THE HOBBEAN: A Lord of the Coffee Prequel
Vittles in the Dark
Bilbean peered into the gloom. He was completely blind in this dark hole, and the smell of burned flour and rotting coffee grounds was strong and acrid in his nostrils. He crawled forward slowly, disgusted by the slime and sludge he was touching, until his hand came into contact with something round and cold, pierced through by a hole. Unable to see what it was, he thrust it into a pocket and continued to grope blindly.
He came to the edge of a lake of cold, stale coffee. He could now see faint lights, like the ghostly flickers of a coffee timer, winking in the distance but shedding little light. He sat down, too tired to go further. He wondered if he would ever be found by his dwarves. There was complete and utter silence all around him, except for the drip-drip of the coffee, falling far away into the pool.
Then suddenly, there was another sound. A splashing and a muttering. It came closer and Bilbean's heart pounded with fear. He fumbled for his small sword and drew it shakily, discovering then that the blade glowed faintly. He could see now something moving slowly across the surface of the blackperk lake, a small boat coming toward him.
On the boat was a creature, a twisted and grubby thing, a wiry and smelly thing, too. He had huge blinking eyes and a fleshless body. His fingers were stained with caffeine and his teeth were brown as walnut shells.
"What isss it, my deliciousss? Is it brewable? Is it sssavoury?" He made a horrible sound in his throat, like the sound that a teapot makes when the water has boiled away. He climbed out of the boat and crept toward Bilbean, eyeing the shining sword doubtfully. "What isss that, my deliciousss?"
"This is Zinger, and you'll find out what it is if you come any closer to me, weird-o!" squeaked Bilbean, nearly falling as his knees knobbled and his heart shuddered. He held the sword steady, though. "Show me how to get out of this dump, if you please."
The creature huddled down and made his strange noise in his throat. "Gulp'um…. gulp'um." It had lowered its balding round head between its wiry knees and gazed up at Bilbean in a cunning way. "It must have a competion with us, gulp'um! It likes, perhaps, riddles?"
"I am actually more of a card-player, myself," said Bilbean. "Pity we don't have a deck of cards. We could play a few hands of five card stud or some…" To Bilbean's dismay, the withered creature produced a warped packet of pasteboard playing cards from his Gucci thong-pouch and began shuffling them like a Vegas dealer.
They played and they played. Glup'um, as Bilbean had come to think of him, was a deucedly good card-counter but, fortunately for Bilbean, he could not maintain a poker-face. He cackled and talked to himself whenever he had a good hand. Bilbean cleaned him out of all his stuff: twelve fishbones, two goblin kneecaps, seven pairs of eyeteeth, and a Blockbuster card with the name "Gob Grimgullet" written on the back.
Though clearly defeated, Gulp'um had one more card up his sleeve. "It must waitsss, deliciousss. We would brew it some coffeess before it leavess usss. A little cup of coffee, deliciouosss…" and he wandered off into the darkness, rowing out into the coffee-lake to a tiny island that Bilbean could not see by the light of his tiny sword.
Bilbean waited impatiently, returning the cards he had pocketed during the course of the game. As he searched his pockets, he discovered the item he had stashed there earlier in his haste. "What's this, then?" he asked himself, and fiddling with it he slipped it on.
Immediately he noticed a difference. Everything became dim and remote, and his blood coursed warmly as if he had just imbibed a rich cup of fragrant coffee, black as coal. His hands, now as invisible as the rest of him, began to shake slightly from the rush.
"Bless my soul!" Bilbean said to himself. Then he winced as a cream-curdling shriek sounded across the coffee-pool, and Gulp'um came steaming back.
"Gone! Gone, gone, the Deliciousss iss gone! It has essscaped with the Deliciousss, nasssty TeaBagginsss! We hatess it! It has stolen our Deliciousss"
"Oh, dear," thought Bilbean as he followed the furious creature toward the exit, " I guess I shouldn't have eaten the last Krispy Kreme donut!"