“Life was like a cup of coffee, that’s what Cal had always thought. It’s full of shitty tasting stuff, and yet everyone has it.” Cal sipped at his coffee, and tried to think of more ways to compare his mug of instant coffee to life. He nodded for no particular reason, pretending he had good ideas in mind. After some time doing this, he took another sip of his now-cold coffee. “Crap.” Already in the kitchen, and already by the kettle, which was already full enough of water, Cal flicked the kettle on and walked over to the sink to pour away his cup of jack. Cal smiled.
“A ‘cup of jack’.” He nodded for real this time, convinced his idea wasn’t as bad as his coffee. He stared out the window at the orange sky as the sun peeked out from the distant hills. Whether it was early in the day or late, Cal had no idea. His clothes were no clue, his dressing gown, boxers and slippers were what he’d wear regardless of the time of day. “Hell, if he could get away with it, he’d even wear them to work,” Cal monologued. His smile slipped somewhat, and a slight frown formed. “The kettle doesn’t usually take this long,” he explained to nobody before turning back to it.
“His kettle was glowing,” he narrated, “purple- no, red- no- huh…” The colour of his kettle continued to shift, and no amount of monologuing his own life would change that. “Rather than the metal itself glowing, it seems to be a strange aura around said kettle. Which is glowing. The aura, I mean.” His descriptive abilities lacked like a thing which lacked. “Well, no time for magic at this time in the morning or night.” Cal approached the glowing kettle, set on getting himself a cup of jack.
As Cal approached, he noticed that the usual whistling sound of the kettle was slowly transitioning into a humming noise vibrating into his head. Like any intellectual, Cal did the appropriate thing, and poked it.
The kettle exploded, and a piece of metal flew towards Cal in a very necessary and dramatic fashion.
Cal awoke on a floor in what looked to him like a cathedral. Of course, his view was limited to the ceiling above him.
“He decided to stand up,” Cal narrated, standing up. He noticed his coffee mug was still in his hand, and then he noticed the large white horse sitting on a throne. “Cal sipped at his coffee, only to realise he hadn’t made any more jack,” he spoke into his mug.
““Hello, human,” spoke Celestia, “I am Princess Celestia,”,” said Cal.
“Wow, okay, you’re already exactly what I-” Celestia stopped suddenly and cleared her throat. “During an experiment of my pupil or I, you were brought to our world.”
“You mean left and right?” Asked Cal.
“Excuse me?”
“You said your pupil and your eye, so I assumed your eyes are magic and you were either being too specific or only had the full magic powers in the one eye and in the other other had only a magic pupil.”
Celestia blinked.
“I don’t know how eyes can experiment,” Cal continued, “but you’re a horse and maybe horses can do that kind of thing. How magic your eyes are I’m not sure of, my friend Chris can control his at the same time. Not ‘at the same time’ at the same time, I mean of course he can control them at the same time, I mean he can do different things with them at the same time, like look at his watch and read the paper. Cal sipped at his empty cup, wishing he could do things like his friend Chris.” Cal waited until he had finished speaking before sipping at his empty cup, but was never in a state of not being jealous of Chris. “My other friend Jane, though, her eyes are super magic, she can do this thing where she closes one but not the other.”
“That’s… That’s… Wow.” Celestia took a deep breath. She reached into her pocket to pull out her phone, only to remember she was naked, and lived in a fantasy land without phones. She instead grabbed a tin can hanging from the ceiling by a piece of string. “Hey, Servant Person? Can you bring me the strong wine? The kind I used for genocide that one time?”
“Cal ignored her and continued his talk of magic eyes,” said Cal. “Why are horse eyes magic? Moreover, which eye did you experiment with?”
“Well, Cal-”
“How do you know my name, Cal exclaimed?!” Cal exclaimed. “I never introduced myself.”
Celestia regretted.
“I’m kidding of course, you have magic eyes, obviously. Also I narrate and probably let it slip once or twice.”
Servant Person entered from a doorway nearby the throne, carrying a deep purple bottle of wine and a fancy glass tankard atop a silver platter. Celestia took the wine, ripped out the cork with her teeth and started chugging. She finished the bottle in record time, placed the bottle back onto the platter (which Servant Person swiftly took away), and stretched her neck out in preparation for the stupidity to follow.
“First of all, Cal,” she slowly began, “my eyes aren’t magical, not in the way you think, anyway. Secondly, you mistook the word ‘pupil’, as in student, for its homophone ‘pupil’, as in…” She paused, trying to think of a way to describe the word ‘pupil’. “...As in an eye part. You also mistook the single letter word ‘I’, as in myself, for its homophone ‘eye’, once again as in my eyes.”
“I see,” said Cal, nodding. “And that’s ‘I’ a a one letter word. In that case, what do you mean ‘your pupil or you’? How couldn’t you be sure?”
“I said ‘my pupil or eye’ because-”
“‘Eye’ or ‘I’?”
“‘I’, I mean. I said ‘my pupil or I’ in jest, I was joking.” Celestia took a breath, glad to be out of the loop of eyes. “Putting the situation bluntly, Cal, my pupil brought you to this world in an experiment which went in a way she did not intend. As it stands, we have no current way of sending you back to your world, and the experiment itself is far too dangerous to mess with for the sake of a single person. I’m sorry, but you’re now stuck in this world.”
For the first time since Cal’s arrival, the throne room was silent.
“I don’t understand the purpose of your joke, Cal finally spoke, breaking the silence,” Cal finally spoke, breaking the silence. “The punchline of your joke is that you yourself brought me here, and I now notice the extra setup earlier, but your joke fails twofold. Firstly…”
Celestia once again took hold of the tin can. “Servant Person?”
“Already bringing more wine, m’lady.”
Author's Note
And so begins the first epic adventure of Cal The Coffee Guy.
Twilight is Short Tempered
“Cal stood in the kitchen of the Ponyville castle, staring out at the sun peeking out from behind the distant cartoon hills,” Cal narrated.
“If you keep narrating like that, I’ll cut your tongue off,” said Twilight. Cal had been living in her castle for a week now, and no amount of positive thinking or telling herself he’d eventually get a job and/or leave could stop her insatiable bloodlust.
“Twilight, what is the meaning of life?” Cal asked.
“Boy, jumping right in the deep end today, huh?”
“My life used to be filled with quiet moments staring out of kitchen windows, wondering whether it was morning or night and coming up with new ways to describe liquid brown thing as I narrate my life in my underwear, dressing gown and slippers.” Cal flicked his hair for dramatic effect, though what he was trying to affect was unknown. Whatever reason he had, the effect was ineffective, as it had no affect.
“Look, a week ago, I would’ve been all aboard the sympathy train,” Twilight started, “but you haven’t paid me any rent, you’ve used up all my coffee, and you refuse to wash those clothes.”
“What would I wear in the meantime?” Cal asked. “Thanks to you, I have no other clothes to wear. And anyway, these are the only clothes I owned.”
“Then… Then you’re being redundant!”
“Twilight, no one is impressed by your magic.”
Twilight took a deep breath. “I’m sorry that my experiments led you being stuck in Equestria, but that’s no excuse to not get a job and pay me some rent.”
“I won the court case, Twilight,” Cal reminded her. “You owe me a place to live, so I’m gonna live in your kitchen until you either find a way to send me home or ask me to help save the world.”
“Uh… What? Where did that come from?”
“I’m a human in a weird, alien world. Clearly, I’m the chosen one and it’s down to me to save the world from whatever evil thing is around, preferably a coffee monster to be thematic, or something that needs opposable thumbs.”
“Y’know where you can stick your opposable thumbs?” Twilight growled. “You do realise any random unicorn can do more with magic-”
“”-Than I can,” said Twilight,” said Cal.
“Fuck you.”
“Hey, Twilight, look…” Cal picked up a coin lying on the counter and moved it behind her ear, then back out from behind her ear. “Look what I found behind your ear.”
“Wow! A coin!” Twilight rolled her eyes.
“No, it’s your dignity. Cal put the coin into his dressing gown pocket.” He did so. “And it’s all mine.”
Cal woke up outside of the Ponyville castle with a very swollen black eye.
“This must be a sign, he said,” said Cal. “It’s my call to adventure. I’ve gotta save the world.” Cal started walking towards town, looking for somewhere to fill his once again empty coffee mug. He spotted a child sitting on a bench, reading a book about mathematics. Like any half-naked thirty year old man would do, Cal ran up to the child and swatted the book out of his hooves. “Hey, child, wanna help me save the world?”
“Hecker yeah, gorilla thing!” Cheered Snails.
“We must find coffee, child. Coffee. We must not call it coffee.”
“What do we call it then?”
“Make some shit up. I like ‘cup of jack’.”
“‘Gorilla juice’?”
“Cal smiled,” Cal smiled. “That’s more like it.” He began running, and beckoned Snails to follow him. The two ran down to the end of the street, then suddenly stopped.
“Over there, gorilla thing!” Snails cried. “It’s a Gorillabucks!” He pointed, and Cal’s gaze did see it: A coffee shop.
Cal picked up a pair of sunglasses off the street, put them on, then took them off and put them into his pocket. “Hecker damn…”
The two approached the shop and peered inside the window. The mare at the till was worried by this, and was almost tempted to reach for her tin can to call the police.
“Alright, child, take this…” Cal pulled the coin from his pocket and gave it to him. “This is a dangerous operation, but your boundless loyalty has spoken for itself.”
“Ready for some hecker action, sir!” Snails salluted.
“I need you, said Cal, to take this coin, he continued, and go inside the store.” Cal paused for a moment and checked if anybody was watching. Many people were. “What you need to do, child, is buy the brown water. As much as you hecking can.”
Snails gasped. “So much profanity!”
“I know, I know, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Can you do this, child?!” Cal shouted.
“Hecker yeah, gorilla thing!” Snails cheered again.
“Go get ‘em, champ,” Cal slapped him on the shoulder, “I’ll keep watch.”
As Snails ran into the store, Cal turned around and leaned on the glass like the coolest cucumber, donning his floor glasses for extra effect.
“Now this effect is affecting the effect of my personal effects! Cal declared,” said Cal. “He was only mildly disappointed when one of the lenses fell out of the glasses.” He kicked the lense aside. “In his own way, he looked even better.” A passing mare stared in confusion as she passed him. “Hey, baby,” he winked, “are you hot water? ‘Cause I’d like to dissolve in you.”
The mare showed her affection for Cal with a swift kick to his genitalia.
“Joke’s on you, I’m infertile,” said Cal, as he fell to the ground.
“Mr Gorilla! Mr Gorilla!” Cried Snails, running out of the store with a styrofoam cup of coffee. “I have the wet chocolate!”
“Fantastic job, you hecker child!” Cal mumbled somewhat thanks to the ground he had face planted into. He pulled his mug out from under himself. “Pour as much as you can into this!”
Snails carefully took off the lid of the styrofoam cup and began pouring the discount coffee into the mug. He was able to pour about half before running out of mug.
Cal climbed to his feet, spilling most of the coffee in the process. “Good job, child, now refill my jack mug with that icky sticky.” After he’d done so, Cal took a huge gulp of the coffee and sighed in joy. “As sweet as fresh goat piss. Thanks, child. Go away.”
Cal went back to the castle.
Author's Note
Surely, Cal is the greatest man in the world. Also, the only man in the world.
