Cafecito

September's flash fiction piece explores whether our potential for darkness is a bad thing — all in the time it would take you to enjoy an espresso

Welcome to Surreal Florida, a newsletter of short speculative fiction and the real places that inspire it. First of all, a big thank you goes out to everyone who entered the short story collection and coffee kit giveaway. Congratulations to the winner who was contacted separately. May you brew the most delicious cafecito in celebration.

On that note, I thought it would be appropriate to follow up the giveaway with a flash fiction story that centers on the drink so many of us in South Florida know and love so well. So, what happens when coffee meets mysterious brujeria? Enjoy this six-minute read, Cafecito, and find out. Or, if you prefer stories in audio format, just listen to the voiceover posted above.

Coffee animation by Jorge Domingo of The Domingo Creative. Thanks so much for this fun collaboration that captures the story’s pivotal moment.

Cafecito

By Brenna Cuba

My mother, my grandmother and even my great-grandmother before her had all been visited. The timing and details vary, but there is one constant in all their stories: they were served café by an invisible host and drank.

“Todavia, no?” Abuelita asks at breakfast.

“No, Lita,” I say. “Not yet.” There is no need for clarification. “Y no lo quiero.” And I don’t want it.

“Nosotras no decidimos.” We don’t decide.

They make it sound like they didn’t have a choice, but I know the stories. They weren’t forced to drink. They chose. I know why they chose. Women didn’t come to power by ordinary means. Things were different now. Women could vote and influence the laws that governed them. The drinks that turned men to tyrants had been outlawed. We could hold jobs and make our own way. What need is there for deals with the darkness?

When the lean times come, we don’t want for food. Our mango, citrus and avocado trees bear fruit year-round. Our herbs, tomato and pepper plants, too. We share and trade for things we can’t grow. But Mami and Abuelita trade other things, too. Recursos, they call them. Remedies. And with the lean times, come meaner times, and the demand for remedies grows.

I don’t know how they know to come here, but women from all over town come for these remedies. Cures for ailments. Cures for injuries. Cures for slights. Cures for wrongs for those with few rights. They take many forms: a sleeping draft made a little too strong, a prediction to save a young girl from harm, a fire to engulf a house, influence to get a woman out of jail, secrets sold like goods. The list is long and strange, and I want no part of it.

I’m a secretary and happy to be so. Abuelita says, “the world doesn’t need another secretary.” But we look out for one another, too, like sisters. It’s not so different from her. However, some sisters don’t listen.

One day one of the girls at work starts showing. No beau. No ring. No prospects. But we all know the vice president responsible for her situation. Trouble is, he wasn’t very responsible. I tell her to come home with me, and I will help her. Her eyes nearly bulge out of her head. I say I’m different than my mother and grandmother. She doesn’t believe me. She places a protective hand over her belly and goes to her apartment alone.

She doesn’t come to work the next day, or the day after. I go to her place and find the police there, hauling her body out like old furniture draped in sheets. I ask for answers and only get questions. If only she had come home with me, she might have lived. It was the darkness shrouding my home that kept her away, and yet another darkness that killed her. Or are they one in the same?

I return to work the next day and pity forces me to approach the VP. Maybe he did care for her. I want to believe he did. I ask if he’s heard the news.

“It’s tragic,” he nods. “But the world doesn’t need another secretary.”

I’m stunned into silence. Abuelita’s words ringing in my ears.

The languid ease of his lean against the desk and a look that dares me to respond tells me all. I am a mouse in a predator’s den. I have always been a mouse.

Something in me boils over, something I don’t recognize. Fists clenched, I march home. Heat rises off the street in a haze. Not a single palm stirs and I feel the sweat dripping down my neck.

The house is closed up – a dark oasis against the sun. I close the door. Before my eyes adjust to the dim, I can’t see anything inside. In this moment, I can’t tell where I end and the dark begins. We are one. I smell fresh coffee and rush to open the kitchen window a crack for light.  

It’s there. The presence that had always lurked and whispered in the shadows is in the kitchen serving café.

I watch the liquid stream from the metal coffee server and swirl into the tiny porcelain cup. The caramel-colored espumita froths over the black espresso as the pot stays perfectly still above the cup. No hands to hold it. No soul to offer it.

I had never wanted it, but I can’t tear my eyes away.

It pours and pours in an impossible endless loop. Never spilling. Never overfilling the cup. The café moves in hypnotic circles.

I move closer to the table and brush the cup with my fingertip. Searing hot and steaming, like my rage. The aroma is strong, sweet and laced with a metallic tang.

I think of my friend wrapped in sheets and what she would have wanted. I think of her unborn child. I think of the predator and all his potential prey. I know what I have to do.

THE END

Coming up…

So, what’s so special about South Florida coffee culture? In the next post, I’ll share exactly what it was that inspired this story and why Miami is such a great coffee city.