Cold Brewed 003 — Spent Grounds
A graphic novel told in photos about an alternate history where coffee and not alcohol was banned in the prohibition — free with a links to the print version.
We — Mark 9 and I — wanted to share the tenth(+) anniversary release of Cold Brewed into print, so we’re re-releasing the digital version (outside of scrolling, it doesn’t format well for e-readers). Feel free to support the team as the episodes release. One way to support is to order a print copy directly from your preferred bookstore:
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Another way is to subscribe — I’ll send cash on to the actors and production team:
WHAT IS THIS?
Cold Brewed’s a graphic novel told in photos about an alternate history where coffee and not alcohol was banned during the prohibition years. It’s an odd duck with a lot of third wave coffee lingo — we never knew, for instance, that Adam’s roasting in his over would turn into an actual coffeeshop and roaster. Video here for the making of Cold Brewed back in 2012, you’ll see our baby faces.
Without further ado, here’s the photonovel I made with Mark in my early twenties:
previously on COLD BREWED:
She looked good. Real good.
“What about you?” I asked.
“I gotta spell it out?” I asked. “Are you already rationed out to some roaster, sugar?”
She winced at the unspoken word: hooker. Then she turned away, sniffed, and got up to go out.
003
We went out and down the hall to the balcony.
Streets quiet like a grown thing dying: gasps of a deer whose lungs’d been shot. Normally heard more of that high above pavement.
“You know,” she said, “didn’t think the Emerald City thing’d get that bad.” She fidgeted. I expected her heels to shoot through the grate, but somehow she balanced on top, even hooked around the rail.
“A tamper always gets bad,” I said, “Spent grounds always end up in the knock box on an Emerald City Tamper.” I smoked. Couldn’t help but remember the first time I saw Avani dead. And Bready Moe dead in that industrial roasting factory. Spent grounds. They’d been my whole world.
“Then you’ll want to know what I found,” she said.
“Where?” I asked.
She puffed her smoke at my lips. “Bones of that old highway.”
Hated that place. Felt like the ruins of a long dead society. Maybe ours was: they were just a few years old, those walls. Long, bitter story. “Spent grounds?” I asked.
“Wilson,” she said.
I looked at her long.
“He’s dead, Jett.”
My mind wandered with my eyes. I looked through different apartment windows. Saw a man in a wife beater. Lady hanging out her blacks on a rotten clothesline. Kid running naked through a dark room without power, the only light coming from outside and shining on his bare butt. Where was Carmen? I missed Avani. Bready Moe. Now Wilson.
Wilson... wait. Why Wilson?
“Where you going?” she asked.
“Lock up for me,” I said.
“But there’s nothing in here worth stealing, Jett,” she said.
“Then don’t lock up for me and have a nice day.”
“You always gonna act—”
“My pleasure,” I said.
“Fine.”
I took the long way around, the long way out of town hoping to lose anyone that might be following me. It was roundabout, way out past city limits, a great arcing desert wandering. No one’d follow me out that far, but I still checked. Hard death, old habits.
...then continued on my way.
She said the old highway’s bones, but where? Stretch went on for miles, far as I could tell. Route like this used to wind through the country like a tap for house roasts, the lifeblood of mom and pop roasters, bringing in the goods and services from everywhere to our town. But that was another time, another bygone. That was before the law’d been passed, long before Emerald City’d been tamped.
Crumbling bricks remained.
Heard a train. Rare sound these days.
Saw something across the way. On the third formerly load-bearing wall.
Couldn't get a good angle.
Couldn’t jump down. Guessed I had to slide. Hate sliding, feels like falling but with the constant reminder you ain’t in control. Had a funny feeling.
What was it that reverend had said at dad’s funeral? Some mountain shadow... or... Oh:
“Yea though I walk through the valley—”
"...of the shadow of death..."
"...I will fear no evil."
Too early to tell, but early enough that fear for worst tried to creep back in...
Fear burrowed in me.
Had to cross a river of sludge.
Close enough to see the truth: Scarlet was right.
Spent grounds.
Likely enough like my old pal Wilson.
Wasn't no one there to check for me...
Yup, it was him.
No fun in the way Wilson’d died. Ended unclean.
Wilson was a doser, but not an all-out COD doser that took whatever he could get, whenever he could get it. Wilson had c... had had class. He could make a roulette wheel sing loud enough to bring home all the skinnies.
So why kill Wilson? He’d been loyal to the local roasters, loyal as they come. Heck, Wilson was the shining star of local roaster loyalty. What local roaster in his right mind would pull Wilson short for dosing local stuff? Unless, of course, someone had rigged the whole thing up on pulleys and stilts to look like a local. If someone’d spiked the dose or pulled him short mid-shipment then—
Behind his body, something shady in the dead grass caught my eye.
Tasted baggy.
Past crop.
Last year’s or the year before.
More grounds and another bean stood out in the yellowing grass and then another bean behind it.
Three more were bunched up behind those.
Baggy, bready crumbs. Smelled like Bready Moe’s breath. Images of his body wolfed up space in my mind.
Nothing straight behind.
Nor farther down the way.
Then I saw it, dead ahead.
Looked like a shoddy roast in a local bag.
Chicory.
They’d stepped on the dose with chicory. Thinned it out with a poison substitute for a real roast. Cheaper pounds, more coin.
And Wilson probably called them on it. The man knew how a local roast should taste.
Oh yeah, the bean told the story true:
Wasn’t a local roaster. It’d been some new blood, some scorched big batch who wanted to drive a steam wand through the heart of local loyalty, turn it on, and let it burn. Kill us all. They always worked that aways, burning beans in huge doses to undercut locals on price alone. Big boy comes in with cheap shit and kicks out the mommas and the papas. We knew that story.
That’s how it starts and it never ends clean. There’d be spent grounds all over towns soon, filling the gutters and clogging the drains so the hard water rises. I’d feared finding Wilson, but ten thousand other fears mobbed me, ten thousand names and faces of other good dosers and skinnies that’d end up spent if I didn’t act real soon.
The fear of those gathering fears got me moving, got me to realize one important fact: sure, someone offed Wilson, but this time, this tamper, I’d beaten them to their cooling tray before they’d hit the shelves.
Someone’d gotten sloppy during the first crack of an Emerald City Tamper.
Someone’d spilled their beans.
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Did you know Overmorrow is now available for free on Kindle Unlimited? And it’s the final version? If you have kindle, go check it out right now. More to come on this. Or just preorder the paperback on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
Overmorrow is #1 in its categories! A sale, PRIZES, Kindle Unlimited, and the Paperback.
Friends! Today is the day to start the OVERMORROW launch. I’m telling you about its success, its sale, its Kindle Unlimited launch (that’s a first for me, an experiment), the paperback preorders, AND SOME FABULOUS PRIZES. Prizes are also for those who purchased early copies