Fiend (14 page)

Maybe get off on that sweet pussy first, one of them says.

I’ll fucking kill—

The lumberjack cracks Jared in the face. He falls.

I tell myself it’s only scante and we can get more and it’s not even a question of what to do and maybe they’ll kill us afterward but there’s no other play.

It’s in the car.

American Hero cracks, the big one says.

In the car, I say again.

Well, let’s just see about that, he says.

He lets go of KK.

I yell for her to run.

She doesn’t.

All of them laugh.

I need Type to do something, to get one of their guns, to get all Hulk like he did to the little girl with umbrella socks. I need a miracle. Mesh Cap pushes me over to Type’s Civic and I’m thinking about running, just fucking taking off, and maybe I’d be able to make it into the woods and from there I could survive, find shelter, steal a car, get myself back to West Seventh, maybe find some baseheads still smoking, and it could be okay, me alone, me surviving. I’m at the car. He tells me to open the door. I tell him it’s in the back. He tells me to open the back door then.

Keep your fucking hands up. See them drop for one second, I’ll kill the girl, let you watch, then kill you.

I open the door.

I’ve stashed the bin on the far side of the backseat. I have my hands raised above my head. He tells me to get the shit. I crawl into the car. I push my hands against the ceiling. I’m sitting on something hard and then I realize it’s the pipe.

Going to grab it, I say.

Grab it, then.

I lift the bin onto my lap. I’m about to start my way back out of the car when I think about the pipe that’s practically wedged between my ass cheeks right now. I maneuver my weight so it’s perfectly aligned. I squeeze with everything I’ve got. I’m praying that the pipe stays put and doesn’t fall and it’s not much, but a triple-blown stem could puncture a jugular and has to be better than nothing.

I drop the Tupperware at his feet.

I step out of the car, keeping my clenched ass out of his view.

He knocks off the lid with the barrel of the shotgun. He says, Holy fucking A.

He bends over, taking out a scoop. He lets the shards slip through his fingers.

I stare over at Typewriter. Then at the Albino. And then he’s exploding out from his knees and has his hands on the fat guy’s shotgun and then I see Type standing and I’m yelling no, no, because we could have found another way and I reach to my ass and grab the pipe and it’s all so fast, me smashing its end on the door of the Civic, Mesh Cap realizing what the fuck is happening, me lunging at his neck, me making contact, the pipe plunging into flesh, and then I’m on top of him and I hear gunshots and I know it’s KK and I know I can’t live without her and I’m thrashing, the pipe just a nub sticking from the dude’s trachea. I grab the gun and sprint over and it’s a full-on gunfight. I’m yelling a primal fucking scream and firing rounds into the lumberjack. Then the short guy turns and points but I’m quicker, my slug ripping through his skull.

I’ll kill every last one of them.

The motherfuckers who took her away.

I’m firing and firing and there’s no more movement and somebody’s calling my name and I’m standing over Bowling-Ball Face and I’m crying and there’s a small gurgle of blood bubbling from his throat and I pull the trigger again. And again. And again.

Chase.

Chase.

Somebody touches my shoulder and I spin around with the shotgun and am about to shoot and it’s KK and she’s covered in blood and I stop, just fucking crumple at her feet. She’s telling me it’s okay. It’s over. She rubs my hair. She tells me I did good. I can’t breathe because I thought she was dead and because I’m a murderer of humans.

I hear Typewriter. This makes me cry even harder. Then I hear Jared and he says, He’s gone. I look up from the dirt. KK pulls my face to her bare chest. She tells me not to look. I’m bawling. I fight against her hands. I see the body of the Albino. Brains spew from the back of his skull. She tells me we’re safe—shh, we’re safe, you done good, baby, you done good.

KK’s with me. It’s just us in the cabin. She’s wrapped me in a sleeping bag. I have no idea where my clothes are. Typewriter and Jared are out burning the bodies. They’d tried to shield me from this conversation, but I heard them argue about what to do. Somebody said burying them wasn’t safe, they might come back. They talked about burning them and the smell and the sight and this maybe attracting the walking dead and finally they decided it was the lesser of two evils.

I guess I’m not doing well.

There’s a pressure behind my eyes, kind of like I’m being skull-fucked.

I remember shooting enough scante to kill an elephant. They just sat there watching me.

People just keep patting me on the back. Telling me I’ve done good.

I sit on the couch covered in the Albino’s down bag. KK cleans up the mess those stupid fucking Canucks made searching the place. I just keep seeing the neck of the tall one give way, keep feeling the glass stem going deeper and deeper.

You did what you had to do, KK says.

I guess I must be talking.

I’ve never been so spun.

I keep seeing the Albino’s bloodied face. Then it exploding. And I’m standing over the short motherfucker unloading round after round.

I’m still crying.

KK’s at my side. She shakes out a few pills from one of the bottles I stole from Walgreens. She tells me to open up. I do. They taste like aspirin. My mother is at my side and I have a fever and she’s telling me to swallow them, not to chew them, but I can’t, the little disks getting caught in my throat, me gagging, me crying, me just chewing them.

I mumble, Mommy, I can’t.

Yes, you can. Take a drink now.

KK hands me a beer.

I want to tell her that I can’t drink beer, that I’m a little boy.

I know you are, she says.

And it’s confusing, me sitting there on my childhood couch, my mother nursing me back to health, and I tell her I thought she was dead. She rubs my buzzed head. She tells me
that we’re safe. I ask where Dad is. She tries to smile but her mouth quivers and I start crying again, and hide my face in the musty odor of the Albino. I hear KK tell me everything happens for a reason. I ask her if she’s real. She promises me she is. I tell my mom I love her. She says she loves me too. I tell her I’m sorry. She says not to worry. I see my mom coming to visit me at juvie. She’s sitting in a white room. Her boy-cut hair is the sun. She doesn’t tell me I’m a fuckup. That she’s disappointed. She doesn’t ask where I went wrong. She just pats the metal bench beside her. I sit. I try to be stoic. She smells like Obsession and Sure. I curl into her lap. I tell her I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry. KK tells me it’s one day at a time. I tell her to let go and let God. She tells me to accept the things I cannot change. My father is dead. My mom says that fevers are good, that we’re still fighting. I ask her if she has one. She says she’s fine. I tell her that she’s not fighting anymore. She holds me. She holds me and it’s KK and we’re in the janitor’s closet on the seventh floor of the psych ward and she’s running my finger along her stitched gash and we’re trying to put everything behind us, that’s what they tell us,
put everything that got you here behind you
, and we’re excited because we whisper how we’ll change our lives, how we’ll be better, how we can do this, together.

I ask her when she gets out.

She tells me to close my eyes.

She pulls the Albino’s sleeping bag tighter around me. I’m naked. I’m crying. My heart is moments away from giving up. I’m thinking of killing another human being. How one second the tall guy with the mesh cap was living, the next second he
wasn’t. I can feel the texture of his throat. How I had to stab him harder than I would have guessed.

You did the right thing, KK says.

Is my fever gone?

No, honey, still there, my mom says.

I want her to feed me Sprite and Nilla Wafers. I want her to change the channel to the Ninja Turtles. I want her to take a wet cloth and dab it on my head and tell me again how this sickness is me fighting.

I smell scante all around me. I open my eyes and Typewriter is grinning his fat-boy grin and hands me a rectangle of aluminum foil with crushed shit lining its crease. He’s holding a hollow pen. It’s kind of an awful sight to wake up to. For the briefest of moments, I think I’m back at his mom’s. That I’m sitting on the one couch. That I’ve just been on one motherfucker of a trip, spanning all of three seconds. Then I see the cedar logs. Jared and KK sleeping on the floor. Typewriter’s face cut to shit.

You feelin’ better, bro? A little base for old time’s sake?

I don’t respond, just sit upright. Type puts the Bic in my
mouth. He lights underneath the foil and it takes a second to start to smoke and I’m gentle with my inhales because a burning chunk down the throat is a horrible way to start a morning. The smoke fills my mouth. Then my throat. I lean back. I hold it until my lungs scream for oxygen. Then I hold it a second longer. I let go of everything at once.

And it’s like magic.

How I’m better, not afraid of failure or dying or hell or that we’re now down to four.

That’s what I’m talking about, Typewriter says. He claps to some beat that only plays for him. He joins in with a little dancing. Just some bobbing of his knees, his torso jerking in opposition on the upbeats.

Uncle Typewriter fixes things, bro.

He lights the freebase again. I lean in and take another hit.

Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about, he says.

Shut up, KK says.

Somebody needs a head adjuster.

What time is it?

The fuck cares?

Typewriter walks over to KK and Jared. They’re covered in a blanket, lying on another one. They each take a hit. I can tell Typewriter hasn’t slept. One, because he’s dancing, and that only happens when he’s spun real bad, and two, because he’s getting us high, which again, he only does when he’s completely tweaked.

KK turns onto her stomach. She rests her head in her hands, her elbows on the floor. She asks how I’m doing.

Good, I’m good.

Yeah?

Yeah. Don’t really know what happened—

Did what a motherfucking hero does, Typewriter says.

He’s in front of me for another hit.

He says, Chase Daniels, everybody.

I take a hit and watch Jared get up and come over and he sticks out his knuckles for a bump and I think this is weird but I give one anyway. He tells me I’m the man. I must have been really fucked up last night. KK gets up and she’s just in her panties and this gives me wood and I look down and my dick’s just staring right back at me and I cover myself with the sleeping bag.

KK walks to the little kitchen area. Typewriter asks if she’s cooking omelets and this makes him laugh and she says, Something like that. She grabs a spoon. She’s holding a needle between her teeth.

Fucking onto some shit now, Typewriter says.

You get this ready, baby? KK says.

Jared tells her no problem.

And we sit there distilling meth into rigs and I’m a little high but then I think about the way blood gurgled through the stem in Mesh Cap’s neck and I tell them to cook me one too. I don’t need a belt. My veins are thick like ropes. I blast a tenth into my arm. My eyes are those of owls.

Morning coffee, huh? KK says.

For real, Type says.

Fuck, that’s good, Jared says.

I feel like I have to say something so I do—there’ll be more—and this is met by three sets of eyes turning. That and
silence. I don’t mean to be captain fucking bring-down, but that’s the way my mind works sometimes. Practicality. Worst-case scenario. Realism. I tell them about the other handful of dudes the Albino sold to.

Doubt it, Jared says.

What part of that do you doubt?

Just that there’s anyone left. That they would come here, he says. He’s shaking his head, massaging the crook of his arm. His vein looks bad, on the verge of collapsing.

Just a matter of time, I say.

Type’s still dancing. He says, He’s right. There’ll be more. The whole Chicago crowd. Motherfuckers will do whatever it takes to get more dope. Y’all know that.

So what is it you’re suggesting? Jared says. That we leave? Head back to St. Paul? Because I’m telling you that’s a bad idea.

Real bad, KK says.

Not suggesting anything, I say.

We’re quiet. We’re feeling methamphetamines settle into our synapses, these pleasures pulsating against our fingers and toes and teeth. We’re thinking about waiting in this shack, the walls closing and closing and closing, the outside world closing too, walking dead and addicts with guns facing death, their holy grail our little blue Tupperware.

There’s another problem, I say.

Jesus Christ, Jared says.

KK shakes her head at him.

The Albino’s dead.

You think I don’t know that, Jared says. His voice is sharp. I haven’t seen this side of him before. I miss his other half, the
J-Bone and C-Money side of his habit. He tells me he burned his body while I was inside crying.

Fuck you, I say.

Typewriter points a finger at him. He says, And who the fuck saved your life? You forget that?

Jared’s face is long and tired and taut and he mumbles an apology. KK rubs his back. She did this to me just last night and it was more than a concerned friend, and her touch across my stomach while we swam was more than a flirtation and I want her to finally realize she loves me. Jared asks what I’m getting at.

We have no more shit. None. Just what’s left in the bin.

Which is a hell of a lot, Jared says.

Which
isn’t
a hell of a lot between four people. Like even if we’re good, we’re looking at a week. Two, KK says. One, Typewriter says.

Jared stands. I want to tell him to put on his fucking shirt. He rubs his head, pulls his hair, and I wonder if he’s seen this on TV, the desperate-man-in-dire-straits scene, and he says, You guys know how to cook?