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He leaned back in his chair and Guiseppe and Florcus could do nothing but gape at him. His skin blended in inexorably with the beige flowers of the cafe wallpaper. A row of baroque teeth beamed back at them.
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'Want some coffee?' he said suddenly, lurching forward and tossed a bag of what seemed to be frozen gravy onto the table. 'I brought it for sustainment on my journey.'

Florcus picked up the bag. It seeped gently from the corner onto the tablecloth. Florcus noticed a pattern appearing and moved the bag so that the pattern would be symmetrical.
'What's the matter with you? Cat got your tongue, sir? There is no generally agreed origin among etymologists for this bizarre expression, ha ha, although there does seem to be a broad view that the expression came into popular use in the 1800s, and first appeared in print in 1911!'

He took a breath.
'In my view the most logical explanation is that it relates to the 'cat-o-nine-tails' whip used in olden days maritime punishments, in which it is easy to imagine that the victim would be rendered incapable of speech or insolence. A less likely, but no less dramatic suggested origin, is that it comes from the supposed ancient traditional middle-eastern practice of removing the tongues of liars and feeding them to cats.'

The cafe door opened with a horrifying ting-a-ling, letting in a gust of wind which made the students dash around grabbing at pages with graphs on them. A lanky, curly-haired lad took advantage of the distraction to finish off the meatballs for the group.
The overall effect was that the stage was set for the entry of our new character. The hand that reached out obnoxiously into florcus's face, shiny, pink and overeager, belonged to....

Down the corridors where the hours are suns.

I am visited nightly by the seven muses, who sit around my boudoir and quote to me directly from God. When I arise, my mind is instantly flooded with an impulse to create and with it, beautiful, heroic epic stories which need to be told for the benefit of mankind through the medium of coffee.


My soul is innervated with the song of the ages and it is my destiny to impart my insights to the grovelling, flea-ridden masses of 'humanity' that dwell outside my door, waiting night and day to glimpse my greatness.


I often watch the people as they pass in their soulless droves below my turret window. They scurry about on the cobblestones in their badly repaired burlap sack 'clothing'. Their grasping hands and blank minds just calls for my edification. It is my duty to give it to them.

I start by kneeling in front of a stained glass window of Engelbert Humperdinck and calling before me the winged sprites who guide my hand to turn shadow into form; to bring being out from nothingness; then I pick up my pencil and turn to my room-sized easel that I had shipped out from Paris last week. I then take out the pile of coffee beans of all various hues to the canvas which I had made by five small Indian children in the village of Boratje for mere pennies. The rest is a vague void, for creation is a mystery and I am often caught up in the ecstasy and do not remember a thing.

The room is filled with God-rays, lighting both myself and the canvas every time I put down a stroke. It is by this sign that I know I am going down the right path and fulfiling the aforementioned destiny. I know the painting is finished when the heavens open, releasing brilliant light, heavenly music and trumpeting angels; the beauty so inspires them that they sometimes fly away back up to Heaven carrying my painting with them!'

He laughed and took a deep breath. He started rolling a cigarette, using his thumb to tuck the leafy material inside the paper. A new programme began on the tv in the cafe.

'When I have my coffee paintings displayed in Notre-Dame and the Louvre, in the National Galleries in Delft, Florence and Rome, in the New World and beyond, I want to hear stories from intrepid travellers as they spent their life's savings travelling by coffin ships from all four corners of the world to finally arrive in front of my paintings. I want to hear then how they fell before my masterpiece, sobbing and with their souls filled with self-loathing and a redemptive grace all at once. I want this to be a transformative process for my audience. I want them to go away knowing their lives will never be quite the same again, then to spread the word until I am known throughout the dark forests and the high-peaked mountain ranges, through the seven ages of rainland and the bleak shadowlands- then can I truly call my work done and I shall be transported to where I truly belong amongst the greats of the ages and I shall sit on the crowned throne as the Highest of All Artistés. Yes! Ha!'