I watched from my window as the red and yellow leaf slowly drifted through the air, lilting back and forth, carried by the wind. Focusing my eyes closer, on the panes of the windows I couldn’t help but notice imperfections in the way it was blown. The houses around me were all the same color, cookie cutter build. My gaze meandered upward to the fluffy white mass of clouds...

“Sarah!” My mother shrieked breaking me from my reverie as she stumbled in the doorway, her arms full of groceries. “Help would be appreciated” I recognized her huffy tone and with a stone in my stomach knew she and dad had a fight again.

“On it,” I mumbled with my face to the ground, I knew how mom could read my emotions like a book.

Lurching back to the house, my arms full of food, I actually had to stop on the side walk and guess witch house was mine because of the similarities. As I teetered into the kitchen I slammed the groceries on the counter with a sigh of relief. I started to slowly put them away into the mundane cabinets when I noticed a small lone coffee bean sitting on our meticulous counter top. A gust of wind blew it onto our hard wood floor. Forgetting it entirely I went back to the task at hand. Turning back to the bags on the counter I noticed it was back. The small coffee bean was on the table once again.

Later in the night I noticed it happening again and agin. I would be doing my homework I would look over and see a small coffee bean sitting there, as if taunting me. Irritated each time I would swipe it onto the floor and step on it, grinding it into the floorboards.

Asleep in bed I woke by a sound of scuffling approaching the bed.
“Ugh...mom?” I mumbled and turned over. It happened again, they sounded louder this time, closer, and I opened my eyes, startled. Sitting on the edge of my comforter was another coffee bean. This time, though, it was watching me. It stared with a vacant and slightly menacing gaze. I froze in shock as we looked into each others eyes, its expression cold, hard, and slightly mocking. It had small limbs that looked as though they were simply sheared from the body and hanging on by a small thread. Its posture was erect and with no neck it looked like a small broken, pebble. However, I found myself afraid to open my mouth with the absurd notion that it would jump down my throat.

“Finally” The small bean relished in a as it moved ever closer, i noted with incredulity that it had no knees and walked as if on hinges. I stayed silent though I was screaming in my mind that this was a dream. I waited for it to continue to speak in its high pitched voice.

“We have been waiting for such a long time, you see. All of my kind have been laying in wait, sacrificing our selves doormat to the human kind” It spit the last few words, disgusted.

“But we have been waiting for the opportune moment to strike, and now the world will be ours for the taking, and your kind will pay greatly for all of our species sacrificed for the charade, we will be the top of the food chain.”

It was really quite ridiculous, this quarter inch coffee bean wanted to take over the world, very cliché really. I then felt the bed shudder and looked in puzzlement at the lone coffee bean but my gaze was drawn to the space around it. My eyes widened farther than I thought possible, and I whimpered at the insanity of it all. Thousands of coffee beans emerged from the edge of the blue comforter and swarmed behind the leader all with narrowed eyes and vacant expressions. They converged on me and if one had been watching they would have seen me disappear into the attacking brown mass without even a scream.