This story appears as part of our annual Halloween Fiction series on Sprudge.
Sat at a bar, chatting away, diddling deedling, you know yourself. The odd things that a woman working in a coffee shop does to get by at 4:05 after a five cup day. We’re talking two oat flatties, two espressos, and an unnecessary but very necessary freaky filter before close.
I’m chatting to my wonderful friend, rolled and ready to go rollie held by my thumb and forefinger like chalk held by a professor, trying to emphasise their verbose but unintelligibly boring point.
A true shame about chalk. Marks made on jacket sleeves and dust waving from walls in little plumes. In came the infinitely more efficient and practical emergence of the ‘whiteboard’ and its accompanying ‘marker’. Anyway, a digression not to be focused on but potentially dwelled upon later as I try to sleep for half an hour and scroll for three more and wonder why I’ve bags under my eyes and I get bored of erections. I used to find them quite exciting really, but now look at them: vile things.
Anyway, unlit rollie in hand, pushed up against the condensation-laden window of the pub. It’s fucking jammers. I start to feel a bit funny. That last coffee I had before close, some creepy processed filter I’d never heard of. It’s turned me somehow. I’ve been quitting those pre-close filters for about 5 years now. Fuck me, right?
My mind wanders: that’s a tasty looking neck.
My friend looks at me funny, head tilted, eyes narrowed. Like she’s heard what I’d thought out loud.
“What did you say?”
Oh fuck, shit. I go for it. I ask for a kiss, she says yes! What?
Neck, teeth, fuck. Blood.
Oh god that’s tasty, I can’t stop, she looks like she’s ok. There’s a moan, definitely a moan. I let go of her, maybe she’s ok?
She falls to the ground: Super dead.
Ah.
I get out of there with a flurry of ‘sorry there now, ah sorry yep, sorry, sorry.’ Thank god for the lovely bit of trad in the corner, I think it caught their attention. Knowing this crowd, they’d be far more put out by two women shifting the face of each other than one of them committing murder by sucking blood out their neck.
I feel no remorse, I know I should but I don’t. That’s something to keep an eye on. Probably keep an eye on these fangs too. Sliced through a neck like butter, that was great… Ok, weird.
I leg it down to the shop to get a look at this freaky bag of coffee before my crime becomes a more pressing topic than the fiddle and concertina going at it.
The coffee in question came in the post this morning: pretty sick black sample bag, enough for two brews, some Romanian roaster I’d never heard of. Seriously dark roast with notes of molasses going on. The closest thing to a fruit I’d pick was roasted hazelnuts and tar. But hey, I’m not picky, give me something in a cup and I’ll swallow it before you’ve tipped me.
I find the bag.
Roaster: Va M Pire Coffee Co.
Origin: Transylvania, Romania.
Process: Anaerobic Vampiric Maceration. Varietal: Caturra, Virgin-Blooduaí
I drank vampire coffee. Oh, my mother’s going to kill me isn’t she.
Big fangs for teeth.
Feel my arms and legs, tighter muscles than I’ve had in years! Slay, I’ll take that. Would love a bit of blood. That’s a fucking nag. Apparently I like necks. Women’s necks, men’s necks too, why not. Suppose we’ll go see.
Head next door to my other local, stand by the bar, wait for some sucker to approach so I can suck the life out of him. And that’s not me talking about my plans to write a screenplay about one plucky woman’s newfound murder fetish of customers that say ‘I’ll do a latte’. You won’t do a latte. I will do your latte. You will receive and drink your latte. You doing a latte is making the latte and taking my agency out of the matter. I have agency and you fucker can fuck off. It’s not going to be that, it is a screenplay I’ve worked on for a while and it does suck the life out of people. It will be me, with my actually pretty sexy new fangs, sticking holes into the next fucker that touches me.
Here’s a nice boy, long hair, clean neck. I ask for a lighter, we step outside, after a couple minutes of learning about how much benefit you get from remote working and learning nothing about what output this man produces for the world, I ask him for a kiss.
“Oh, eh, yeah, please!”
We kiss, it’s nice. He steps back, looks scared, big beady eyes gawking at me. Blood drops from his mouth. Fuck him, I go for his throat, he steps back again the wee shite, but I have a hold of him, he trips back and I rip the front of his whole fucking neck off, he falls into the middle of the street, no neck on him, pumping blood all over the cobbles. Big mess.
I’ve got a considerable amount of clearly not my blood around my mouth, and people scream, cry, the lot. So off I pop to my shop to lock myself away for a wee while. This mayhem might just blow over?
I lift the blinds, pitchforks are on the way, flaming torches: all the villagers out to get little ol’ me! Preposterous. I just work in a coffee shop, let me have my release.
Glancing at the vampire coffee bag, an outline of a bat jumps out at me. So I close my eyes, squeeze really hard, try not to poop, and whoosh!
Big plume of chalk dust, and I’m a bat. Bust through the front door window and fly off. Off I go, flying into the sunset as a vampire bat.
Oh, the sun’s quite hot actually.
Fuck.
Bryan Wilson is the Roastery Manager of Calendar Coffee in Galway, Ireland. This is Bryan Wilson’s first feature for Sprudge.
