Derek's hands wouldn't stop shaking.
He tried to ease in to the left turning lane, but his mind was spinning with the chaos that only comes with true chemical dependency. He extended a tremulous hand forward to turn on his blinker. His forearms spasmed with the restless nerve-chaos of withdrawal, and the cigarette between his fore and middle fingers dropped to the dilapidated floormat of his old Toyota. It was only one of a hundred instances of cigarette burns in the cloth interior as a result of his addiction, and he cursed softly, stamping it out with the heel of his shoe. He was too busy and occupied to worry about the state of his vehicle. He was within a half mile of re-upping, and that's all that really mattered at this juncture.
Derek was a pillhead. He'd tried every pill under the sun.
The only variations he saw nowadays were different forms of ecstasy, all with different symbols carved on the fronts of them (the ones with the @ on them were the best). He'd popped every anti-depressant, every anti-anxiety medication, every upper and downer and sider and diagonaler, and in every possible combination that anyone could think of. He could tell what kind of buzz he would get if you blindfolded him and he had to figure out what kind of pill he was swallowing by the way it went down his throat.
He had a black book, with hundreds of different names in five different zip codes around town. He knew who had prescriptions for what drugs, when they cashed their prescriptions in at certain times during certain days, and when he could call them to buy part of their stack. Jerry's xanaxes came in on the seventeenth, and he always picked them up at the Walgreens on the corner of Fifth and Cherry between two and three in the afternoon. Darius got his valiums on the twenty ninth at the walk-in clinic by the Burger King on Union after he finished work at five thirty five. It was a science --- to stay properly addicted, that was.
His brain felt like someone had stabbed him in the back of the head with a knife. His skull rattled when an eighteen wheeler sped past him as he waited to turn. Of course there would be traffic here on his most desperate night of the week.
Derek called it "nails in the brain." It was phase four of five in his withdrawal cycle. Ever since Rimona kicked him out of their section eight housing project by the river, he'd turned to his good buddies oxyconton and xanax and valium. For the tougher days, kalizopan gave him a shoulder to cry on. When he couldn't sleep, he wasn't beyond snorting his pills to get them through his liver faster.
It was a cycle he knew well --- for the past four or five years, actually. Sometimes the difference between a great buzz and a good buzz was a matter of how fast you could get the magic in your system before withdrawal pains kicked in. He couldn't let his body get to phase five. Phase five was unbearable.
The last car whizzed past before the light turned red ahead, and Derek turned in to the trailer park. His eyes were convulsing in their sockets and his knee shook when he depressed his foot in to the accelerator.
He'd been referred to this guy because his last drug dealer grew a conscience out of fucking nowhere. He hadn't asked the guy to have a moral epiphany when Derek showed up at his doorstep with a wad of hundred dollar bills and the desperate, frantic stare of a true burnout.
"I can't sell you anymore man, you gonna die. You gotta slow down. You can't be taking fourbars by the handful or your heart is gonna stop. When you swallow too many and drop dead in a ditch somewhere, the cops are gonna look for who sold you them pills."
Derek snorted and pulled past the first stop sign. That's how he'd been given the phone number to contact "Edder," and that's how he found himself cruising through a low income housing trailor park at two in the morning.
He'd started with weed like any other champion addict when he was a teenager. He'd done well in school, but he couldn't find himself getting through class without being high. It piqued his curiosity, caused him to think in different ways than he normally would, and for the most part, he had a blast. Then, he got to college, and he couldn't do anything in the morning before he smoked. Seven semesters later, Derek couldn't function in normal society without doping himself in to some form of chemically induced stupor.
He went to work and did an amazing job sometimes, wired on uppers. His boss gave him amazing performance reviews. The next week, his dealer would be out of uppers, and so he had to turn to the pain pills. Sometimes he would get to feeling so good at work, his muscles felt like they were liquid sex, flowing through his bloodstream until he was in a perfect zone of contentment ---- for about three hours. Then, it was back to phase one. He usually rolled his pill cocktails and took them at about three thirty, so by the time withdrawal kicked in, he was in the parking garage at his steering wheel. People at work noticed he was edgy sometimes, but they'd never seen him withdraw. In truth, he was a functioning addict, and a chameleon when it came to appearing to others as a normal man without a care in the world.
He had rid himself of an expensive car, a nice apartment, and most forms of insurance. For every two dollars that he reduced his monthly bills by, he could buy an extra pill. Rimona knew what he was doing when he filed for government housing. She moved out a month after they moved in. She also told him she was thankful to God that they'd never had a kid.
Straight through, left, right, left, straight through, right.
That was the four-way stop sequence that he'd been given to get to Edder's trailor. He was surprised for a moment that he'd remembered it so flawlessly in his traumatic state, but of course, his memory was perfect when he needed to give his brain what it desired. The pathway to the buzz had almost been traversed. He went straight through the next four way and right at the last. Edder's Honda looked to be in worse shape than Derek's Toyota, and as he opened his rickety door and slammed it behind him to trudge up the muddy walkway, he spotted flashing blue lights on the far corner of the trailer park. Not good.
The wave of anxiety, just the fact that the pigs were in close proximity to his most important deal of the week, caused phase five to kick in full throttle. Tears began to stream down his cheeks as the pangs of full-scale withdrawal ripped through his muscles and nerve endings.
He sputtered in a fit of coughing before turning around to go back to his car. When he had no pills, there was one fix-all solution to phase five, even if it was a temporary one. He reached in to his glovebox and pulled out a bottle of Robitussin DM, and three seconds later, he was jerking the shoestring out of the rivets of his left boot to tie around the cap.
He spun the bottle hard in a full circle for a good few minutes until the maltodextrin had separated from the codeine at the bottom of the container. He ripped the lid off and downed the entire thing in a few swallows. Normally, he cautioned people against this feat, as most of them ended up wigging out in a corner in a fetal position. On the street, they called it "Robo-Tripping," but for him, it was a way to dumb down the pains in his head and limbs until he could get his fix.
He struggled, but he finally made it to the front door. This was the most awkward and difficult part of re-upping for any true addict. Unfounded connections with a new dealer could set even the greatest of chemical dependents on edge. He wiped the tears from his eyes, sucked up the foul soup in his sinuses, and took a deep breath. Then, he knocked.
Edder opened the door just as Derek was spitting his tussin-loogie in to the bushes. He frowned.
"Still got those Benjamins on ya?" Edder said.
Derek reached in to his back pocket and fanned out five hundred-dollar bills. He always let his money do the talking for him. When drug dealers saw Derek, they knew he meant money, and he never asked to be fronted. Not once. It was bad business for someone who depended on the wares of societal rejects.
He sat down on the dirty couch that he assumed used to be yellow --- now, it was a brilliant mix of pea soup and puce. Edder passed him a tall, orange plastic bong that looked as if it had never been used. He knew it had, and wondered if Edder practiced the same level of cleanliness when it came to his toilet. Derek decided it would be better to piss outside when he was finished here.
"Here man, gotta go get my bags from the back. Just got in a hundred Pergosets and some oxies. What you feeling?" Edder asked.
Derek held his lighter to the bowl and ingested a formidable hit. The Tussin-bomb he'd downed a few minutes ago was starting to dull the twitching of his eyeballs. Now, the marijuana went straight to his lungs, to his center, at the source of his muscular turmoil, and he released his pain and inhibition in a large cloud of smoke, coughing in a slight fit before being able to respond.
"Pergs aren't strong enough, and I only want the oxies if they're six point fives. Any dosage less than that, and I might as well be swallowing sugar caplets."
Edder swiped the bong off the table and took in the remaining smoke before blowing it out effortlessly, then he smiled. Half of his teeth were black, and half were missing. The most obvious sign of meth usage.
"I got some new shit that you never heard of before, boy. Didn't wanna tell ya, cuz Chad says you got a bit of a problem and might be dead soon. I don't give two shits, since you got the money. I can't tell you where they came from, so don't ask, but they'll rip you a new buzz that you ain't ever had before, I guaran-damn-tee you. They're twenty bucks a pop. Five hundred gets you thirty. You want 'em?" Edder appeared as if this deal was already in the bag.
"I can't just take one pill, and I don't want to spend my whole wad if I don't know if they're good or not. I'll need to mix them with some loritabs, if you have any." Perhaps a sad statement, but as Derek heard it coming from his own mouth, it sounded worse.
"Heh. Trust me boy. You think pain pills are gonna make you feel good? You ain't seen shit. I'll give you one as a tester."
Edder reached in to his pocket and dropped a solitary caplet on the grubby, chipped cofee table.
It had one dividing line through it, and no serial number or symbol. Half of the pill was black, and half of it was red. Definitely not from a pharmaceutical company --- they were superstitious about those colorings, and the FDA didn't approve of black or red pills in the first place. That meant a chemist had concocted them somewhere in an underground lab for the sole purpose of fucking people up, and so the potential for a good buzz was certainly there. Derek hesitated, but then he reached forward, crushed the pill between his back molars, and then swallowed the mixture of saliva and pharmo-dust. Usually, he only licked the time-release coating off the surface and ingested them, but when he needed a quick fix, he crushed them up and swallowed them before-hand. Not directly in to the bloodstream like with a syringe, but still faster than the traditional route.
"Let me be alone for about twenty minutes. I'll let you know shortly." Derek closed his eyes, and Edder went back in to his bedroom.
The Wizard of Oz was coming on ABC, and Derek got to the point where Dorothy met up with Professor Marvel before he started feeling it. He couldn't watch Dorothy stare in to the crystal ball anymore. He felt amazing.
It kicked in slowly at first, tickling his senses in to a blissful euphoria, but within five minutes, he was blazing on the path of glory in his own mind. It was an upper, it was a downer, and it was everything else, all in one. He felt optimistic about the future as the drug induced his brain in to a positive line of thinking. He couldn't wait to get home and pet his cat. His cat was so soft when he was on pills. Derek would give him some Fancy Feast. His cat hadn't deserted him like that bitch Rimona. It deserved wet food tonight.
Edder came in from the back room and Derek raised his head slowly, opening his eyes. The room was a starburst of electric color and sensation, and although he couldn't trust his eyes, he didn't WANT to trust them. He wanted to trust the orgasmic feeling of his mind and body, to shell out his money as fast as possible and take these home. Monday would be a good day at work. When he spoke, his voice was lighthearted, soft and jovial.
"Forget the loristats. Five hundred for thirty. Here you go. Thanks so much man, you're great. I'll come back to see you next weekend."
Derek dropped his money on the table and rose to open the front door, and he almost forgot about Edder as quickly as he'd paid him. He'd be back, of course. Edder was his new best friend, but he had business to attend to. The business of speed rolling, to be exact.
"Hey man, you be careful now, y'hear? Don't be takin' more than a couple of those at a time. One is enough, two is overkill, and three will bring things to your head that you won't want to see. Don't be withdrawin' from more than one at a time. The guy that gave these to me is real obscure, not the greatest fellow in the world. Saw a guy's chest cave in, his heart was pumping so fast, right in the dude's living room. I'm not warning ya cuz I think yer a pussy, but because I don't wanna see ya get hurt if you plan on comin' back. You kill yourself cuz you couldn't handle a buzz, and I'm gonna be fuckin' pissed, you get me boy?"
Derek opened his mouth to respond with his usual rebuttal of "I've been doing this a long time, don't worry about me, I'll be back to get more guaranteed," but the sound of police sirens and squealing tires drowned out his voice instantly.
They were on Edder within a few seconds of screaming "get the fuck down," and his hands were cuffed just as Derek bounded across the front lawn in one incredibly graceful leap. His skin was vibrant and alive with the rush of chilly night air against it, and he quietly thanked the gods that both cops were obese and slow to chase. The first soon gave up his pursuit, opting instead to stash Edder unceremoniously in the back of his police cruiser before burning out of the driveway and speeding along the side street that was parallel to Derek's foot route through the underbrush. The second tripped over a fallen tree at the edge of the forest, and by the time he was on his feet again, Derek's outline in the skeletal grouping of bare trees had disappeared.
Derek surged forward, pumping his legs furiously until the nettles and dry cracked wood of winter flora were raking at his face with increasing frequency. He normally never rolled on hallucinogens or drugs that sped him up, but physically, he felt like a one man army. Whatever these pills were, they delivered all of the positives that he'd experienced in his lifetime of addiction, and although he knew withdrawal would be a pain, he was already formulating a plan to keep himself permanently doped up on black and red heaven. He had to find Edder's supplier.
He was in the sizable patch of woods between the trailer park and the next subdivision a few blocks over, and if he emerged at the cul de sac in the rear of the neighborhood, he would be home free. There was a solitary vehicle parked in the turnout, but it didn't seem to be running and the lights weren't on. He had to take his chances. Derek reached in to his rear left pocket to feel the small bag that he'd paid more than two months rent for. It was still there.
It was fourteen degrees outside, but to Derek, it felt like seventy and partly cloudy. He pulled out the bag and took three more caplets. He swallowed them dry just as the hood track lights on the sedan came on and the engine roared to life. A disguised cruiser ---- obviously called in to this area by dispatch to cut off his routes of escape. Derek cursed loudly, but fleeing captivity at this point was out of the question. He was a proud member of the grid.
Despite the unpleasantness of the sensation, Derek had resorted to specific tactics of espionage before to sneak his pills in to the overnight drunk tank, and as he gripped the bag and carefully maneuvered it through his fly to tuck under his testes, the undercover police officer was on him only moments later. Derek's spot was perfect. The cop wouldn't find his pills, and although he'd fled from them, he'd be charged with a misdemeanor and released at around nine tomorrow morning after being reprimanded by the judge for spending time at a drug dealer's house and running on foot from armed law enforcement. They couldn't prove he'd purchased anything, and so he kept his mouth shut as the cop read him his rights.
The back of the police interceptor was oddly comforting. The other three pills he'd taken kicked in when they were about a mile from the justice center, and he honestly felt as if he could break his handcuffs and strangle the cop to death if he wanted. He didn't want to. He only wanted to sit, to walk in to the burnout tank with all the other Friday night fuck-ups and enjoy his buzz. Hopefully he could find a corner seat on the cold stone bench and use his jacket as a pillow. It was a routine he'd repeated before, as much as his withdrawal process. Nights in the burnout tank with phase five withdrawal pains were among his most desperate moments in life.
As they booked him, Derek reached under his crotch and drew a few snickers from those who'd been arrested for driving under the influence and domestic battery. The bag was still there, secure. In five minutes, he would be in the tank with the others. He had to find a way to take a few more without anyone noticing. He did it in three hour meetings in the conference room at work with dozens of co-workers around him all the time. Derek wasn't worried. As the correctional officer took the handoff from his arresting deputy, he managed to sneak two more upon arrival in the tank, before anyone could place him under scrutiny.
Because he was attuned to his body and its receptiveness to chemical substances, he knew the first pill was about to wear off. He had found the only remaining corner seat among the hobos and addicts and woman beaters. At four in the morning, he was lucky to have done so. Some crackheads suffered from vertigo so badly that they were forced to sleep on their back on the stone floor as they twitched and throbbed in the dimly lit hellhole. Derek pitied them. No amount of Robo-Tripping could alleviate their suffering.
He would be out of jail in five hours, and he had a few days worth of supply to keep him going. There had been worse nights, but as he felt the first wave that he'd experienced with Dorothy and Toto begin to evaporate, he considered Edder's warning. Better to replace it now, or to wait until the three from the cul de sac wore off? He decided to wait. A newcomer sat down a few feet away, freshly booked and fingerprinted. He was a reasonably well kept man, dressed in business attire, with his arms crossed over his chest. His voice was smooth and collected.
"Having a good night?" He smirked.
"Better than most of these assholes. My drug dealer just got arrested. I think I'll probably pass out soon." Derek's voice was shaky.
"Edder got away. They found the fat pigs who arrested him all carved up." The man spoke of Derek's source with a hint of familiarity.
"I know why. He has these pills --- sold me some before they picked him up, actually. I ran and still ended up here. They didn't find my stash though. You wanna try one? Maybe you'll know who still has them." Derek found himself staring at the man's multi-faceted tie, the intricacies and patterns of its design appealing to his buzz-induced curiosity.
"No thank you. I don't do drugs. How many did you take, exactly?" He stared at Derek inquisitively.
"A few. Let me ask you something --- this might sound weird and I'm a little fucked up, but I'm curious. If you don't party, why are you here, man?" Derek was smirking now.
He was peaking: a titan on the crown of Olympus, the corpse of Zeus under his foot. The peak was the real rush, when you felt smooth and got talkative. He was glad he had someone to shoot the shit with, rather than spending the twenty minute stretch inside his own head.
The man loosened his tie.
"I came here of my own accord. It's a pity, Derek. Edder listened to me. You went too far. You could have been one of us like him, but you're about to hit phase six."
The man frowned before he rose to his feet, clasping his hands around the iron bars of the cell window. Derek tried to gasp, but there was no air for it. The man casually bent the iron bars aside before leaping through the open chasm to freedom, where he bent them right back in to their former positions.
"Nice trick, Professor Marvel, but no one takes pills like me. You're a hallucination. Phase six doesn't fucking exist for me. I think I'd know. I've been through phase five at least a hundred times. Go back to Oz." Derek sighed and closed his eyes. He couldn't focus, so he re-opened them.
He heard heartbeats. Some pumped quickly, with the cadence of crack cocaine to march to. Some were slower, more rhythmic --- the consistent pulse of a body on depressants. Derek stared at a man on the floor with a dozen track marks down both forearms. He'd stuck himself in every possibly nook and cranny. The movement of blood through his veins pounded in Derek's forehead like a persistent gavel.
The vein in his neck pulsated incessantly with the flow of blood under grizzled, unshaved skin. It was beating too fast for a man who lay quietly awaiting his sentencing from the county. The hobo was wired on something, and his blood flowed with the intensity of a raging river, when it should have flowed like a small brook in the dead of lazy summer heat. What would it taste like?
Derek blinked, and although he knew his mind had a tendency to indulge in sporadic thinking under the influence of drugs, he'd never found himself contemplating the thought of drinking blood. It had been a terribly real and strong whim, popping in to his head as effortlessly and naturally as the urge to take more red and black caplets. So he did. Five more. He chewed them like the first.
Two hours later, the sun was beginning to crest over the horizon, peering through the small rectangular window in the multi-tenant jail cell. Rays of morning sunshine licked across the middle of the floor, stirring alcoholic and burnout alike from a restless and painful slumber.
Derek's hands had stopped shaking.
The awaking masses of drunk tank zombies stirred. Some would continue to dry heave, their eyelids flickering rapidly as their brains leapt from the proverbial green grass of unconscious sleep, across the fence, to the burnt and smoldering field of vicious hangovers. Some watched their peers hypnotically until they eventually turned their attention to the corner. To the motionless young guy who had surely overdosed. There was always one every weekend.
Derek drained the first crack addict at around five thirty in the morning. The conscious citizens of the city's darker half gathered in the furthest corner as he fed on the unconscious burnouts. They survived by order of preference, as moving addicts were not the easiest of prey for Derek in his blood-craze.
Sated with blood, thirty minutes later, Derek's heart suffered its final moments of withdrawal before it exploded out of his chest and dropped with a splat a few feet away from his body.
The survivors watched his heart beat on the floor for four minutes before they stole his wallet.
And a free bag of pills.
Really cool, although I saw the ending coming.
Thanks!
I thoroughly enjoyed that. Really well written, with an informed approach. Well done sir!
I liked it, however I'd rewrite Edder's speaking parts. It was a good attempt at an uncultured dialect, but just didn't come out quite right.
This is really good :)
whatup edgy drug stories. gimme a break.
also professor marvel? you mean the wizard?
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