I slammed The Saturn into park, hid the spike, and stormed into the supermarket without locking the doors. Cold sweat caressed my spine. My eyes were bulging black holes. I soared over a horde of senile shoppers and banked a hard right down a flickering fluorescent hallway leading to the public bathroom. The door swung open and I simultaneously smelled the shit of every sad soul in the store, the suicidal meat managers and virgin stock boys with their rancid diets, shit after shit after shit. First came the employees, then random passersby, and then, very finally, me.
My trajectory was
a nosedive,
an impending
crash.
I caught a blur of my reflection in a puddle of piss as I hurtled past. Right between where your feet go when you stand to let it fly. I looked opaque.
I smashed through the furthest stall and instantly vomited. It splashed onto the off-white tiles framed in green mildew and made a Pollock in puke. I peeled a line of toilet paper, wiped my mouth with jackhammer fingers, and flushed it away. Through turbulence, I shed my puffy winter jacket, hung it on the stall door, and rolled my right sleeve high and tight. Polka-dotted blotches stained the fabric.
Out came the spike and a tiny bag of brown. I unlatched the baby changing station, grabbed a water bottle from my jacket, unscrewed the plastic cap, and set it aside. Then I rinsed the spike and sprayed pink at the ceiling, chewing on its orange cover like a pacifier, leaving it filled with clean water.
The dealers would drive around like chipmunks with stuffed cheeks, not with nuts and seeds, but with double-wrapped bags of death. If the pigs flashed Blue, they'd swallow the bags, shit them out, clean them off, and resume selling. Or the bags would burst and they'd overdose and die.
A real tragedy.
The bang of my heartbeat weakened my limbs. I ripped open the first bag, relinquished it to the tiles, used my teeth on the second, tore the knot, and spat it at the wall. I could taste it. War. Sickness. Love. Warmth.
I drooled.
I dumped the bag into the cap, spilled the spike's innards, and muddled the rocky powder with the butt end of the plunger, forming a buttery brown blend. Clutching my last cigarette, I peeled a piece off the filter, rolled a ball between my thumb and forefinger, dropped it into the brown, stuck the spike into its center, and drew back on the plunger. The spike slurped and sputtered when the cap was empty like it wanted more. With the scathing bulb overhead, I illuminated the loaded barrel and began flicking out air bubbles, easing on the plunger until it spouted a drop, which I tasted as a prelude.
It was ready.
I pumped my fist to exhume my pulse. Red tracks crisscrossed yellow and blue bruises. The colors contained a semblance of sapphire. I habitually hit my right arm, mauled and swollen. Every attempt on my left was a miss. An abscess.
A nightmare.
I wielded the spike, angled it, thrust it into the sapphire, and again drew back on the plunger. The dulled tip struggled against my calloused vein, scraping and shredding, so I prodded harder until it audibly punctured. The translucent chamber flooded with blood. I shot the melange into my body. The lights became saturated and easy. My eyes drooped and my tendons relaxed. Blood leaked from the injection site as I withdrew the spike. I didn't mind bleeding. I preferred it. In flight.
I rolled my sleeve down to make another polka-dot, collected the evidence, and left the stall carrying my puffy jacket like a little dog. The baby changing station stayed down.
As I approached the sink, a man barged into the bathroom.
He wore a crumby uniform with a pin-on name tag that read: Greg, Meat Manager. He had a slimy crew cut, cystic acne, and a belly that buried his belt. "Ya all right there, bud?"
"Sure." Our eyes met in the mirror. He gaped at me as I began catatonically washing my hands. He knew. His nostrils flared and his pallid face winced.
He could smell the shit, too.
Frightening and Necessary. Thank you.
Excellent writing. The audio of it being read is excellent too. There is a host of vile and grim pen-portraiture on this site, but it is more than worth exploring if that sort of thing is your cup of tea.