The Couch of Beanis Compels You
“Twilight,” Sunset said as calmly as possible before taking a sip of coffee, “Please tell me someone at the company died.”
“Sunset, that’s a terrible thing to say!” Twilight admonished.
“I’ll take that as a no?” Sunset asked. She sounded almost disappointed.
“Why would you think someone died?”
“Because it looks like there’s a candlelight vigil in the parking lot.” Sunset let out a soft sigh. It was looking like it was going to be a lovely day until this happened.
Twilight got up from the conference table and joined Sunset at the window. “Oh, would you look at that.” Twilight’s voice had the tone —the one that said she’d done something without Sunset’s knowledge or consent. “Worshippers!”
Sunset’s mouth opened and closed a few times, but the words had gotten stuck in her throat. She let out a long sigh and took another sip of coffee to wash the words down. Maybe that would be enough for them to filter out one at a time.
“Why?”
It was a start.
“I forgot to tell you about this, didn’t I?” Twilight smiled sheepishly at Sunset.
Sunset kept her gaze locked on the small crowd in the parking lot. There were people on their knees praying. Praying.
“You might have forgotten to mention it.”
“Whoops?” Twilight’s face flushed red.
“I’m going to regret asking, but why are there ‘worshippers’,” Sunset emphasized the word with air quotes, “in our parking lot? How did they even get past security?”
“Security is just a few scarecrows propped up on roombas,” Twilight admitted, scuffing her foot on the carpet. “We can’t afford real security guards.”
“Put a pin in that one and get back to the worshipping in the parking lot.” Sunset’s free hand pinched the bridge of her nose in an attempt to stave off a Twigraine.
“Oh… are you sure you don’t want to talk about our lack of security some more? Wallflower did a lovely job on the scarecrows.”
“Twilight. Worshippers.”
“Well, we were running close to falling into the red with the whole corporate espionage thing and hiring on a new employee, so I kinda had the building…” Twilight trailed off into an inaudible mumble.
“Come again?”
“I had the building rezoned as a holy site.”
“I—” Sunset started, finding it difficult to fully articulate that Twilight had done what could very well be the most idiotic thing in the history of Twilight. She made a mental note to add a dollar to the Fiji jar.
A few deep, calming breaths later and Sunset found the words she needed. “Why did you turn our company building into a church?”
“Shrine,” Twilight corrected.
“Huh?”
“Technically the building is a shrine. It’s a holy site that houses an object that’s considered sacred—like a vessel for a spirit.”
“Tell me it’s not what I think it is.”
“It’s not what you think it is,” Twilight confirmed.
Sunset let out a sigh of relief. At least she hadn’t said it was—
“It’s The Couch.”
It was exactly what Sunset thought it was.
Sunset fell silent, sipping her coffee and watching the worshippers in fascination.
A few stories below the pair, the crowd had taken to some sort of slow chanting, though what was being said was a mystery through the thick glass. A few of the people below had taken to building a small shrine with what looked suspiciously like a beanis. One particularly erratic person was dancing about with a sandwich board that simply read ‘Prais Beanos’.
Sunset took a long sip of her coffee and walked away, leaving Twilight in the conference room without saying another word. She walked down the halls of Beanis Inc in a daze, ignoring the rest of the madness that marked the day-to-day goings on of the company.
She walked past Wallflower bent over a desk in the customer satisfaction center as Dash satisfied her with Fluttershy watching, past Applejack and Rarity chatting at the water cooler, and didn’t even bat an eye when she saw Pinkie slip into The Couch room with a video camera and a woman in a pirate costume she didn’t recognize.
She stopped at the front doors of the building, where Tempest was watching the crowd intently.
“Hey.” Tempest nodded to Sunset as she approached.
“Hey.” Sunset grumbled sourly.
“So, question: why do we have a mob of protesters in front of the company?” Tempest asked as she turned her gaze back to the worshippers outside.
“They’re not protesting, they’re….” Sunset sighed and stared down at the empty paper cup that had once housed the only thing keeping her sane today. “They’re praying.”
“Praying?”
Sunset nodded in defeat.
“Oh great, missionaries.” Tempest cracked her knuckles menacingly. “Want me to kick them out?”
“I don’t think you’re allowed to.” Sunset sighed for what might have been the hundredth time in the last twenty minutes. “Twilight had the building rezoned so it’s now a church—shrine—whatever.”
“Why?” Tempest’s brow furrowed in confusion. It must be nice, being unused to the madness that was Twilight Sparkle.
“Taxes.”
Tempest looked genuinely impressed. “Smart.”
“I guess, but it makes my job a lot harder. Do you know how much work it’ll take to rebalance the books because of this?”
“Bummer.” Tempest didn’t sound too concerned about it, though. “So we just have to let them hang out there?”
“You could always try asking nicely for them to leave.” Sunset rolled her eyes.
The front door opened and Tempest stepped outside before Sunset could stop her.
“Hey, everyone, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” Tempest called as she confidently strode towards the crowd. “We’re closing up for the day and can’t have you hanging out here overnight.”
A whisper ran through the worshippers, but they didn’t make any move to leave.
“Come on, guys, get a move on. We might be a shrine, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be trespassing.”
The crowd slowly moved towards Tempest. The closest worshippers started reaching out for the woman like extras in a zombie movie.
Tempest took a step back from them, glancing over her shoulder at Sunset. It was all the time the crowd needed to wash over Tempest, surging around her and staring in awe. Strangers reached out to touch her, running their hands over her arms, shoulders, back, and anywhere else they could touch.
Tempest pushed her way out of the group, knocking more than a few of them off their feet in the process, and ran back to the safety of the building. She was panting as she slammed the glass doors shut behind her.
“What was that?” Sunset asked.
“They were whispering to each other. It was not normal.” Tempest said as she hunched over to catch her breath. “They were looking at me like... I don’t know, it was weird, okay?”
“What were they saying?” Sunset looked around, wondering if she should start barricading the doors.
“I couldn’t hear most of it, but they were calling me,” Tempest shuddered, “they were calling me the Beanssiah. Something about a holy prophecy and heralding Her arrival.”
Sunset blinked at Tempest, letting the other woman’s words sink in. On the list of things Tempest could have said when she got back inside, the word Beanssiah was nowhere to be found. So much so, in fact, that Sunset found herself lacking any sort of response to what she was being told for the second time that day.
So she chose to repeat what she’d done to Twilight and walked away.
“Sunset?” Tempest called after her, “where are you going?”
Tempest’s words fell on deaf ears as Sunset walked all the way back to her office, where she pulled a bucket filled to the brim with one dollar bills from its home on her bookshelf. Fiji, it declared in big, bold letters on the side.
Once, it had been a jar in that spot. She upgraded when she filled the jar.
She set the bucket on her desk, as she had so many times before, and stared. True, she had enough money for a week in Fiji, but that was also a week away from Beanis Inc. That in it of itself was an amazing thought, tempered only by the fact that that also meant a week away from Beanis Inc.
A week without Sunset’s attempts at dissuading Twilight from going overboard.
A week without Sunset putting out metaphorical fires when Twilight did her own thing anyway.
A week without seeing a beanis.
Knocking from the open door pulled her from her thoughts. It was Twilight.
“Are you okay, Sunset?” she asked. “You’ve been acting kinda funny today. What’s up?”
Sunset looked from Twilight to the bucket and back again. “I’m going to Fiji.”