Page 25 of Inevitable Destruction

Nah, I guess not.

“Uh, sorry.” Jay’s words pierce me fucking deep, but I brush them off like I always do.

“Don’t worry about it. All good.” The high from the coke has always depleted greatly, and now I just feel jittery. And fucking sober.

I pull out my pack of smokes and put one between my teeth. I chew on the filter as Jay tinkers with things again—something I’ve noticed he does when he’s high. I lean against the door frame and light the cigarette idly.

“You know you’re not supposed to smoke that in here.”

“You gonna stop me?” I suck in the nicotine, and when Jay steps up to me, I blow it back in his face. The plume of whiteish-gray smoke billows around his face, only streaks of his golden blonde hair peeking through.

After it dissipates, Jay grabs my smoke from me and puts it between his lips. “If you’re going to break the rules of a house you don’t even live in, you can at least share.”

I shrug. Whatever, I guess.

When the cigarette is gone, Jay puts it out, and we leave his room to join the party. The usual lights are flashing, music pounding, bodies sweaty and swaying. And I’m not high enough for this.

I push my way down the stairs, beelining for the kitchen when a hand clasps around my shoulder. I freeze on the spot, three steps from the bottom. Someone’s hot breath brushes against the back of my neck, causing goosebumps to creep down my spine and settle in the pit of my stomach.

My hood must have fallen from my head at some point, and I feel too exposed, too unprotected. It makes no sense, but clothes bring me a sense of comfort not much else can give me. Being covered head to toe is almost like a barrier between myself and others. The more clothes I have on, the more I can hide behind. The less people can see.

That hot breath moves to my ear, and I fight a shiver of fear when lips brush against the outermost part of my ear. “I’ve got a few dilaudid in my jeep if you want ‘em. Gus gave them to me with the usual, and they’re not really my bag—but I figured they’d be yours.” The lips disappear just as quickly as they appeared, and I bite back a shiver.

My eyes burn as I resist the urge to run, to get the fuck away from the crawling sensation breaking out all over my skin, hot and uncomfortable and so fucking unbearable.

I manage a nod, my throat too clogged to speak a word. Jay brushes past me on the stairs and starts for his car. My legs follow on their own volition, and before I can blink again, Jay’s placing white pills wrapped in cellophane in my hand.

“Be careful. Those are eight milligrams. They’ll knock you on your ass quicker than shit.”

My eyes remain locked on the pills, my mind already churning a hundred different ways I can take them. I haven’t exactly done a lot of shit before, but this time? I’m antsy with the chance to.

Before… everything with my parents happened, when I first dipped my toes into the never-ending deep end of drugs, I took Oxys one night at a high school party and never looked back. You swallow two of them babies with a few shots of Vodka, and you’re golden. I found what did it for me pretty fucking quick and never questioned it.

It wasn’t until after my parents died that I picked up a needle. All of it was still so fucking fresh in my mind: brain matter splattered along the walls, clinging, and seemingly glued in place. The way the blood had thickened and congealed, giving off a curdled appearance. Their eyes, stuck open and unseeing…

That first pinprick, like a snake bite—fast and poisonous and oh, so fucking deadly.

I open the cellophane and press one of the white pills to my tongue before pocketing the baggy.

Jay and I talk back and forth about pointless shit for a while, enjoying the cool, damp air. “What the fuck?!” he shouts from beside me, and I trip over a crack in the sidewalk, barely catching myself before I face plant. I whirl around, coming face to face with flashing red and blue lights. Jay’s face is illuminated halfway, the rest shadowed by the darkness now that the party raging behind us has quickly dissipated as if there weren’t hundreds of people here thirty seconds ago.

Nothing clears a house faster.

A white and black police cruiser pulls up in front of the house, silent yet foreboding. Jay curses next to me again as he pushes his way past the last group of people scurrying into the house. I follow him, not really sure what else to do. It could be because my brain isn’t working at full capacity, or, you know, curiosity killed the cat. But here I am regardless.

I kick red solo cups out of my way as I trudge across the grass towards the sidewalk where the two officers have now taken up residence.

“What can I do for ya?”

I drag my eyes up from the littered yard to Jay, who stops a few feet in front of them and crosses his arms across his chest. I pause a few feet behind when I feel eyes on me, burning cold. An inkling of recognition creeps into the back of my mind, but I push it away as it bounces against my skull painfully.

Thinking leads to pain. Pain leads to body wracking memories. Memories lead to something much fucking worse than pain—grief. For who I’ve lost. For who I am and what will never be because of both of those things.

And I’d just rather not feel them at all.

I fucking hope this pill kicks in soon because the effects of the coke are long fucking gone, and the awareness prickling the nape of my neck is unsettling me.

I pull out my smokes and light one up as Jay converses back and forth with a female. The music in the house behind us has ceased, along with chatter from any human other than us four.

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