Dungeon of Zero

Short story 12: Secret spy (Part 1)

A tough cookie like myself always begins his day with a nice cup of coffee. For us who dwelled in the shadows, making our living as spies, there was nothing better than taking up a cup of strong coffee to prevent our heads from feeling sleepy.

Pumping ourselves full of coffee and drugs was the way of the world-weary. I mixed a drop of the medicine into my coffee and drank it down. This is my daily routine.

I’d never been sure of what was in those drugs. I took them from a mail-order catalog. But they were super expensive, so I was convinced they were beneficial to my health.

I took the cup and sipped it.

“Bleh! So bitter…”

This strong flavor was actually what banished sleepiness. Probably. That wasn’t written anywhere in the books, though. Coffee was bitter and gross and seriously tasted like mud, which triggered my gag reflex and made drowsiness my second priority.

It didn’t taste anything like how they describe it in the spy novels. They wrote that black coffee was delicious or