The Burning Bush

by AngusEcrivain

A Brief History Lesson

Narrated by Morgan Freeman

Like most people or at least, like most people who like a little caffeine in their coffee despite the fact it's a banned substance, I'm willing to pay what to the vast majority of citizens would likely be classed as an astronomical sum of money for a jar that'll make three decent-sized mugs at best.

Thing is it's not even nice coffee. I mean it. It's fucking rank.

The buzz though, that caffeine high... That indescribable feeling that washes over me and calms me... Yeah, it's worth it for something that tastes worse than a homeless man's armpit.

Knowing all of that I wouldn't be surprised if you called me a junkie.

Well, fuck you.

I mean yeah, it's true enough to say I'll pay more than it costs to buy a two-bed semi in Basingstoke and I'm in no doubt at all that if you held a jar of coffee in front of me and told me the only way I could get at it was to sleep with your long-dead grandma that I'd be all up in that rotted corpse quicker than you can say, "Hey, dude. I'm just messing!" but fuck you. If that makes me a junkie I don't give a shit.

This story isn't about me though. It's about... coffee...

There was a time when all throughout the Multiverse, coffee houses were the places to be seen. The branded franchises were hugely popular but soon, folk realised they could get a better cup of coffee at any one of the millions of independent houses.

It wasn't long, only a couple of decades or so which really isn't at all long in the grand scheme of things, before everything that needed doing was getting done in coffee houses.

Stocks were bought and sold, contracts were signed, songs were written and babies were conceived.

And therein lay the problem. When every other building on every street was a coffee house, the Coffee Wars were inevitable.

People were genuinely killed as coffee houses waged war upon each other, the proprietors of said venues acting more like military generals than baristas.

And so the Law was passed and the populace was forced to go cold turkey...

Fucking De-Caff

Not Narrated by Morgan Freeman

"I can't do it, man," said Steve, his bottom lip quaking and his eyes twitching as the mother of all caffeine headaches attacked the inside of his noggin. "I just can't take it any more."

"Hold it together, bruv," said Simon, Steve's younger brother. His head was killing him, too. So painful was it that he thought his brain might escape through his ears, at least that's exactly how it felt. "We're gonna' hit the storage facility tonight and procure some of that Gold Blend before it makes it to the incinerator, all right?"

"I know the plan, Simon. Gah!" Steve's yell was accompanied by the rapid movement of his hands to the sides of his head and he squeezed as hard as he could, applying particular pressure to his temples, in an effort to make the voices that were currently screaming, "Coffee!" to shut up.

"Do you want a de-caff?" Simon asked, kindly. He felt so bad for his brother, man who'd been a bigger coffee drinker than anyone he knew. "I know it's not the same, bruv, but maybe it'll trick your mind into thinking it's satisfied for twenty minutes or so."

"Do I look like I want a fucking de-caff?" Steve yelled as he jumped to his feet and rushed towards his brother. He stopped all forward motion though when he was but a few feet away. He knew he would not lay a finger upon him, just as he knew Simon would not raise a hand to him in anger.

"Maybe you should stay here whilst I go to the storage facility," said Simon, turning his head away from his brother's near-psychotic gaze. "I mean, I don't want you to hurt anyone is all."

"The only person hurting is me and every other motherfucker who loved their coffee the way the Almighty Toad King intended; with a shitload of caffeine!"

"Since when have you been a fucking Toady?"

"Since I heard they give you coffee at communion," he replied, smiling for the first time in weeks. "Filter coffee is the Blood of the Toad King."

"Is that a fact?" asked Simon as a thoughtful expression spread across his face. "They're allowed to do that?"

"Yeah... There's religious exceptions for all kinds of laws, like back in the day with Catholic priests and choirboys..."

Simon winced at Steve's words, rather pleased he hadn't been around a few hundred years prior.

"The Church works on a franchise basis doesn't it, like Starbucks used to do?"

1812 Overture

Narrated by Morgan Freeman

It took three weeks and both Steve and Simon did some things that neither would ever talk about, including but by no means limited to fluffing for horse porn, tasting food for any number of the Royal Families of the Multiverse, and partaking in one or two rather dubiously funded and most definitely not-quite-legitimate medical trials. The latter of those mentioned is, of course, how Steve came to have a fourteen inch pianist who could only play the 1812 Overture attached to his penis.

But during those three weeks, Steve and Simon managed to raise enough capital to fund their very own Church of the Almighty Toad King franchise.

The even managed to get the Sugar Hill Gang to play at their grand opening, but that really has nothing at all to do with the story.

One could be forgiven for thinking this story has reached its end. Steve and Simon have their Church of the Almighty Toad King franchise, after all, and therefore have free access to all the caffeine-filled filter coffee any two men could possibly desire.

But as with all good - narrator pauses to chuckle - stories, there is always more to tell...

The Burning Bush

Not Narrated by Morgan Freeman

Operating a franchise of the Church of the Almighty Toad King was quite literally a full-time job for on each franchise contract it stated, and please do bear in mind this is highly paraphrased, that the doors of the Church of the Almighty Toad King were never to close.

That is how Steve and Simon, having been taking a nap in the vestry, came to be awoken in a rather rude and rushed fashion by a group of terrorists.

They laughed, of course, for as all terrorists did this particular group were wearing nothing but speedos. As such, there was flab and rolls and stray pubic hairs all over the place.

"You think it's funny, you Toady piece of shit?!" one of the female terrorists demanded of Simon. He was on his knees with his wrists bound behind his back which unfortunately put the terrorist's protruding bush at eye level.

It was not that Simon disliked a neatly trimmed and manicured bush, of course, but in his mind one's bush should never protrude.

"I've no idea what you want but please for the love of the Almighty fucking Toad King, get your protruding bush out of my face."

"We want the blood of the Toad King!" the leader - both Simon and Steve could tell he was the leader, because he had the word 'Leader' tattooed across his pectoral region - said, chortling in such a way that his speedos jiggled.

"Well you can't have it," said Steve, his eyebrow raised. "It belongs to the Almighty Toad King."

"No, little man," said the leader as he got his face all up in Steve's grill. "It don't belong to the Almighty Toad King. There's no such thing as the Almighty Toad King. The Almighty Toad King don't exist and if the Almighty Toad King don't exist then his blood don't exist, either."

"Well when you put it like that," said Simon, grinning as he pointed towards the bush, still directly in front of his face as it was. Oddly though, it was smoking and the unmistakable smell of burning pubic hair filled the room. "But then how do you explain that? Friction?"

"What the actual f..?" The leader cut himself off, or rather he was cut off, as all the bushes in the room spontaneously caught fire. There was much shouting, yelling, and dousing of genital regions with Toady Water and then, complete with singed speedos, the terrorists scarpered.

The End

Narrated by Morgan Freeman

And that's the end of this tale. I hope you've enjoyed reading it just as much as I've enjoyed narrating it.

Whether it's fact or fiction, well I suspect that secret is lost to time. I mean, I certainly don't know but I really hope it's true... After all, you've gotta' respect a bloke who'll do anything for coffee, even if that does mean finding God, whichever God that might be, in an otherwise Godless Multiverse...