Better Short is an experiment in less than 500-word expressions of ideas or stories. This short explores a global pandemic that’s changing the world in ways we don’t realize.
I am a carrier. If I donate blood, I'll probably spread the affliction to one of Earth's last remaining unaffected humans.
Freshly transfused with my blood, the unwitting recipient will rise in the morning, wondering why the new day feels monotonous and staid. Their olfactories would suppress everything except an intensely keen sense of a brewing pot as far as a kilometre away. Losing control of their prefrontal lobes, they’d walk, possibly in their pyjamas, to the smell's source and demand a sip of that brew. On sipping that brew, their day would suddenly get brighter and sharper. Their brain would now be ready for scheming and plotting, primarily to enable this brew's global takeover.
Another caffeine zombie would be born.
The coffee pandemic has been spreading slowly and steadily over centuries but has now reached the level of a virulent global takeover. Although the old idea of God is still going strong in many parts of the world, increasingly, the mushy-brained human apes are being infected with the idea that injecting caffeine into the bloodstream would take them a step closer to being one themselves.
I got turned a long time ago. My father was a caffeine zombie.
The dark liquid took over my nervous system in unassuming steps. First, it came in little doses hidden behind the friendly facade of white milk, but then slowly strengthened its grip until I became just a husk. My central nervous system was tuned up to function only when my bloodstream was doused in caffeine. Like the devil slipping off his mask slowly, my coffee has grown darker until it is the colour of the void inside me, dark as night, glistening under the light as if it is grinning at me.
The purpose of this zombie apocalypse is no less than a complete global takeover.
Coffee pushed humans to build cathedrals filled with a potpourri of artefacts that support the zombification ritual—bean grinders, roasters, gleaming cappuccino machines, milk frothers, and nozzles steaming like a steampunk beast ready to ensnare you.
The zombies have a limbic reaction merely by walking into these cathedrals with faster heart rates, minor palpitations, salival secretions, and desperation, as evidenced when standing in long queues to wait for the next hit to keep them going.
Without it, I might survive a day, maybe even two, but then my brain would begin to wither.
Caffeine zombies have been known to do anything for a shot, including walking immeasurably long distances or being lost in the streets early in the morning in a new city hoping to stumble on a brew. You’d see them droopy-eyed in the morning and shouting, “Talk to me after my first coffee!” as they hurry to find the nearest place where they can suck on the brew greedily.
These zombies want a global takeover, hoping to infect the remaining uninfected. They constantly talk about coffee, write essays, and even aid the proliferation of these devil machines that hiss and gurgle in their homes. They keep posting pictures of these cathedrals and brews, and some keep making them until the nearest normie screams, “Fine! You want me to drink this? I will!”
And yet another caffeine zombie gets born.
Better Short,
Tyag