There are certain challenges that come with running a city centre coffee shop, but I think I manage them all quite well. Making your cafe stick out above the others, especially the big chains, requires a bit of work, but it’s really not that difficult. Baking pastries that look and taste better than the 3D-printed, cardboard offerings the multinationals serve up; easy. Decorating and lighting the place so it looks like somewhere you want to spend time; hardly rocket science. A warm welcome from staff who seem pleased to see you; child’s play. This last factor is the major advantage we have over the chains. These are no minimum-wage, fed-up, uninterested college students, turning up hungover and getting off with each other in the bathroom. My staff are fiercely loyal and would do anything for me and the company. I care for them just as much, and show it. I’m not money-obsessed, so all profits go towards keeping them happy and making sure the shop is attractive to the public.

Most of our customers are your usual independent coffee shop patrons: hipsters who want to be seen carrying around a flat white with the name of a trendy cafe on the side; local office workers trying anything to stay awake during another monotonous weekday; stay-at-home-mums with nothing better to do than meet up with similar types and spread the school-gate gossip. There is a fourth type, however, and it’s them that interest me the most; the homeless.

Their patronage generally follows a pattern. First, they’ll spend a few weeks coming in to ask for a cup of tea, the cheapest hot drink on the menu, once or twice a day, paying with whatever coins they’ve managed to collect from the public. Next, there’ll be a slow reduction in the amount they pay. “I’ve only got . . . “ The staff know to just accept this and give them the tea anyway. Eventually, by the time we’ve learnt their name and know what time to expect them, no payment is offered or expected. Not only is it the quickest way to get them in and out (an important consideration when you consider that personal hygiene is way down the list of a homeless person’s priorities) but it also makes us look caring to the onlooking paying customers, and helps them feel uplifted and lucky, hopefully a feeling they then associate with spending money in my shop.

Then, after a few months, what was once a regular homeless customer will disappear completely. Nobody ever asks where they’ve gone. It may be assumed that they’re dead, sick, in prison or even gotten off the street, but I think they’re probably not thought of at all, missed by no one.

The person of the street currently catching my interest is an old, scruffy, bearded man we call Billy. Where we heard that name nobody can remember, he’s certainly never introduced himself. He’s gone through the process of paying less and less for his tea and has been getting it for free for about three months now. He comes in at around 4pm every day, as I’m in the back cleaning up before we close. He’s always roaring and shouting. He’s not unique in this aspect but he’s louder than most and it’s not ideal. Luckily, once he sees me appearing from the kitchen, he quietens down to a mutter. “Such a calming influence” I can picture the other customers thinking. A delivery man once labelled me “The Hobo Whisperer” and while I admonished him for using an outdated term, I was delighted with the moniker. I believe that part of the appeal of my cafe is the kind-hearted, friendly owner, always ready with a smile and a few kind words. It really is very easy to hide one’s hatred of the general public.

I’m in the kitchen as usual at 4pm today, helping wash up. It’s been an unusually quiet afternoon but the place is no less of a mess. Through the swing-doors I hear Billy’s usual foul-mouthed tirade “HAVE TO FUCKING WATCH THEM, BASTARDS, FUCKING LIZARDS THE LOT OF THEM, I KNOW THEM, I SEEN THEM, FUCKING REPTILE BASTARDS . . .” I allow myself a smile at his familiar rhetoric before wiping my hands on my apron and pushing through the doors and onto the cafe floor. Billy locks eyes with me and the volume is immediately turned down, fading to in an incoherent mumble “fucking . . . watch them . . . bastards . . . everywhere . . . scaley fucks . . .” “Hi Billy!” I announce, as breezily as possible. “Fran, could you get Billy a tea please, on me.” Fran was already pouring the tea, but I have to make sure the customers hear me being kind. Catching the eye of the pair of businessmen at the last occupied table, they manage to return my smile before draining their cups and heading for the door, keen to be away from Billy and his strong, musty odour. More businesses could do with a sweary, smelly hobo to scare those final, lingering customers away at closing time.

I look Billy up and down. About six foot tall, broad-shouldered, long beard and hair. In many ways, he’s exactly the type of man I need in my life right now. It’s a spur of the moment decision, as these things often are, but I decide now is the time to make my move. “Billy, why don’t you bring that tea downstairs to my office where it’s nice and warm, we can have a chat.” Billy looks at me blankly, mumbling profanities, but allows me to take him by the elbow and guide him down the concrete stairs, noisily slurping his tea as he walks. He bursts into his shouty repertoire once more as I pause to unlock the Staff Only door but a bit of shushing and my hand back on his elbow convinces him everything is alright.

There’s only one chair in my office, behind my desk, and I sit him down at it, place his tea in front of him and stand on the other side of the desk, assessing him. “Well, Billy, what are we going to do with you?” I ask, pulling my jumper over my head. “I really don’t think our customers want to hear you shouting about lizards anymore, do you?” The only change in Billy’s expression as I pull off my t-shirt, step out of my shoes and remove my jeans is a slight widening of the eyes. I step around the desk and sit on Billy’s filthy lap. “Why, if someone figured out you were telling the truth we’d all be in an awful lot of trouble, wouldn’t we?” I reach back and unclasp my bra. I say “bra,” but of course the fabric is one with the surrounding pseudo-flesh. My skin-suit separates down the back, snapping open and revealing the spiny crest running from my neck to the top of my tail, a slightly darker green than the scales that cover the rest of my body. Now the awkward bit. I pull the suit off, first over my head, sticking as usual on the rough scales around my brow ridges, then release my arms, careful not to puncture the suit on my sharp claws. Then, getting up from Billy’s lap, I free my legs and thank the fashion gods for baggy jeans as my tail emerges from its temporary home, squashed and bulging inside the right leg. Even our most talented skinsuit-tailors haven’t yet solved this problem. “I’m not sure how you found out about us, Billy. Maybe a friend escaped from one of my colleagues? Never mind, we’ll get them eventually. And who’s going to believe a dirty old vagrant ranting about lizards anyway?”

Throughout all this, Billy is frozen in place. The tea, as well as containing certain addictive substances which means they keep coming back for more, also contains a concoction of my own species’ devising which makes them compliant during this part of the process. Of course, the hypnotic abilities we learn as hatchlings also plays its part. “The Hobo Whisperer indeed” I chuckle to myself, as I slice open a chasm in Billy’s chest with my favourite, sharpest claw. I snap open the ribs as if they were a kitchen cabinet. Even with the tea and hypnosis, there are always screams at this point. Luckily, we’re in a fairly soundproof basement with a busy city noisily covering up anything that may attract attention. In any case, it doesn’t last any longer than a couple of seconds, just long enough for my tongue to enter the chest cavity, find the heart, extract it and consume it in one quick motion.

The blood pooling around Billy’s feet has already started to enter the gullies under my desk and drain under the door to my left. I open this now to a sound that makes my heart sing; last year’s crop of young are lapping up the blood with a happy, slurping noise. I hear a half-dozen pairs of feet on the stairs. It will be my “employees,” aware that they are in for a feast. I grab Billy’s body and drag it onto the floor as my older offspring enter, skin-suits already half-off, drooling with anticipation. “Go easy, kids. Share out the organs evenly. I need the carcass, Mommy has a full egg-sack and needs a fresh nest, and this one’s the perfect size. Fran, when you’ve finished eating, remove the hair. It keeps the nest nice and warm when the body’s gone cold.”

I watch them eat with both pride and sadness. It won’t be long now until they’re old enough to fly the nest, ready to open their own cafes all over the world. Will any of them be found out? It’s happened before of course, but luckily most governments want more small businesses and fewer people living on the streets, so we can usually come to an agreement. In any case, it was government-sanctioned experimentation that caused our bodies and brains to develop to this extent in the first place. So they can hardly complain when a few of their escaped specimens return above-ground to earn a crust. And a modest increase in the homeless death figures is a small price to pay to keep their secret.

No, I think I’ve trained this crop well. Time to turn my attention to their younger siblings, the next generation of baristas and bakers. A perfect habitat for them to mimic human behaviour. As well as the ready supply of homeless people for our food and nests, this learning environment was the main reason our species decided on cafes as our way out of our horrible underground cities. Returning to what was once the home of our entire species always depresses me. There are openings hidden in plain sight throughout the world’s cities. My nearest gate has been made to look like an on-street cellar entrance to a former pub keg-room. The fact that there has never been a pub in the adjacent building, never mind a cellar, seems to have escaped the attention of the feeble-minded humans who walk over it every day. Getting through the gate is followed by a long downhill walk through dark, narrow tunnels. The low-ceilinged chambers these passages eventually open out to are dreary, joyless places. They are also, since the migration upwards of most of our species, largely empty, making the atmosphere even more uninviting. If I want new skinsuits for my youngest crop, though, and assignments for my eldest, I’ll have to make another visit soon.

Those who stayed behind; the skinsuit tailors and logistics experts mainly, are always curious to hear what life is like above ground. They are the real heroes. They must be aware that they are unlikely to see our quiet conquering of the above-ground world in their lifetimes. All they can do is plan our eventual takeover of the 20% of the western world’s independent coffee shops not already under our control. Then it will be the chains. And then whatever industry our elders deem fit to infiltrate next. It will be many more generations before we have enough bodies above ground to deal with whatever the human armies can throw at us when we eventually reveal our true forms to the world. There are even rumours we are preparing for an infiltration of the military too, which should help when the time comes. I’ll be long gone by then myself of course, but I know I’m lucky to have lived so much of my life above ground, and I’m proud to have produced so many young to carry on our campaign.