When coffee beans start launching from the jute sacks at Brood, Rowan drops his rooibos and runs. The air is thick with beans flying like beetles, their electric buzz punctuated by gags as they lodge in customers’ throats. The beans ignore Rowan, as if they’re drawn only to the caffeinated. Customers convulse, clawing their throats, transforming into hyper-caffeinated bean minions. They surge after Rowan into the street, impossibly fast. As they close in, eyes jittering and throats clicking, Rowan laughs at the bitter irony. Even during this bean apocalypse, the other customers are still targeting him for not drinking coffee.
Chip Houser’s short fiction has appeared in Bourbon Penn, Chestnut Review, PULP Literature, PodCastle, Molotov Cocktail, and many other speculative and literary markets. In 2023, Red Bird Chapbooks published “Dark Morsels”, a collection of his very short fiction. Find links and more at chiphouser.com.