for me two days ago, but I haven’t heard from him and he never showed up.”
“So you’re saying you don’t have it.” It wasn’t a question. “We drove all the way out here in the heat, sat here for how many hours while you pulled skin in some stroke-book store and my friend here, who is obviously a big time junkie, is dying out here waiting for you and you’re telling me you don’t have anything? I got people waiting on me too, my man, so what do I tell them when I get back? Oh, sorry, dude, the guy I was buying from got stiffed from his supplier, maybe next time? That’s not how this business works and you know it.”
“Look, I’m sorry, you know?” the old guy said. “I tried, but he just never showed with the stuff, what do you want me to do?”
Scott stared him down for a minute, while I was still in the car watching and I think the sickness was starting to get the better of me because I could swear as Scott’s voice got louder and madder his skin got redder and I saw steam rising off him, but we were in the desert so it was probably heat shimmer, but that wasn’t all I saw.
He looked taller, not like he’d grown, but like his limbs were extending. His legs stretched like a Stretch Armstrong doll. His arms, too, and his hands and fingers, until they were touching the ground and his fingers had claws on them. I saw him tower over the old man, but the old man never let on that anything was wrong or different, but I saw, and I wanted to scream but I knew it couldn’t be real. Stuff happens when you’re tripping and you have to ride it out. I watched a KISS poster give me an hour long concert once while I was on acid. It was pretty cool, but afterward I knew it was just the acid just like I knew what was happening to Scott wasn’t real either. Except I wasn’t tripping.
I was jonesing, but I wasn’t on anything right then.
I didn’t hear the last of their conversation, but the old man went inside and Scott sat back in the car, slammed the door and just sat there steaming. Literally. His body was back to normal, but he still had steam rising off his skin and he looked flushed, all red and mean.
“Shit, man, you think he’s telling the truth?” I asked. I didn’t care where it came from, but I needed something soon or I was gonna start shedding my skin out here in this heat.
Scott just watched the trailer for a minute without saying anything back. Then he looked over at me and said, “Fuck, dude, you look like hell. This shit’s got you in its claws, doesn’t it?” His words should have been caring, concerned, but his face said he was happy, that he liked seeing me like this, and that too had to be the sickness, because Scott was my friend and he wouldn’t be happy to see me like that, that’s why we’d come all the way out here, to get something for me.
“Tell you what,” he said. “Since we’re friends and I don’t like seeing you suffer--” Yes he did, it was in his eyes. He was loving this, and he was talking really slow, like he was dragging through time or something to make it take even longer, and he was thrilled with it, I could see it in his smile. “--why don’t I go in there, see what he’s hiding, and get it from him? What, you think this fucking dope pusher isn’t gonna have something on hand at all times, just in case? Even if he doesn’t use it himself, you know he has an emergency stash in there. I’ll find it, whatever it is, and we’ll get you fixed up. How’s that, buddy?”
I shivered at the way he called me buddy. I nodded, then turned to stare out the window at the emptiness across the highway.
I wondered how late it was. It felt like we’d been there for days. I didn’t turn to watch, but I heard Scott bang on the door, then I heard him barge in. I heard voices raised. Someone was yelling, but what I heard wasn’t a man. It wasn’t yelling at all, it was a baby crying, wailing like it was being tortured, then the cry turned into roaring, like the barking of ten dogs all at once and I was watching into the distance across the highway and my head pounded and my stomach felt like it was eating itself. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had food. But it would have to wait; I needed something right the fuck now and I turned to look at the trailer, hoping Scott would be coming out, bag in hand, but instead the sickness took over and it looked like the entire trailer was shaking back and forth and a light came from the doorway, but somehow it didn’t come through the windows and I thought it looked really weird like that, and then I thought it was on fire because smoke came from the open doorway, only it wasn’t smoke, more like steam I think, it just rose up into the air and vanished to nothing.
I watched the door. I tried to make Scott come out. I didn’t like the way all of this was looking. A hand wrapped around the edge of the doorway. It had blood on the fingers. I didn’t see who it belonged to. Then it was ripped free and whoever it was had been yanked back inside the trailer.
The noises continued and somehow the crying baby and the barking dogs all started to sound a lot like this really deep, pounding laughter.
My stomach cramped and I wanted to throw up, but there was nothing in there to let go of. Someone opened my skull with a dull, rusty can opener and my eyes were washed in acid while knitting needles were jammed into my ears and I tried to swallow but my throat was full of thumbtacks while centipedes with needles for legs crawled over every inch of me.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I wanted to go home.
The trailer gave one final, violent twist to the right like it was going to tip, then it slammed back down and that light clicked off. More steam drifted out the open door. The storm door swung back and hit the side of the trailer. Something that sounded like a goat yawning came from the darkness inside.
I looked out to the highway again and when I looked back , Scott was coming out. He wore the old man’s hat. He glided down the steps, taking them one by one but I didn’t see his legs move at all.
And the last thing I saw, and I know I saw it and I know it was the sickness inside my head making my eyes do funny things, but Scott had a tail and as he came down the stairs it shrank, like it was disappearing into him. The light in the sky made his skin look black, like the charred, grinning corpse I’d thought I saw earlier.
He got in the car and he was Scott. He opened his hand and said, “Who loves ya, baby?” A handful of pills and a bag of powder. It wasn’t a lot, but it was a start, enough to get my head right until we could find some more somewhere.
“Fuck, that’ll work,” I said, taking the pills. I’d wait til we got home for the coke, but the pills I could swallow dry and enjoy the ride back.
I took down three of them, then laid back against the seat and let them cloud my head of what I’d seen, or thought I’d seen, what I knew hadn’t been there because being sick like that messes up your head.
Scott pulled the car onto the highway and I glanced over once on the drive and he wasn’t paying attention to me, just watching the road, but he had this big grin on his face and his teeth were miniature steak knives in his mouth, serrated and gleaming. I looked up and his eyes were closed, but he was taking the highway like he could see it and I knew that wasn’t real because how was he driving?
His lips moved in silence, reciting something without sound like he was praying. Or spellcasting, I thought. I closed my eyes and let the ride take me home.
That was almost a week ago. I got home and we did some of the coke and later I took a few more pills and did some more coke and I felt like myself again. I looked over at Scott once, he was kicked back on my couch and I saw that charred, grinning corpse again, all white eyes and teeth standing out against the black and I jumped up and went into the bathroom pretending like I had to piss.
I splashed water in my face and looked in the mirror. I took a few deep breaths and told myself, “You’ll be ok. It’s just your brain, the drugs are fucking you up, that’s all. It’s cool.”
Back out in the living room, Scott was getting up, saying he had some stuff to do. Usually I would have asked if I could go, because when he had stuff to do that meant there would be drugs, but this time I said, “Cool, man. I’ll catch you
later.”
He left and I turned up the Zeppelin and did some more coke and partied by myself. The coke lasted another couple days, but it’s been gone now for a few. I took the last of the pills day before yesterday.
I haven’t seen Scott since he left that night, but I talked to him on the phone and he’s gonna come over tomorrow. He said he’s got this deal he wants me to get in on, but he wouldn’t say any more over the phone.
Whatever it is, I’m not doing it. After what I saw and heard at the trailer that day, I’ve got to kick this shit. Getting high is one thing, but seeing what I thought I saw, my best friend as a burned out corpse, that weird light in the trailer, Scott with a tail. And those sounds! They nearly made my brain bleed out through my ears. I’ve probably fucked myself up beyond repair, but if I hope to not wind up a drooling vegetable in a hospital somewhere, I have to keep some kind of control. So I have to kick this shit, and I have to tell Scott no to whatever he’s got cooking.
But tomorrow’s a long way off and I haven’t had a fix since yesterday. I’m hanging in there for now, but . . . man, this habit’s the devil chipping away with his pitchfork, poking me in the fucking brain, trying to get in.
I just have to be stronger