, it's awake time. But like any watch, it also tells time but it never needs to be rewinded as it also corrects the time all by itself. Sometimes its ability for chicanery is rather annoying. Just when Emily thinks she have time to do something, she is suddenly on the floor snoring.
    As a child Emily wasn't fond of sleeping on time so her stepmother, who Emily suspected was a witch, had the watch made and gave it to Emily. After two weeks, Emily had formed a neat sleeping pattern and never deviated from it, not until she grew into adulthood. By then, the watch started changing the pattern and Emily is forced to live by time and the watch. Some nights she is wide awake staring at the watch and wishing the silver hand would move to the blue side. Other nights, she sleeps for so long that the next night comes before she wakes.
    As she served another cup of mocha, Emily shivers from the cold of the air conditioners. Summer is ending but the manager insisted on keeping the cafe in the almost freezing temperature. Three more hours of serving coffee to prissy people. With her superb skill at faking nonchalance and her uncommon tolerance for rude people, Emily is able to get through the work day without pulling any of her hair out.
    "Next," she says. She stares at the knife pointing at her. It is rather long and new looking. The person holding it has curly hair that wraps around his head like an oversized, yellow shower cap. Emily has nicknamed him Curly Hair.
    Emily veers her eyes slightly to the left and then the right. Her co-workers are standing back and the customers behind Curly Hair are standing still as if they are there to watch a movie. No one's talking but the pop music from the speaker is clear in their cheerful noise.
    "A large espresso. Now." Curly Hair's voice because of his long time smoking habit. He coughs into his free hand and then stares back up at her. Even with his hair, he is still short compared to Emily's five-feet-nine-inches.
    "But you always have Macchiato with oat milk," Emily says. She remembers every customer's drink. Curly Hair has been visiting their cafe for about five months now.
    "No, that was you. I kept correcting you but you kept giving me the wrong order. I was trying to be nice about it so I didn't say anything but I'm sick of being nice. Do I need to repeat myself again?" said Curly Hair. His eyes are so wide they appear to be almost popping out of their sockets.
    Emily shakes her head. "No, I'll get your coffee." Without rushing, Emily turns around to fill the cup with coffee and whipped milk and drops it all down the drain as she suddenly remembers it is to be an espresso. She quickly gets a new cup and fills it with coffee and placed a lid on it and spins around to face the counter. Her left hand holding the coffee cup suddenly loses its grip on the cup. She grabs her left hand with her right to steady it. Her eyelid is drooping and before she can put the cup down on the counter, she falls to the floor while the cup leaves her hand. It tumbles to the counter with the lid coming loose and splatters hot coffee onto Curly Hair. He screams and drops the knife on the counter. Three men tackles him to the floor.
    Two pairs of hands lifts Emily up off the blue and white floor tile and moves her to a bench in the seating area. After a few seconds, she opens her eyes to the tube ceiling lights. Why is she awake? Usually when she falls asleep, she doesn't wake for at least ten or more minutes. She sits up and looks around her. Her co-workers and some of the customers are staring at her, some with smiles and others with confused looks. This is the ninth time Emily had fallen asleep while on the job. Emily knows her co-workers thought she is faking it for attention but she doesn't try to explain because she knows they wouldn't believe her. She turns to stare at the artworks on the wall of wicker weaving from a local artist. Emily remembers the day she hung up the artworks. It was her first day of work at Wake Up Cafe. She had been so happy to get a job, she hadn't care she was going to be standing on her feet all day long.
    Emily wants to check on the watch but she knows it must have been on the blue side and then suddenly switched to the red as the watch is known to do lately.
    Across the space, Curly Hair is held down on a chair by a couple of men. He is staring at Emily. "It's all your fault! You made my coffee wrong and ruined my life. It's all your fault!"
    As Emily returns to serving coffee, Curly Hair's eyes has never left her. In about an hour and a half, the police arrives and takes Curly Hair away. When the doors to the cafe closes behind Curly Hair and the police, Emily is relieved and yet, not entirely. How could Emily have gotten his order wrong for so long? She has never once got an order wrong. But he should've have said something but then again, he probably had and she had not heard as her sometimes sleep-depraved mind had trouble concentrating.
    There is low chattering about Curly Hair, about how he missed his wedding because he drank one of their coffee and fell asleep and was late in waking up. Emily doesn't have to ask who served that coffee to him. She can feel the eyes on her. Perhaps it is time to find another employment. Her boss only keeps her on because Emily makes the best coffee, no matter if it's a simple espresso or a complicated Irish Coffee, Emily can make it as long as she have a recipe or seen someone made it. Even when she is lacking sleep, she can make any coffee.
    As soon as her shift is over, Emily rushes home and rips the chain with the watch off her neck which is a pretty dumb move because the back of her neck hurts like hell and then she has to calmly unclasp the chain to remove it. She throws the watch into the trash and takes it out to the sidewalk. Why she has not thought to get rid of the watch, she doesn't know but she no longer wants to look at it or live by it.
    Suddenly she falls asleep. But a moment later, she opens her eyes, picks herself up and dusts off her clothes. A couple of people passing by and her neighbors are staring but she ignores them and goes back inside her house. Things are going to change whether for good or bad, she doesn't know but she knows she cannot let a watch control her life.