No Beer In Heaven

Dripple: Dad, how does one die so happy…with a grin from ear to ear… and eyes glittering with joy, like that jolly corpse lying over here?

Droopy: Don’t know son. Certainly not from Scooby snacks.

– The Master Detective Hound
* * *

If you are serious about getting dirty work done for you, don’t call Spopoh.

Spopoh was the most comical crook money could ever hire. The confidence, ego, and bravado he exuded, would suggest he was a legend of sorts. Yet, he often made a mess of the simplest of heists. There were far better yeggs, but none had quite the gift of the gab.

He carried out his missions with the utmost professionalism…or so he believed.

Before any mission, he read surveys, outlining the hotspots and escape routes, with plots and plans of the buildings he was about to enter. This informed the content of his utility belt – from boomerangs to lip gloss, from tranquilizers to voice mufflers, from template thumbprints to motion sensing bugs.

He was gaunt, flat as paper, and as flexible as an empty wallet, which helped him enter and exit the funniest security systems without sweat.

During the day, he worked as a post boy. He knew the city better than those drivers and conmen. At night, he schemed.

He had trained extensively in the martial arts, and was so quick that he could grab and dodge missiled darts with ease…or so he thought.

He often knocked down security guard after security guard, mission after mission, so easily. He was the go to man for impossible robberies.

He wore two watches during missions : one to time himself, for quality control and accuracy, and the other to tell the actual time.

Oh Spopoh! If only half of the above were true.

It is for his flawless record, he surmised, that he was hand-picked for this job. Many will consider this a suicide mission. But to him, he was beyond fear. Nothing could hold him back. Nothing could stop him.

He was to rob a manse. Not even the church itself…

He just had one problem in life. One problem that had often made him a plaything of the Cloaked Skeleton.

That problem was drugs. He could get past anything but drugs. He had been in and out of rehab – almost thirteen times. He had sworn not to return, after breaking out the last time.

Today will not pose a challenge. It was a regular grab and run.

He crept slowly through the pastor’s window, and landed softly on the overpolished floor panel. Quickly, he bowled down three pellets, each spraying anesthetic gas, in pulses, into the room; wore his facemask, and tiptoed towards the safe.

He saw the clergyman, sleeping so deeply, beside his young wife, of about half his age. Spopoh felt a wave of envy – such a disciplined and organized life – if only he knew how. If only he could reverse…

With the correct combination, the safe sprang open, displaying a box, stashed with wealth. It had an upper shelf, with several gold bars, jewelry, rare ornaments, clerical insignia, and numerous letters. His instructions were to empty the upper shelf only.

He looked down the shelf to find a mind-numbing, eye-watering, stash of drugs, packed in sachets. Each of them had been labeled. There was cocaine, PCP, LSD, weed. There was pethidine, morphine, and those in strange letters he could not pronounce.

Suddenly he felt his throat tighten and mouth run dry. He could feel his heart beat differently, his veins becoming bluer, and thicker, as though readying for a shot of coke. His breathing became heavy, his vision blurred, and he could feel crabs walking all over his skin. The room was much warmer now.

This was from just the sight of the goodies.

But why? Why should he be tempted in this way, and at this time? He had just come out of rehab. He knew each drug like an old girlfriend. He had used everything before…and he had missed… the high, the euphoria, the bliss!

He snapped out of it, and packed the goods from the upper shelf only, into his sac. He had to be strong.

Then he paused for a moment…

If he took some of the drugs, what would happen? He would have broken his record as a professional. He would have stained his reputation. He would relapse, as an addict. He had sworn never to succumb to these sweets again.

But the sachets…they started jumping within the cupboard, calling his name, in several melodious tunes, like the voices of sirens.

With the PCP he could walk into a party and really party!

He could see multiple realities with the LSD.

He saw the sachets twerking, right before his very eyes! The powders kept calling him, ‘Help us, Spopoh, help us…’, like damsels in distress, begging to be saved.

His ego soared.

With the weed, he could calm down after work, even on an empty stomach. With weed, there was no boredom. The weed sachets looked like strippers on a pole, begging to be hired. And they won’t stop calling, begging him, and massaging his id. With weed he was no more a burglar. He was the Dark Knight!

He licked his lips, and swallowed hard.

Cocaine. Ooh cocaine! With cocaine, he cannot feel. With cocaine, he was God. The cocaine bags bowed to Caesar Spopoh!

‘All hail His Majesty Spopoh!’, the bags cried, with sincere and enticing voices…

To hell with his reputation. To hell with the rehab. To hell with getting caught. To hell with professionalism. This was the real deal. Wasn’t Sherlock Holmes an addict? Wasn’t Dr House one too? George Best, Maradonna, Marley? Even this pastor?

He flooded his sac with all the sachets he could, leaving behind about six sachets of various drugs, only because there was no space to carry them.

He looked at his watches. He was a minute behind schedule. He raced for the window, about to leave the same way he came. He threw his bag over to the other side, about to follow…

But he stopped, with tears in his eyes. He was shivering from the thought of leaving behind those six beautiful sachets. They were still begging to be saved. They wanted him, and he wanted them too. He thought of his cloud nine, the splendour, the beyond-orgasmic feeling, that they promised to offer. Even the lure of a perfect mission could not match the high of highs.

He went back to the safe. He had made up his mind. It is ungentlemanly to walk away from an aroused woman. He was going to consume all six sachets before leaving. Those babies in a plastic bag needed his love.

Was he going to smoke in the pastor’s bedroom? Yes, right here and right now.

He took of his mask, and flicked on his lighter, setting the dope ablaze. The rising smoke calmed his desperate nerves, as he made to overcompensate for his three months away from this utopia. He inhaled deeply, falling backwards under the weight of ineffable pleasure.

He had set off the fire alarm, and the burglar alarm… and expectedly… a batallion of guards, each with an Alsatian, charging to save the reverend.

He was too dazed to care, too stoned to run. He crept into the pastors bed, lay between the priest and his wife, and smiled with pure satisfaction. He had reached the seventh heaven…where every breath smells of a different perfume; where life is tasty; where every breeze, is the caress of manifold indulgence.

– No Beer In Heaven
– A Case of Drug Addiction
– Based on a True Story