Page 13 of The Darkest Half

Fredrik

Years Ago – When I saw the light…

Drug houses are like being in another world, another dimension; what goes on between their walls is much more than smoking brain cells away, zoning out on a soiled mattress, or falling asleep next to living bodies that reek of disease and death. A drug house is a sanctuary. The walls are protection from the outside world—not even a bomb can get through them. A soiled mattress is just what sober people see, but the addicts don’t see it at all—they experience it; they give in to the comfort it provides for free. No judgment. No expectations. And the living bodies that reek of disease and death: the addicts only see their damaged souls, not the disgusting human shells that confine them.

Humans become addicts for a few reasons: they’re too weak to survive in this hellish world; they’re different from ordinary people in one way or another; they’re incapable of bearing the weight of the world on their shoulders; many have done things they regret and know the guilt will haunt them until they die.

Weakness. That is why addicts become addicts.

I was weak.

I was different.

I was incapable.

I woke every morning kissing the mouths of guilt and regret. The strange thing was I didn’t feel guilt or regret for kissing them. What a fucking conundrum.

But there was one difference between the addicts and me. We went to the sanctuaries for the same reasons: like them, I was an addict; like them, I felt protected from the outside world; like them, I found comfort among the filth because it did not judge me and expected nothing from me; like them, I only looked to mingle with the souls, and not the disguises they wore.

The difference was that they were my drug of choice.

I sat with my back pressed against a wall; to my left, a woman was passed out on that heavenly mattress I mentioned; a needle hung from her arm. I thought she might’ve OD’d that time; she was still breathing, but it was shallow and getting harder to hear.

To my right, a man sat; the funk of his unwashed body surrounded me. He had been rambling for the past hour. I had been listening but hadn’t offered a word since he’d started. He didn’t seem to care.

On the other side of the dark room, across a landfill’s worth of trash on the floor and two or three other addicts asleep among it, another man was sitting with his back pressed against the wall just as I was; his knees were drawn up with his wrists resting on top of them. He was shirtless and shoeless; a pair of holey blue jeans sagged around his one-hundred-fifty-pound frame. He had been looking at me for a long time. I wondered what he was thinking. I wondered if he could see my soul like I could see his. I wondered if he knew I needed to bleed him dry.

“Sixty-four,” the rambling man beside me went on, pointing his finger into my view. “I made sixty-four dollars that day. Yesterday. I think it was yesterday. One lady told me to get away from her car. Bitch. I told the bitch I just was gonna wash her windshield. Fuckin’ bitch.”

I continued to ignore the rambler and kept my gaze on the quiet one across the room. How am I going to do it this time? I was always trying to find a way to do it that made me feel less…well, guilty and regretful. OK, so I did feel it, but the problem was I never learned from it. I’d always do it again. I’d never stop. That’s where the conundrum came in.

“I asked this man in a suit,” the rambling man said, “if I could wash his windshield.” He pointed at me again. “Hey, that’s a nice suit you’re wearin’.” I got the feeling he was interested in knowing why someone like me was in a place like this, but he didn’t—no judgments, no expectations.

“But I asked the man: ‘Hey, could I clean your windshield?’ And he put a five in my hand and walked away without saying anything. Now, I’m happy and all that he paid me to do the job, but couldn’t he at least acknowledge me? I mean, what does he think I am, his servant?”

The man continued to talk, and I continued to ignore him.

The quiet one across from me got up, and he disappeared around the corner. I waited a moment before I followed.

I found him in the bathroom taking a piss; the door was wide open. He zipped up his pants and stood in front of the mirror.

“Why you followin’ me muthafucka?” He raised his hands and patted his wiry blond hair here and there.

“You intrigue me,” I said.

“Yeah, well, go stare at somebody else’s dick. I ain’t got nothin’ for you faggots.” He never looked at me; he didn’t see the knife in my hand or the blood in my eyes filling up my vision in a deep shade of crimson.

Finally, he did look at me.

“You a dealer, man?” he asked, poking his head around the doorframe. “You in here lookin’ for somebody who owes you? Ain’t nobody in this place can ever get anything on a tab.” He looked me up and down with judgmental eyes, which offended me in this holiest of sanctuaries. “Only people with money got a tab, man. Everybody else pays up front, or they go without. But ain’t that some shit, though? Why do people with money need a goddamn tab anyway?”

All addicts tend to ramble.

I shoved the man toward the toilet and closed the door behind me with my foot, the knife pressed to his jugular. His eyes widened with fear and anger; he wanted to run away from me, but he wanted to kill me too.

“What the fuck, man!”

Clumsily, I pushed the man against the sink; his hands came up wildly, swiping at my head. Distracted, I ducked to miss one hand, but I dropped the knife when the other hand caught me across the side of my head, causing my ear to ring.

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