“Direction”: a short story
Amissa wanted to find the Capulus Coffee Shop. She was in a town she’d never been to with street names that were nonexistent. There was no indication that she was anywhere near where she wanted to be with every passing intersection. Her friend who’d been to the town a few months earlier had told her Capulus was, “like, the best coffee she’d ever tasted in her life.” Amissa needed it.
When she woke up in the subtly disturbing bed and breakfast she had found driving through town, she immediately rushed downstairs, eager to get the best cup of coffee she’ll ever have.
“Do you know where the Capulus Coffee Shop is?” she asked the B&B owner, Francie, on her way out.
Francie nodded knowingly and pulled out a blank sheet of copy paper and a bag of colored pencils and started giving directions with urgency:
“When you walk out the door, you’ll want to get in your car immediately. If you are out in public with this map, everyone will know that you know where the Capulus Coffee Shop is. It’s very hard to find,” and she took a green colored pencil out of the decades old plastic bag, “When you pull out onto the road outside, you’ll notice a letter on some of the trees. You follow them to the last letter, ‘e,’ and make a swift, diagonal right. The road looks like it ends abruptly — you have four-wheel drive, I hope?”
Amissa was frozen.
Francie continued, “Once you turn there, there will be six buildings, all identical in style. Think fast food drive-thru meets haunted victorian mansion. None of these are Capulus. They all say they are but they aren’t. So keep going.”
She was creating a delicately drawn map, the trees rich in color and the roads accurate down to the potholes.
“This part is important,” Francie emphasized, her voice lowering, “There will be a street name that you pass called Capulus but do not turn there. It’s a trap. Our town doesn’t have street names, and it will be obvious it’s fake because it’s written in chalk. They have to rewrite it every morning,” she drew a red ‘X’ over the street sign she sketched.
“You keep going for ten miles, it’s a one way road and it says ‘no outlet,’ but just keep going. There will be a man in a blue velvet suit at the ten mile marker. You’ll want to roll down your window and say, ‘Volo genus capulus.’ It’s latin for, ‘I want amazing coffee.’ He’ll give you a code name and a card that says, ‘stultus,’ which means entry. It gets you into the shop. But he won’t give you directions. He’ll assume you’ll already know what to do. You’ll keep going another two miles and park you car under the twelve mile marker. And you’ll see a man there with a dip-dyed beard who you’ll give your code word and entry card to. He’ll walk you to the shop. It’s about a ten mile hike, I’d bring a daypack if I were you. We have hiking boots if you need them as well. Any other questions?”
Amissa glanced at the map, momentarily forgetting what the directions were for.
“What kind of coffee do you have here at the B&B?”
Francie straightened her back, a deep-lined smile on her face, “Capulus. But most of our customers prefer the generic grocery store brand.”
Edited by Cheyenne Abrams.
