Oliver Benjamin
would have damaged…It might have destroyed my career.”
Sprout still stared intently at Yak, and slowly the image in her
memory and the one in her eye realigned, sharpened in focus. It was
remarkable what a wholesale removal of hair could do to disguise
even someone you thought you knew so well, once, so long ago. Like
a cat in a bath. She wailed and threw her hands to her face. The
transparent vessel left her grasp, arcing up and forwards. Glass
exploded over the face of her semi-brother and hot coffee poured into
his open eyes.
She spun running out the building blind with tears. Her aged
father tried to chase her, but she was lost to him yet again.
Yak had fallen backwards to the floor. Blood streamed down his
smooth cheeks and his vision burned like puddles on hot asphalt,
racing inwards towards the center.
When the sirens finally drew near, two sets of them pulled up to the
building. The medics arrived to take away Yak, and Detective Spada
arrived to take away Roy.
“We took out a cup of your coffee a few days ago,” he said as he
affixed the handcuffs, “Had it analyzed scientifically.”
Roy protested, “There’s nothing illegal.”
Everyone gathered around to hear the secret.
“Oh but there is,” Spada replied, casting his voice across the
whole room, “Your beans were impregnated with oil of Catha edulis.
Chat or qat or khat or whatever. It’s a Schedule I contraband drug. As
illegal as crack or heroin. And you’ve been selling it to hundreds of
people. That, Roy Makonnen, makes you a big time drug dealer. That
makes you a major felon.”
The Detective dragged Roy outside and into the police car,
deliberately banging his skull on the doorjamb. “Watch your head,”
he said, clearly happy with himself. How wonderful these little
moments, when an obvious evil could be so easily cast out of the
world.
“How can chat be so illegal?” Roy said, bewildered in the back of
the car. “It’s not dangerous. Some civilizations swear by it.”
“I don’t make the law,” Spada answered. “By the way, you were
wasting your time with that stuff. I researched it. Cathinone, the
chemical that makes chat so great breaks down after a few days and
is totally destroyed by heat. The stuff you were brewing was just
ordinary coffee with some astringent extra flavoring.”
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