I presume the fancy of the skull, of letting fall a bullet through the skull’s eye–was suggested to Kidd by the piratical flag. No doubt he felt a kind of poetical consistency in recovering his money through this ominous insignium.

The story goes thus: the narrator visits a friend who has discovered an unusual type of beetle. Through a convoluted plot device, the beetle leads to a pirate treasure map printed in disappearing ink and coded into a cipher. Much of the story involves decoding the cipher, climbing a tree, dropping the beetle through a skull’s eye socket, and pacing off steps according to the map. Ultimately a pirate’s treasure chest is discovered. Apparently the reading public at the time was ga-ga over cryptography and so-called “secret writing.” In fact, it’s said that Poe helped popularize those themes. In any event, there is something very Holmesian about this story.

The full story is available here.

This is presented as a shooter, but how you drink it is up to you. Combine the ingredients in a tall shot glass or (as I did) in a stolen port glass. Let the gold settle at the bottom, representing the buried treasure in Poe’s tale. If you’re making one for a guest, present it with a “yo-ho-ho.”

This is a visually appealing and Poe-evocative drink that packs a punch. But I wouldn’t say it’s especially delicious. Goldschlager is essentially cinnamon Schnapps, which may or may not bring back horrible memories from high school. Still, the cloying taste of the Goldschlager is somewhat attenuated by the tequila, resulting in a tolerable, warming drink that can be shot (to get it over with) or sipped by the fireplace as you labor over a cryptogram. I opted for the latter.

One morning, in cool blood, I slipped a noose about [the cat’s] neck and hung it to the limb of a tree;—hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart;—hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offence;—hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin—a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it—if such a thing were possible—even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God.

Still, it’s a spellbinding tale, with an air of Doom hanging over it, as well as murders, subterranean crypts, and madness. It even offers a bit of a moral, to wit: If you’re going to wall up a body, check for strays before mortaring in that final brick.

The fact that the narrator suffers from alcoholism makes it a bit awkward to base a drink on the story. And yet, no collection based on Poe’s tales can ignore this masterful narrative.

The full story is available here.

Rinse a coupe glass with absinthe. Note that a little absinthe goes a long way; this is only a rinse. Now, pour the Kahlua, espresso, and charcoal into a cocktail shaker with ice, and shake to chill. Strain into the prepared coupe glass, and top with the crumbled Kit-Kat bar.

This is not a drink for everyone. You have to like strong flavors. The espresso and Kahlua go together pretty well, though the taste is quite intense. The addition of the absinthe adds an unusual twist, which may not be to every person’s taste. The Kit-Kat bar serves as a sweet, chunky chaser that helps you to forget about the odd drink you just downed.

But now a new horror presented itself, and one indeed sufficient to startle the strongest nerves. My eyes, from the cruel pressure of the machine, were absolutely starting from their sockets. While I was thinking how I should possibly manage without them, one actually tumbled out of my head, and, rolling down the steep side of the steeple, lodged in the rain gutter which ran along the eaves of the main building. The loss of the eye was not so much as the insolent air of independence and contempt with which it regarded me after it was out. There it lay in the gutter just under my nose, and the airs it gave itself would have been ridiculous had they not been disgusting. Such a winking and blinking were never before seen.

The overwrought prose huffs and puffs melodramatically over trifles. “If! Distressing monosyllable! what a world of mystery, and meaning, and doubt, and uncertainty is there involved in thy two letters!”

But of course Poe is satirizing a form of writing popular at the time–a style Wikipedia calls the “Gothic Sensation Tale.” 

At the climax of the story the narrator (an ostentatiously dressed woman named Signora Psyche Zenobia, or perhaps Suky Snobbs) loses her eyeballs (!) in an absurdly improbable accident involving the minute hand of a huge clock in a church belfry. First one eyeball pops out and falls into the roof’s rain gutter. And then the other. And then they stare back at her.

And of course it is these two ocular orbs that we’re going to evoke with our cocktail.

The full story is here.

So, having been defeated in the lychee department, I naturally turned to radishes. These have the advantage of roughly sharing the size and shape of an eyeball, plus their root resembles an optic nerve, and on top of all this the red skin can be peeled to reveal a bloody-white eyeball. It’s as if the humble radish was born to stand in for an eyeball. I mean, what else is it going to do??

For the drink itself, I wanted something garish and colorful like Signora Psyche Zenobia, who informs us that she has a “commanding” appearance. Quoth she:  “On the memorable occasion of which I speak I was habited in a crimson satin dress, with a sky-blue Arabian mantelet. And the dress had trimmings of green agraffas, and seven graceful flounces of the orange-colored auricula.” I zeroed in on her sky-blue Arabian mantelet which, I am told, is a “woman’s short, loose sleeveless cloak or shawl.” And it seemed to me that blue curacao would evoke “sky-bue” admirably. So, we’re going to make what amounts to a Blue Hawaii, with a double-eyeball garnish.

First, prepare your eyes! Use a potato peeler or some similar contraption to peel off most of the red skin from two radishes. Leave just enough red skin behind so as to resemble bloody veins and such. Then use a small melon baller or similar Inquisition-worthy torture device to hollow out the front of each radish. Put a dab of jam into each radish hole, followed by a blueberry. Congratulations–you’ve just made two eyes. Stick them on a long toothpick.

Now, mix the vodka, blue curacao, and pineapple juice with ice in a mixing glass, and strain into a rocks glass with fresh ice. Garnish with eyeballs. If you’ve done this right, they will regard you with an “insolent air of independence and contempt.”