All I Need Is A Little Coffee & A Whole Lot Of Jesus

The rain had finally spent itself.

Not in a dramatic tapering-off, not with a last heroic peal of thunder or a cinematic bolt of lightning, but the way exhaustion ends things—quietly, almost sheepishly. When Father Tristan Greene pushed open the door of the house on Willow Row, the hinges no longer screamed in protest. The wind had gone slack. The air smelled rinsed clean, like wet stone and crushed leaves, and the early sun lay across the street in pale gold bands, warming puddles into steam.

He stepped out into the morning like a man resurfacing after a long dive.

His cassock clung to him, heavy with damp, salt-stiff with sweat and rainwater both. There was a bruise blooming along his ribs where the thing had thrown him against the wall; another on his forearm from where he’d braced himself against the doorframe when his knees had tried—quite rudely—to give out. His throat burned from hours of prayer spoken over screaming wind and screaming flesh, Latin and English braided together until he could no longer tell where one ended and the other began.

But the house behind him was quiet now.

Not the ominous quiet of something waiting.

Just… quiet.

The woman inside slept, sedated and watched over by a parish nurse who had arrived sometime near dawn, her face pale but peaceful, breathing slow and even. The walls no longer wept.

And just before that, she had asked for confession and the Eucharist—a sign that she was truly free. The crucifix lay where it had fallen, no longer flung aside by invisible hands. Whatever had been clawing and shrieking and mocking through the night had gone, driven out into the storm that had borne it in like Legion fleeing into the herd of swine.

Father Greene closed the door gently. He rested his forehead against the wood for a moment, breathed, and whispered a prayer of thanksgiving that was more exhaustion than eloquence.

Then his stomach growled.

It was an almost comic sound—loud, indignant, impossible to ignore.

He straightened, blinked against the brightness of the morning, and let out a hoarse laugh. “All right,” he murmured. “Message received.”

The walk back toward town felt unreal. The sky was a scandalous blue, scrubbed clean by the storm, as if the heavens themselves had decided to show off. Sparrows hopped through the hedges, utterly unconcerned with demonic manifestations or spiritual warfare. A pair of joggers passed him, earbuds in, offering polite nods that said clergy before coffee was not a sight worth questioning this early in the day.

The McDonald’s off the main road glowed like a beacon of secular mercy.

Inside, the smell hit him all at once—salt, grease, sugar, hot coffee, the unmistakable perfume of civilization continuing unabated. A teenager at the register looked up, blinked at his soaked, rumpled appearance, the collar still crisp and white against everything else, and asked, “Uh. Morning, Father. What can I get you?”

Father Greene studied the menu like a man staring into sacred text.

“Breakfast,” he said finally. Then, after a beat, “A lot of it.”

He ordered with the solemnity of one commissioning supplies for a siege. Sausage biscuits. Egg McMuffins. Hash browns—many. Pancakes. Orange juice. Coffee he didn’t even plan to drink. The cashier’s eyebrows crept higher with each item, but she said nothing, only handed him two large paper bags and a drink tray that sagged dangerously in the middle.

“Feeding an army?” she ventured, half-smiling.

“No. More like a great cloud of witnesses,” he replied, deadpan.

She laughed, perhaps unsure why.

The sunlight felt warmer when he stepped back outside, arms full, the weight of the bags grounding him in a way incense and prayer had not managed to do. He ate one hash brown in the parking lot, standing like a man who had forgotten how chairs worked, and nearly wept at how good it tasted. Salt and grease and carbs—simple, solid things that asked nothing of his soul.

The rectory welcomed him home with its familiar smells: old books, lemon cleaner, faint traces of pipe tobacco left by a predecessor long gone. He set the bags on the kitchen table, lining them up with careful precision, and peeled off his wet coat, hanging it over the back of a chair to drip dry.

The kettle went on next.

There was something almost sacred in the ritual of it—the way his hands moved without thought, muscle memory guiding him through small mercies. He filled the kettle at the sink, the water clear and cold. He reached for his favorite mug, the chipped blue one someone had given him years ago with Ora et Labora stamped on the side. He measured the grounds by feel rather than spoon, dark and fragrant, and poured them into the French press.

Outside the kitchen window, sunlight pooled on the grass. Somewhere down the block, a lawn mower coughed to life. The world, apparently, had decided to keep going.

The kettle began to sing.

Father Tristan Greene leaned against the counter, closed his eyes, and let the sound wash over him. His body still hummed with the echo of the night—the resistance, the fear, the bone-deep fatigue—but here, now, there was only heat and steam and the promise of bitterness softened by cream.

When the water was ready, he poured it slowly, watching the grounds bloom and rise, inhaling deeply. He set the lid on the press and waited, counting breaths instead of seconds.

One.

Two.

Three.

When he finally pushed the plunger down, the resistance was gentle, yielding. He poured the coffee into his mug, dark and steady, a small, ordinary miracle.

Father Greene wrapped both hands around it and stood there in the quiet kitchen, sunlight on his face, steam curling upward like a benediction.

He thought back to a plaque a former parishioner had once given him before moving to find other work. It said, “All I need is a little coffee and a whole lot of Jesus.” Indeed.

Then he took a sip.

And for the first time since the storm had begun, he allowed himself to rest.