Strange conversation

In my house we have a custom to keep the coffee pot ready to use: every time we make coffee we wait for the pot to cool down, we take it apart to clean it, we let it dry for the necessary time and then we put it back together again, in this way the pot is always available.

But these days something unusual happened, I had stored one of the coffee pots in an annex of the house where we sometimes keep things. I did not take the precaution of checking it because it was supposed to be clean. That annex has a wooden ceiling so during the day it is much warmer than the rest of the house, but in the evenings it is very nice.

A few days later I went to look for that coffee maker because the one that was in use had a problem and was leaking steam.

When I uncovered it I was transported to a horror movie. A brown substance had spread all over the part where the filter is, it looked like a big spider web and gave the impression that it was alive, it really felt very threatening.

In the coffee pot there was coffee residue and with the high humidity and the heat of the annex a mold had grown in an impressive way, it is the kind of problem that can be common in the tropical zone where I live.

My wife refused to clean it up, so I had no choice but to get some rubber gloves and with a spatula and a brush I removed all the mold. I ran boiling water through each of the components of the coffee pot and proceeded to uncover the metal filter, letting the water boil without adding any coffee. After repeating this process about six times my wife finally accepted to use the coffee pot again to prepare our coffee.

That ugly image of the coffee pot covered by the brown substance had remained in my memory...

That night I had trouble falling asleep and when it was already close to dawn I started having a very strange dream...

I was in the kitchen of the house when suddenly I began to hear voices. At first it was like an almost imperceptible whisper but little by little it got louder and I could understand what they were saying.

There was no one in the kitchen, I looked everywhere to try to find the source of those voices. I got up and went to where the coffee pot was. There was no doubt. The voices were coming from inside it...

Armed with courage I dared to disassemble the coffee pot, I paid attention and I could see a slight vibration in the filter, the filter was talking to a part of the mold that I had cleaned. Neither one nor the other had mouths or ears, but I was sure that there was a conversation between those two, I could clearly hear what they were saying...

The coffee pot was complaining to the mold that it had colonized it, telling it that in this way it would make it useless, that it would not be able to make coffee. The mold, for its part, told it that it was not doing anything wrong, that it was in its nature to grow where the best conditions were, that it had only taken advantage of those coffee remains left on its surface to continue the rhythm of life. If there is anyone responsible for this situation, it is your users, the mold finished off....

At that moment I felt that the filter of the coffee pot was looking at me, but there were no eyes... A voice began to rumble inside me, it was the filter that was talking to me. It felt very angry. In his words he was telling me that I was irresponsible, that because of me the mold had damaged it, that if I couldn't be careful I should stop making coffee. The filter's claims towards me did not stop and the more things he said, the more his voice increased. My ears were about to burst. ...

Drenched in sweat I woke up...my wife was no longer by my side. From the smell of coffee I knew she was in the kitchen. With some trepidation I asked her if everything was all right with the coffee machine. Wonderful, she said...!

Please don't forget to clean it so that what happened last time doesn't happen, I said almost in her ear so the coffee pot wouldn't hear me...

Thank you for your time.