Welcome to Bergman’s, where the bleakness of the décor assaults your senses. The walls are white like a windswept northern landscape and as blank as your existence in the world. No one seats you; you are isolated and ignored so you stagger under the weight of your pain to the table that seems to be forever out of reach in the abyss of despair that eternally stretches out before you! Hauntingly and painfully beautiful, the music of J.S. Bach and his BVW 1042 plays on an endless loop.
You struggle to the table and haul yourself into the chair that creaks and groans under the heaviness of the existentialist angst that is your burden. The chairs are as hard and unyielding as the toil of daily existence and you sit uncomfortable and empty.
Look in vain and exhaustion for a menu, it is torn and stained with the tears of previous patrons. There are no specials, ever, only monotonous offerings of tasteless food. The sandwich that is being offered today is Existential Egg Salad. On brown, shriveled bread made with Malaise and eggs that suffer with the notion and anguish of what came first, themselves or some unknown and long forgotten chicken.
Did you miss breakfast in your struggle to face the day? Then perhaps Panic Pancakes that struggle in a heavy burdensome morass of syrup would be a good choice before you hit that cold and uncaring shower.
If a meaningless morning has passed, the careless staff offer with a sigh, deep with pain and hopelessness, their lunch choices. Depravation Dogs, choice of toppings but empty of substance and filled with a tortured mix of flesh from animals who suffered silently in a cold, forgotten, and dying landscape.
Yet another lunch offering: Harbinger of Doom with a side of fries. Toppings include: limp lettuce and the sourness of life pickle and draped across it in an unmindful manner, a slice of cumbersome cucumber.
Is your stomach anguished and full of doubt? Then how about Isolation Ice Cream, cold and unyielding with hopeless hot fudge to complement the failure of finishing this hard to swallow confection that sits on the remains of the previous repast like the hauntings of arguments lost and relationships doomed from their very painful births. Or Depression Donuts, not so sweet and empty within. Despondent Danish—sweet on top that crumbles to the touch revealing the brittleness of this sad confection. Mortality Malted—a quickly melting treat that disappears like the lost grey Sunday hours that slipped from your grasping, desperate hands.
How about a beverage to top off your meal? The sad offerings are as follows:
- Coldness Coffee—a bitter and dark roast
- Sour Milk of Human Kindness—curdled and lumpy with grudges
- Tribulation Tea—a broken bag swimming in an acidic tannin pool
- Angst Apple Juice—from fallen apples that cried out as they descended to an unyielding earth.
- Exile Elixir—drink it down to drown and numb the demon voices crying within that still reclaim their horror in the Hour of the Wolf.
Your meal will end with your stomach full of worrisome and stabbing doubt, as you pay your bill, printed on a tawdry, torn and poorly scrawled ledger and left a sad and forgettable tip. On your way out, notice the graffiti scrawl beside the badly dented cash register:
Our dreary lives are heavy with the burden of the choices at this establishment!
Above the doorway is a sign on cheap cardboard and laden with dead bugs and water leakage form the drooping false ceiling:
We hope you didn’t enjoy your visit here.
Please do not bother us again about anything
Have a miserable day!