I gave up coffee a while ago. It was the right choice. I don’t like feeling dependent on anything other than the obvious – food, water, that stuff – and I was definitely getting there with coffee, going through the motions like a robot until I had had my morning cup. And it was making me so angry. Short with colleagues and customers.

       So, I went cold turkey. And it worked! I was definitely calmer running on green tea, and after a week or so my energy levels in the morning had levelled out almost to normal.

       I’ll admit, though, I wasn’t really ready for the side effects. Some, sure. I was prepared for the headaches, I stocked up on paracetamol before cutting myself off, and the heart palpitations, the stress, I knew that everything in my body would get worse before it got better.

       It’s the… external side effects that were the real problem, though.

One morning in particular, about a week into my new, uncaffeinated, life, I woke up to a muffled thudding in the next room. Coming uncomfortably alert, in that way you do when you think you might be getting burgled, I strained to hear more, but the thuds remained small, scuffling, and infrequent.

At length, once I was about 70% sure that those couldn’t have been footsteps or malicious rummaging – the two hallmarks of burglars, or so I’m told – I picked up a weighty copy of House of Leaves for a makeshift club and crept from my bed to the living room/wardrobe/kitchenette of my extravagant urban flat.

       In that room, I found… nothing. Just as expected. I stood still a while until, hearing no more, I turned to get ten minutes more sleep. But then, there it was again! A thud, a scuffle, distinctly coming from… the fridge?

       Slowly, inevitably, and wearing marigolds because I now strongly suspected a rat and A&E said after last time that I couldn’t come back in for rat bites for another month, I opened the door.

And found nothing. Again.

       “Eugh.” I said to myself, and, forgetting my new lifestyle, “I need a coffee.”

       I didn’t forget myself enough actually to make myself one, of course. But I did spare a rueful look for the poor, neglected Tupperware full of coffee grounds before me in the fridge. My decision to stop had come upon me on the spur of the moment, and I couldn’t bring myself to throw away perfectly good grounds. Maybe guests would want a cup. If I ever had guests.

       I smiled at the grounds and shook my head. Not today, old friends.

       They shook back, rocking the Tupperware with a resounding thud and a whispering scuffle.

       What?

       Had a rat got into the grounds? But the Tupperware was sealed! What if it suffocated?

Heedless of the mess or the dismay of my pals at A&E, heedless of anything, in fact, but saving a little rodent life, I grabbed the Tupperware and held it in a two-handed grip as it knocked against my hands and chest.

       Releasing the catches, I dropped the grounds to my dining table/desk.

       Huh.

       For a moment there was nothing. No movement, no scurrying for cover by a little overcaffeinated body, just a pile of coffee grounds.

       And then the grounds shook. They jumped and vibrated, as if they were on a speaker, and, little by little, they began to form themselves into… I don’t know how to describe it. It was a rough approximation of a human: Two arms, two legs, bulbous head, even little indentations for eyes…

       Oh, it looked like Morph. The little clay man, Morph? That’s how to describe it, him, but made from coffee grounds, and without the eyes. Or the nose, I guess.

       I was transfixed. This little man took a halting step towards me. Then a second one. Amazed, I reached down a finger, looking to shake hands.

       The little coffeeman seemed to regard the finger, to lean over, almost like it was sniffing it. I tried an open palm, like introducing myself to a dog.

       This was a mistake.

       With surprising and growing agility, the coffeeman crawled up my hand to my arm, clinging on with weirdly fluid arms, clinging around my arm like wet sand. I tried uselessly to shake it off, and when it reached my shoulder I felt two small but hard impacts as it delivered a one-two punch to my temple.

Yelping, I managed to grab it before it could do any more damage. It tried to dissolve and reform, but it couldn’t escape my grip. When it realized this, it took human form again and hit and kicked against my hands. It even tried to bite me, but happily its coffee ground teeth found little purchase.

       After about a minute of this grainy mouthing, the coffeeman seemed to give up, went limp, and began to dissolve again into its constituent grounds, slumping as it did so into a grainy mess in my hands.

       Thinking quickly, I snatched up the Tupperware I had discarded back when things had made sense. I dropped the grounds still in my hands into it and scooped up what I could find of the rest. They began to coalesce again as soon as they realised what I was doing, so I had to rush in the last handful of grounds and slam the lid on, clicking the box shut just as I felt the nascent coffeeman thud against it.

       I chucked the box back into the fridge but, just as I was about to shut the door, my conscience pricked me. What if it couldn’t breathe in that box? I didn’t want to kill the furious little weirdo, even if the sentiment was far from mutual. A fridgeful of air would be enough for even the most murderous homunculus, right?

       Right, I decided, and I opened the fridge door. The box lay there, quiet. Dormant, I thought. Lying in wait.

       I reached over an old lasagne under a clingfilm cover which I had been meaning to throw away for days, took hold of the top of the Tupperware, and carefully unclicked the lid.

       One.

       Two.

       Three…

       Before I could unclasp the fourth, the lid blew off as a tiny fist impacted it.

       I slammed the fridge door shut and watched it, listening intently to the carnage going on beyond the barrier between me and this tiny cauldron of rage. After about half a minute of scuffling sounds, I was satisfied that not even the coffeeman had enough rage in its tiny frame to force the door open.

       I slumped down against the fridge and rubbed the bruise forming at my temple with my nibbled finger.

       What just happened?

       Why… the question sounded stupid even in my head, so I voiced it, made it real: “Why does the coffee hate me?”

       No, it still sounded stupid.

       So, I googled it. Several thousand results popped up, giving the stories of myriad tortured souls seeking aid for their digestive issues, heart problems, anxiety, all asking the same question, but none seemed to suffer the problem as… violently as I was. Common denominators in the stories, though, were people either drinking far too much coffee, or having recently stopped.

       Could this be because I hadn’t been drinking the coffee? Did it… resent me?

       No, that was stupid.

       But then, this whole situation was stupid.

       Science, I decided. That was what I needed. So, I pondered the problem, scientifically.

       After fifteen minutes of this with no results, I was considering giving up, when the words “conservation of energy” popped into my head.

       Yes… Yes. Yes. That was sciencey.

       And it made… a sort of sense? I stopped drinking coffee because it made me angry, right? Well, according to Lydon (1986), “anger is an energy.” Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed and transferred, meaning that the anger I wasn’t feeling built up in the coffee itself until it boiled over, creating this little homunculus!

       Yes, I thought. Yes, I may have just received a head injury, but this makes an awful lot of sense.

       Feeling pleased with myself, I googled: “Does conservation of energy apply to coffee?” An AI overview assured me that yes it does, that thermal energy transfers from coffee to the surrounding–

       Useless as usual. I scrolled down to find a BBC Bitesize article and a brief spark of hope flared up and then sputtered as I found that it just explained the same. Below this were only less useful answers.

Swallowing my frustration, I decided that I didn’t need an answer, I had that – conservation of anger.               What I needed to find was what to do about it.

       Tabbing away from Bitesize and sighing as I heard a muffled clattering begin again in the fridge behind me, I googled: “Little coffeeman fight me.” All the results were videos of brawls in cafes between equally large, normal men, and news articles and discussion threads about those videos.

       I shut my laptop.

       Well.

       This was apparently unique. Which meant no help.

       I saw two ways to proceed. First, drink it. Maybe the little coffeeman just wanted to pass on its anger in the natural way.

       With this plan in mind, I approached the fridge, spoon and stovetop coffee maker in hand to signal what I had planned. I waited until the latest rumble died down and opened the door, a friendly smile plastered on my face.

       The smile fell a little when I saw the state of the fridge. The coffeeman had torn most of my vegetables apart. Ruined morsels of aubergine, broad beans, even carrots were strewn hither and yon across the fridge. It had got into the lasagna and thrown that all over the walls, and the milk… The milk. The carton had a ragged hole in its side and had deposited its content all over the lower drawers. A trickle of milk was now running down onto the freezer door below and on to pool on my kitchen floor.

The coffeeman itself had clearly been caught in the milk deluge. It was on a higher shelf, attempting to dry itself by sprinting from one wall to the other at its frighteningly fast top speed.

       I made a sound to get its attention, some inarticulate exclamation of greeting. Hitting a wall, it looked over to me and I gestured to it with the spoon. It went still, back to the wall, looking first at the spoon, and then straight into my eyes. I think. I had to estimate based on the angle of the neck and those two little divots.

       I moved the spoon toward its still, staring form. This was all reminding me far too much of what had happened when I had offered my hand, and, sure enough, as soon as I got near enough to scoop a few grounds it pounced, whip-fast, and snatched the spoon away. Just as quickly, it shifted to a two-handed grip on the spoon, raised it over its head like an axe thrower, and hurled the utensil at my face. I had just enough time to bring up my hands and protect myself. The spoon clanged off the coffeemaker, unfortunately falling back into the fridge, and the little coffeeman scrabbled down to it, fishing it out of the slowly draining milk lake on the bottom shelf, and swung it at me like a mace, silently daring me to come near.

       Ok then. It didn’t want me to drink it. Steeling myself, I decided it was time for Plan B.

       I could be pretty quick, too. I snatched the Tupperware from an upper shelf, the lid from the shelf above – Jesus, this thing really had launched it – and, earning a bruising spoon-strike to my wrist, I scooped the coffeeman back in, bringing box and lid around it in one movement. I clicked the lid shut with my fingers while my palms held the box closed.

       Heaving a sigh, half of relief and half of frustration, I placed the roiling box on the counter and set about clearing the fridge.

       An hour later, after much sponging, scrubbing, spraying, and wiping, the fridge was presentable again. More presentable, in fact, than it had been in a while. The box hadn’t quieted the entire time, spoon-on-Tupperware constantly clattering in the background.

       So now I knew it definitely didn’t need air, at least.

       Step two, I nipped to the shops to replace the vegetables the coffeeman had destroyed. This plan needed props. I filled the vegetable crispers, enough but not too much. I stacked the shelves with yoghurts, fizzy drinks, miniature cheeses, the works.

       Next, I placed the Tupperware back in the centre of the fridge, two seals broken, just enough to slow the coffeeman down, but enough to ensure that it would break out. 

       And finally, now the coffeeman was preoccupied with escaping, I fished through my drawers for a little camera my parents had given me as a birthday gift. It was meant for birdwatching, the sort you stick in a nest so you can watch the chicks grow up, though where they expected me to do this in my converted abattoir of a flat block I have no idea. Regardless, it came in handy now, as I found it, pulled a little tab off an adhesive backing, and stuck it to the inside of the fridge door. I connected my phone to the camera’s Bluetooth, checked the feed – good, steady – and I shut the door.

       Plan B. I’m a child of the twenty-first century. If I can’t stop this thing, then I am damn well going to video it and monetise it.

       I watched the feed.

       Thank god.

       It was hilarious. This furious little thing burst out of the box and immediately lay about itself with its tiny fists.

       The cheeses went first, the coffeeman strewing them around the fridge and individually pulverizing them until it remembered the spoon, initially discarded in its anger, and pinned a cheese directly through the midsection. I winced, but the coffeeman just discarded the spoon and took a running jump onto the yoghurt, grabbing onto the lid and tearing it open as it fell back to the shelf. Seemingly satisfied, it hugged the yoghurt container in both arms, rocked back, forth, back… and hurled it down to cover the vegetables in the crisper. At that, the little coffeeman seemed to notice the vegetables for the first time and it reached down to pick up a soggy stick of celery, and it just swung it for a good ten seconds, round and around, releasing it into the speared cheese, where it pinged off the spoon and slapped into a can of fizzy drink. Oh yes. It noticed the drinks. It leapt onto one of the cans and toppled it, riding this Irn Bru like a barrel in some bizarre circus routine. Then it seemed to remember itself and began to pulverize the can, straddling it on the shelf and savaging it: It was jumping on the can, slamming it with both fists, shoulder-barging it against the wall of the fridge… That was the grand finale. On that shoulder barge, it caught its arm in the pull-tab and the can detonated into its little face.

       It all got a bit more subdued after that. The coffeeman, seeming stunned by the spray, stumbled at length back over to the tupperware and clambered back in. It slumped back into its grounds and… Slept, I guess? Whatever it does.

       And I had four minutes of pure, rage-filled comedy. I wasted no time in uploading the video to YouTube, no editing, this deserved to be raw. It got some attention, first the viewers’, then the algorithm’s, and then it caught fire. Tens of thousands of views in hours, thousands of comments, some just decrying it as AI-generated, others asking what software I’d used to animate it, but most just sitting back and enjoying the show.

       By the end of the day, a local coffee company had made an offer to buy the video.

       By the next morning, a major coffee company had made an offer to buy the coffeeman.

       I agreed to meet the big-time coffeemongers. To my surprise, they arranged to meet that day, at an office they had in town. I opened the fridge and pounced on the Tupperware, sealing the lid over it as it shook in my hands, dressed up, and went off to meet them.

       Over a green tea, they told me I was a gift to marketing, asked me where I’d found the delightful little homunculus and, finally, offered me far too much money, but I found that I couldn’t agree to it. It was the coffeeman’s antics in the video, it was the coffeeman’s work, the coffeeman should get the deal, and the money. The representatives seemed delighted with this turn of affairs and agreed wholeheartedly, so I unlatched the Tupperware to bring the relevant party into

negotiations.

       The coffeeman pounced, grabbing the handle of my teacup and brandishing the scalding liquid at me, but I had already scooted my chair out of reach. I kept my distance and did my best, in words and gesticulations, to explain the situation. After a while, the coffeeman actually seemed to calm down. It took the pen in two little hands and, with great effort, drew a frowny face on the dotted line.

       This, I supposed, was its signature.

       It climbed back into the box, and was that a hint of a wave? It pulled the lid back on and, before I could mention that I actually did need that Tupperware, the representatives left, with Tupperware and homunculus in tow.

 

The weeks passed, then the months, and years. The advertising campaign was a triumph. Everyone loved seeing the little coffeeman go to town on some biscuits or a load of coffee beans, even, at one point when the coffee company must have been feeling particularly flush and he must have been feeling particularly skint, beloved character actor Mark Rylance, always ending with some cheesy tagline like “something to rave about” or “fight you for a cup!”

       The coffeeman also seemed to grow up. Mellow. Its rampages became more choreographed, more skilful and thought-out, and in some adverts it even just sat in a tiny armchair, with a tiny copy of Robinson Crusoe and a tiny, tiny cup of its own to advertise decaf (tagline: “Because we all need some time to relax”). It began appearing outside of adverts, on talk shows and quizzes, never speaking, always accompanied by its handlers. After a few years, it just became one of those threads in the national fabric who you’re never surprised but always pleased to see the camera pick up at Wimbledon or Children in Need or a royal funeral.

       The little weirdo really made a life for itself.

       Ten years after that fateful YouTube video, now sitting comfortably at 15 million views, thank you very much, I happened to be hanging around on Regent Street in London. It was December and I was admiring the shop displays, and it was as I turned from a display of white goods dressed as characters from Swan Lake that I saw what appeared to be two massive, suited men flanking a Pomeranian. As they got closer, though, I realised that it was no Pomeranian, but my old friend, resplendent, indeed drowning, in a coat which did unfortunately appear to be real fur.

       When they were about twenty feet away, I was just wondering whether to say something – Would it even remember me? – When the coffeeman raised its little round head and caught my eye with its featureless face. I needn’t have worried, the recognition was instant.

       I smiled, nodded, gave it a little thumbs up.

       It shed its coat, revealing its granular form, and hit the ankles of its two bodyguards, gesticulating furiously at me, raising its fists and making wild punching motions.

       Seeing the two big men shift their weight to run at me, I turned and sprinted to the nearest tube station.

       And as I bolted down the escalator, feeling a muscular tread hot on my heels, and praying that there would be a train waiting, was I scared?

       Yes. Obviously.

       But was I also proud of this furious little homunculus who had coalesced in my fridge to try to stop me bettering myself?

       Also yes.

       Good job, little guy.

       I pray it never remembers where I live.