Bangkok Noir

Halfhead Colin Cotterill

Samart Wichaiwong, a.k.a. Teacher Wong, awoke to find his legs off the mattress and flailing. It was as if his conscious self was fleeing his subconscious in panic. It wasn’t the first time Halfhead had chased him out of a dream. She was no man’s fantasy. She always reminded him of the he-’n-she act at the transvestite cabarets. The singer, tucked between the stage curtains, turns to the left and he’s a man, to the right and she’s a woman. Remarkable. Except Halfhead turns to the left and she’s a Gray’s Anatomy centerfold. One side of her skull is missing, sliced down the center like a severe homicidal parting. One red eye, half a nose, left-sided mouth with a sluggy-black tongue spilling out. But it was the drool that really repulsed him. The drool. Samart slapped away the memory of his nightmare and stumbled around his apartment in search of the remains of a bottle of Archa beer, a refugee from last night’s binge. He chugged it down. It didn’t taste any better than the scum in his mouth, but he needed nutrition. He changed out of his striped pajama bottom and into his white silks. His belly formed a third trimester mound inside the smock top. He swept back hair that hung like a hula skirt from his bald dome and tied it behind his neck with a rubber band. Finally, with all the artistry of a likay performer, he sat at the mirror and encircled his bulging eyes with a crimson bruise of lipstick. He checked the time, then took off his watch and placed it beside the DVD player. He walked untidily down to the ground floor, across the vacant lot, and unlocked the door to the humble bamboo hut in which he supposedly lived. He was early but he knew this could be a most significant day.

The two latte-brown uniformed officers were seated in front of the stage on an itchy grass mat staring at Samart, who sat cross-legged and apparently comatose on a flat cushion facing them. He was surrounded by porcelain animals, pickled reptiles gazing drowsily from glass containers, coloured vials and bottles and skulls of all sizes, animal and human. The hut’s curtain was drawn, and a small fish tank lamp illuminated Samart from below, casting a campfire shadow that bent all his features upward. His red, up-all-night eyes stared dully into space. It was an image that had impressed many but obviously wasn’t having a positive effect on today’s audience.

“How long are we supposed to sit here like mutton?” the Colonel asked. He was in his forties, sturdy, and his looks were as ugly as his manners.

“He’ll come out of it soon, sir,” his captain told him. Captain Pairot was a skinny version of the Colonel but with skin as loose as lettuce. Given the common Thai propensity to subscribe heavily to police corruption, he’d no doubt fill it out soon enough.

“His soul will become aware of our presence here on earth and leave the Otherworld to join us,” he said.

“Is that right? Take long, will it?”

“Could be half an hour.”

“Hmm, sorry, I can’t wait that long.”

The Colonel unholstered his pistol, aimed and shot the head off a plaster giraffe. The bullet passed through the bamboo wall and probably wounded one of the stray dogs that loitered in the lane outside. Teacher Wong didn’t appear to care, or flinch or blink. The Colonel leveled the weapon at Samart’s head and started counting down from five. The shaman was out of his trance at three-and-a-half.

“Ah, officers,” he said. “Have I kept you waiting long?”

“Yes,” grunted the Colonel, reholstering his gun.

“Teacher Wong,” said the Captain respectfully. “This is Colonel Thongfa, head of the Chiang Mai crime suppression division. I mentioned to you he’d be dropping by to see you today. He read about your successes: the missing girl, the drug stash. If he’s impressed, perhaps—”

“There’s no perhaps on the table here,” the Colonel cut in. “For some reason I can’t work out, we’ve been given a tub of money for mumbo jumbo psychic consultations. I want nothing to do with it, but I’m under orders. I’m not handing over a single baht unless I’m certain whoever we hire isn’t a crook. That could take some time, considering you’re all thieves and charlatans. Am I right?”

Samart nodded. “So I hear,” he said.

“So, it’s down to you to prove your worth.”

Samart smiled and adjusted the large yellow chrysanthemum tucked behind his ear.

“Then perhaps you’d be better looking elsewhere,” he said.

“What?”

“I’m not in need of money.”

“That’s not what I heard,” said the Colonel.

“And what have you heard, sir?”

“That you peck out a living selling lucky amulets. That you do the odd exorcism and purportedly put clients in touch with their departed loved ones in exchange for food. Doesn’t sound like much of a business to me. If you were any good, you’d be rolling in cash. Horse races. Casinos. You could take ’em all. Seems to me you’re small fry, Samart, and probably a fraud. You’ve managed to bamboozle Captain Pairot here and a couple of the other idiots at your local station, but I’m not that green. I’ll give you one shot. You’ve got five minutes to show me what you can do.”

“Then I won’t waste your time, Colonel.”

“Meaning what?”

“I don’t have any party tricks for you. I use my gifts for good, not for personal gain. I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”

The Colonel huffed, fingered his gun, got stiffly to his feet and walked to the door without another word. Captain Pairot shook his head and followed him. The policemen were outside the doorway, putting on their shoes, when Samart called out, “Oh, Pairot. I was sorry to hear about Constable Chalerm. He was a good man.”

Pairot looked back briefly at Samart before both officers disappeared into the thick vegetation that surrounded the cabin, seperating it from the new 7-Eleven next door. It was clear from his expression that he didn’t know what the shaman was talking about. Samart smiled and stretched his aching spine. Cross-legged was never his favourite position. He preferred flat on his back on a mattress. He needed a beer, but he knew the cops would be back sooner or later.

It was sooner.

No more than five minutes had passed before the two officers reappeared in the doorway.

“How did you know?” Colonel Thongfa asked.

“What’s that, Colonel?”

“The shooting.”

“Somebody got shot?”

Captain Pairot stepped into the room.

“It just this minute came over the police radio in the car. Officer Chalerm stopped a pickup truck out on the Lampang road. Couple of witnesses saw the driver pull a gun, shoot him at point blank range and flee the scene.”

“Metallic blue Toyota,” said Samart.

“That’s right.”

“It only happened half an hour ago,” said the Colonel, walking into the room without bothering with his shoes. “You couldn’t possibly...”

“Lucky guess, then,” smiled Samart.

The Archa beer was so cold it sent penguins in icy boots tap dancing over his brain. The mattress was still warm from the sweet smelling skin of Tip, the café singer — his love life, whenever he had money in his purse. And, today, with a five thousand baht advance from the cops, he was flush. A crate of beer. A takeaway papaya salad with sticky rice. An hour with Tip. This was, without question, living.

After today’s little performance, Samart had been put on probation as the psychic consultant for the Northern Police Division. The mind of some fool at the police ministry had obviously been turned by all the clairvoyant crime-solvers on cable and decided the Royal Thai Police Force should openly embrace the supernatural. Regional commanders were given a budget and a month to recruit a prophet. Now Samart was, for the unforeseeable future, officially their man in Chiang Mai.

It had all been achieved without a milligram of ability but with plenty of guile and sleight of hand. For twenty years it had been exactly as the Colonel had said. Loser Samart had scratched a living off people’s gullibility. He had all the potions, knew all the chants. But he could no more contact the beyond than he could thread a live baby python through his nostril and have it come out his mouth. (He’d seen it on TV and had attempted it himself during one drunken episode in his teens. He’d lost a tonsil in the process.) He’d faked every trick since. All the best-paying customers — those who watched where their money went — weren’t taken in by his act. Only the poor, desperate for any grasp of hope, believed in him. He’d been destined to live from hand to mouth for the rest of his worthless life, but then two strokes of good fortune lashed at his lazy buttocks.

His renaissance had begun with a missing girl. Her parents thought she’d been kidnapped, but Samart recognized her from her photo in Thai Rath. In fact she’d run away from Bangkok with her Western lover and was holed up in a single room at 103 Condominium. Samart had been called in to perform an exorcism on a haunted lift, and he’d seen the girl on the roof exercising her Shih Tzu. Teacher Wong did all the map divining and personal object caressing. He made a good show of it, and the sergeant at the Huay Kaew substation was duly impressed when they found the runaway girl exactly where Samart had predicted.

Thence followed his first meeting with Captain Pairot. The officer had come to him as a last resort. Pairot’s unit had raided a Tai Dum heroin plant and netted fifty kilograms of pure white. But during the day the dope had vanished from the police strongroom. The central anti-narcotics commander was flying up that afternoon to appear in photographs and pick up the haul. Sadly for Pairot, there would be nothing to show him. Samart was a gambler. He was one of a large group of reprobates in a conglomerate that bet on cockfights and English Premiership football games. One member of this ring of addicts was called Nimit, a constable at the Chang Pueak station to which Pairot was attached. Nimit was in debt up to his greying temples and wrinkled brow. He had, on one or two occasions, after the odd bottle of rice whisky, intimated that one day — yes, one day soon — he might just help himself to some of the contraband that passed through his station.

Samart took a gamble, as gamblers do. Perhaps this was the occasion upon which Nimit had lost his mind. Samart sat in the empty strongroom, breathed in the essence of the missing heroin and supposedly plucked a map reference from thin air. (He’d looked it up earlier.) It happened to be the home of Nimit, and the investigating officers found the stash buried in a plastic ice chest beneath his chicken coop. Samart was two for two and a minor celebrity in the local police community. He’d been given rewards for both finds, and it was evident that there was serious money to be made from the police if he could just keep his run of luck going. That’s when Colonel Thongfa heard about him.

Samart decided it wouldn’t hurt to give fate a leg up. Fortunately, there were those who knew the affairs of the police before the police themselves heard of them. These were the rescue foundations, sometimes referred to as the body snatchers. Through an impressive network of volunteers, short-wave radios and mobile phones, their members were invariably first at the scene of an accident or disaster, natural or otherwise. They were considered to be charities and were funded by donations, although it wasn’t unknown for the keen young men of the rescue missions to dip into the odd purse or ease the victim’s breathing by removing a gold necklace. It wasn’t unheard of for one foundation to engage in public fist fights with another to be first at the scene.

On that fateful bright March morning when Colonel Thongfa came to call, Samart had been connected to his shortwave radio via an earplug hidden in a large chrysanthemum. He’d been hoping to pick up a traffic accident, a small motorcycle prang with which to impress the officers. But luck had once more perched on his lap. A foundation volunteer had come across the scene of a police killing and was radioing for a rescue truck just as the Colonel and the Captain arrived in the hut. It was perfect timing. Samart’s immediate future was gilded, his next month’s food bill paid. With his belly full and his brain frozen, he lay back on the peach-perfume-scented mattress and let himself drift. And drift.

He was in the front seat of an old brown Austin A40. Until now he’d always been an observer of his nightmares, a voyeur. He could no sooner have participated than a viewer could step inside a TV and become acquainted with the soap stars. But here in the Austin he could smell the old leather of the upholstery. The semi-headed crone was sitting beside him in the driver’s seat. It wasn’t her best side. He was surprised to hear his thoughts come out through the mouth of his passenger-seat-self when he said, “What have I done to deserve you?”

“What?” she replied. Drool dribbled from her sluggy black tongue.

“I mean, this is a dream. Am I right? A dream? So why do other men get Lucy Liu in a Catholic high school uniform and I get... if you’ll excuse me... road kill?”

She was surprisingly unoffended by his slur.

“You need me, Samart.”

“Oh, yeah? And why’s that?”

“I’m your spirit guide.”

She put a skinny hand on his thigh, and even though he could barely feel it, he squirmed away across the seat.

“I can help you with your career,” she went on.

“I can pass information on from this side.”

“Really? Well, I happen to know from personal experience that all this spirit stuff is bullshit.”

“Then what do you think I am?” She leaned closer to him and he could smell some sort of decay, which had obviously been doused with perfume. Her hand moved further up his thigh.

“You’re a nightmare.”

“Thank you. And you could make me a complete one, Samart.”

“How?”

“Invoke me.”

“And how would I go about that, as if I couldn’t guess?”

Halfhead reached down and pulled both recliner levers, and their seats dropped to the horizontal. Samart clawed at the door but there was no handle. Halfhead rested a hand suddenly as heavy as guilt on his chest. What remained of her face hovered above his. Warm saliva dribbled from her lip as she spoke.

“You just whistle, Samart. Just whistle and I’ll do your bidding.”

“That’s all?”

“And this...”

She pressed her half mouth onto his complete one and snaked her gooey tongue between his lips.

He awoke retching with the taste of stale eel in his throat, the musky scent of rotting flesh in his nostrils. He hurried to the window and dispatched the entire evening’s supper into the hibiscus. Nothing would possess him to go back into that nightmare. Nothing. Or so he believed.

For the next month Samart’s attachment to the police rapidly came unstuck. It was an unmitigated disaster. He’d hoped to stretch his luck and the odds of chance to two, perhaps three months before they found him out. A premonition here or there gleaned from the body snatchers’ network might have bumped him up to four. A nice little nest egg, a retainer buoyed by the odd win bonus, some money put away for rainy days — perhaps even enough for the Amway dealership he’d dreamed of. They made serious money, those Amway reps. But even the averages had turned nasty on poor Samart.

The police had consulted him on eight cases. Bombed, the lot of them. He’d claimed to see the departed spirits of two children who turned up, not at all dead, eating ice cream in the truck of their estranged father. He’d given three grid references for criminal hideouts which turned out to be a temple, a fallow rice paddy and the Lampang governor’s summer house. He failed miserably at identifying which of two counter staff at a gold shop had lifted a four karat bracelet, and he picked out the wrong man three times in a lineup, even though all but one were police officers. It was a period of great anguish for the shyster shaman. He put it down to lack of sleep. She’d been there all the time, Halfhead the hag, in his naps and his daydreams, in his nights of floating like a corpse, half-submerged in shallow sleep. She’d been there waiting for her whistle. He’d vowed never to purse his lips again, but a visit from not-only-slightly insane Colonel Thongfa pushed him back into the nightmare world inhabited by the walking sliced.

“You know how many people I’ve killed?” the policeman asked. It was his opening remark, and it tripped off his tongue as innocently as “Have you had dinner yet?”

“Lots?” Samart offered.

He noticed the senior policeman’s hand reach for his pistol. Thongfa was leaning in the doorway. Not point blank range, but he had fifteen rounds, and even if he was an awful shot, one of them could surely splatter Samart over most of the back wall.

“More than lots, witchdoctor Wrong. And, you know? Most of them did nothing to deserve their fate. They didn’t make a fool of me. They didn’t break my face in front of my superiors in Bangkok. But I still shot ’em. You want to guess what I’d do to a little fat man with beer breath if he didn’t rediscover his supernatural bent in the next twenty-four hours? Go on, Teacher. Guess.”

Samart had a good imagination. He didn’t need a brochure. So he slept. Six bottles of Archa to the worse, he dived back into his nightmare and let supernature take its course.

“Are you sure it’s a good idea to have the press here?” Samart asked, turning to Captain Pairot. The policeman stepped back before the beer fumes could overpower him. Samart was already on his third bottle.

“I thought you’d appreciate the publicity.”

“Well, that’s just it, isn’t it? I won’t be getting any. Your colonel’s going to take the credit, as usual. Look at him strut.”

Samart and Pairot were on the second floor balcony of the police station. It overlooked the car park where Thongfa posed before a large flock of reporters and cameramen. A chain of drowsy monks passed by on the opposite side of the road, ignoring the yapping of an agnostic dog trapped behind a shop-front shutter. It was 6:00 a.m., and the early sun was glinting off the gold chedi atop Suthep Mountain. It had been the last vestige of the city’s charm. Now it was just another Gomorrah of coloured advertising hoardings held together by concrete. The crowing of cocks had been replaced by the clearing of throats and the hum of breakfast television. In the car park of the Chang Pueak station, the gnarly voice of Colonel Thongfa drowned it all out. He announced that he would be leading a team to apprehend northern Thailand’s most wanted man: drug kingpin Khun So. He had reliable information from police intelligence that the villain was staying overnight at a house on the Ping River. Once the compound was secure, the Colonel would allow the press inside to view the catch. Interviews would be acceptable.

“Police intelligence? That’s me, right?” Samart slurred.

“Will you relax?” Pairot said with a smile. “You’ll be getting more than your fair share once the rewards are divvied up. You should be flattered.”

“Because I do all the work and he gets the TV interviews?”

“No, because he trusts you at last.”

“Not a great leap of faith. All the tips I’ve given you for the last two months have been spot on. I’m on a roll. I’m hot stuff. He’s not the type to gamble unless he thinks I’m a sure thing. I’ve earned it.”

Samart wasn’t exaggerating. Three murders solved. A whole litany of robberies, rapes, riots and rip-offs amicably settled. It had reached the point at police headquarters where most detectives were running their cases by Teacher Wong before wasting their time with an investigation. He saved them a lot of paperwork, yet he was selective. He didn’t claim he was able to solve every mystery, even though he could. He didn’t want to look too good. It helped his credibility to claim the spirit line was down from time to time. It made his successes all the more remarkable.

This renaissance hadn’t come cheaply, of course. Halfhead was there with the answers whenever he needed them. She was a remarkable psychic informant, but he had to pay her in kind. She insisted on a good invoking from time to time. It wasn’t the type of thing a living soul could get used to. She was a corpse, after all. There were the flakings, the gas emissions, the joint creaks, the tinkle of fingernails and toenails raining onto the metal floor during great moments of passionate invocation. But even though it all felt unnervingly real, Samart was able to remind himself it was a dream. Just a miserable dip into the subconscious. When he came around, his revulsion at the liaisons in the back seat of the Austin was more than made up for by the superstatus he’d achieved in Chiang Mai. His picture was in magazines. His voice was on the radio. His fake amulets were selling for five thousand baht apiece, and he was well aware he’d soon be independent. He could rid himself of Halfhead and her disgusting wiles. He could assume an inscrutable cloak of mystery and make a living selling black magic memorabilia and Amway products. The future was looking rosy.

But then the flock of seagulls hit the jet engine.

With a company of media representatives established under the shade of a duck heel tree, Thongfa’s commandos scaled the walls of the compound like Special Olympic ninjas. Some made it to the top, unsure of what to do once there. Most made it halfway up the ropes and then slid back down, blowing into their palms to assuage the burning sensation. Some lost their grip completely and thudded into the bougainvilleas. Only one brave soul made it over the wall and into the compound. He unlatched the gate from the inside, and Thongfa and his men advanced along the gravel driveway, making enough noise to raise the dead.

Samart was alone in the front seat of the Austin A40. He had a beer bottle in his hand. Not knowing why he was there, and for want of something to do, he sipped at the drink. It was flat. No, not flat, tasteless. Totally without... texture. It was as if he were pouring merely the concept of beer into his mouth, without experiencing any of the pleasures. This should have been a dream, but it was different. He was real. Even if the beer was non-existentially awful, and the car interior was a set from a long-running season of nightmares, he had substance. Something had happened. He considered briefly that he might have been elevated to a higher spiritual plain — been awarded a karmic gold star by the gods. But, of course, that was unlikely. There were mornings he couldn’t even elevate himself out of bed.

The view outside the Austin was like traveling through country lanes at warp speed. It looked like a nice day. There was nobody in the driver’s seat and the steering wheel spun both clockwise and anticlockwise like a prop on a children’s carousel. There was a dead jasmine lei hanging forlornly from the rear-view mirror. Always bad luck to have anything dead in a motor vehicle. But as he was untangling it, the mirror shifted position and in the glass he saw the probably smiling face of Halfhead. There was something different about her. She seemed to have picked up another dimension since he’d last seen her. She was wearing a newly bloodied frock with a white lace collar. There was lipstick on her half lips.

“Something bad’s happened,” he said. His voice resonated unexpectedly around the interior of the car, vibrating the spring-headed basset hound on the back window ledge.

“This isn’t a dream anymore,” she said.

“You’re real now?”

“No.”

“Then?”

“You aren’t.”

“So, I’m...”

“Dead.”

Without provocation she reached forward and slapped his ear. It hurt.

“I felt that.”

“You’ll be feeling a lot worse.”

“What? Why?”

A genuine fear was rising from the rusty bed of the Austin and gnawing at his ankles. It was as if he’d driven over the carcass of Terror somewhere back on the road, and its entrails had wrapped themselves around the axles and were seeping in through the bolt holes. He wasn’t the driver, but he felt responsible for its mutilation.

“I’m having a very bad dream,” he said, and instantly knew he wasn’t.

“You’re about to,” she said, and all at once she was beside him behind the wheel. “A very bad dream from which you’ll never awaken. A nightmare that will stick to you like poison ivy.”

“I don’t...”

“Tsk! That stain’s going to be hard to get out. You should have soaked it straightaway. Men never get that concept.”

He had no idea what she was talking about until he followed her gaze to the large blood-framed hole in his lower chest. He hadn’t noticed it. The wound was like a centrifugal fun fair painting on the white canvas of his silk shirt.

“I am dead,” he said.

“It happens.”

“How?”

“Insane Colonel Thongfa. He’d just raided the house you informed him of. It belonged to one the many mistresses of somebody so important no news channel dared mention his name. And that unmentionable somebody just happened to be in bed beside her at the time. The Colonel barely had time to shoot you before he vanished from public life.”

“But...”

Samart was fussing with his chest wound, attempting to gather the edges of his shirt together to hide the offal.

“But you told me Khun So would be there,” he reminded her. “You said...”

“Sorry.”

“You knew whose house that was.”

She smiled, and her sluggy tongue unfurled to her Adam’s apple.

“But you’re my spirit guide,” he said, his voice several octaves above masculine.

She put her hand on his knee.

“You know?” she said. “I might have exaggerated about my role in your universe just a bit.”

“Then I don’t get it. What are you?”

“Just a regular old malevolent spirit. A nasty ghost with a chip on her shoulder.”

“Against me?”

“Yes.”

“What have I ever done to you?”

“Lottery numbers.”

“What about lottery numbers?”

“You made them up.”

“Of course I made them up.”

He started to laugh and his spleen slipped out onto his lap. He opened the glove box hoping to find something to patch the hole. It was annoying. He ripped the registration sticker off the windshield, but the gum no longer stuck. He threw it down in a rage.

“All this is because I gave you bum lottery numbers?”

“It certainly wasn’t the worst thing you did. You were lying to people for years about serious things. Pretending to talk to relatives on this side. Having the mourning ones hand over their valuables. Giving them false hope. You’ve pissed off a lot of folk, Samart. A lot of lost souls are dying to meet you. We have a little admiration society. We Buddhists may not have a heaven, Teacher Wong, but we have a nice selection of hells. We’re on our way to one I think you’ll enjoy.”

The scene beyond the windows had passed quickly through purple dusk to a mauve-black night. The only lights beside the road came from bushes burning. The car began to slow and figures stepped out from behind the bonfires. It occurred to Samart that whoever researched for the Living Dead movies had done a field trip to purgatory because zombies really did look like that. Some of them made Halfhead seem positively pretty. They laboured painfully toward the car as it rolled to a stop.

“Look,” Samart said, holding back his panic, “I want to lodge an appeal. I get sent to hell because I got the lottery numbers wrong? That’s ridiculous, and it’s not fair. I was just starting to make something of myself.”

“Based on lies, Samart. As always. Do you really think it doesn’t matter? People came to you out of desperation. They wanted help. My husband was a security guard. He got laid off during the recession. He was depressed. He turned to drink. Our poor but happy life was disintegrating. My neighbour told me you had a gift. I came to you and...”

“I know you?”

“You probably don’t remember me. I’ve let myself go a bit since then. I told you about our problem. I gave you a sack of rice and my mother’s ring and you gave me the lottery numbers. I asked if you were sure. You were confident. You said you’d seen the numbers in a dream, but you couldn’t be certain what order they would appear in. I believed in you. I put all the savings I’d hidden away from my husband, sold our fruit handcart, borrowed money from friends and bought every ticket — every combination of those numbers. Every ticket I could find from one side of the city to the other. And the lottery numbers were announced, and not one of your numbers came up. Not one, Samart. Now what are the odds of that? There should be a prize for having no numbers, don’t you think?”

“It’s a gamble. You can’t blame—”

He was interrupted by the clawing of blackened fingernails against the windows. To his horror, Halfhead started to wind down the glass.

“Well, I do,” she said. “You gave me your word and I believed you. My husband was sober when I told him I’d lost all our money. He smiled and walked out. When he came back a few hours later with the machete, he was drunk. I don’t know where he’d found the booze. We had no cash. He’s a strong man. It only took one blow to do this. Impressive, isn’t it? Split down the middle like a coconut. I didn’t feel a thing. Not until I got here. Then the hurt and resentment began.”

“I didn’t...”

“Yes, you did. And you deserve whatever’s coming to you. You’ll have an awful time here, Samart. My job’s done. I’ll eventually move on to somewhere with better décor, but you’ve accrued so much bad debt, you’ll be here for a very long time. You’ll have an age to meet all those spirits you claimed to be talking to when you were back there. And you’d be surprised how many of us gals are still in need of a good invoking from time to time. You’re going to have your work cut out for you, Teacher Wong.”

Icy hands reached in through the window and caressed the petrified shaman, lifted his shirt, pinched at his soft flesh. His eyes were red even without the benefit of makeup. His heart was full and heavy as lard and sliding gradually down to the hole in his front. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he imagined his future. A miserable future without end. And as if all that weren’t bad enough... the beer was crap.