Dog Eat Dog Read Free

was now covered with a towel, but the odor still filled the room. What would Sheila say when she got home?
    Who gives a fuck, he thought. Fuck her … fat bitch. Where was she? She was supposed to come back tonight with her chubby little daughter.
    Mad Dog felt his armpit. Wet and slippery and smelling bad. The drug coming through his pores had a sour stench. He needed a shower. Shit, he needed a lot of things. But right now, he needed another shot of coke.
    Thirty minutes and two fixes later, he had the light out and was peeking past the corner of the windowshade at the rainy night. When he’d started this cocaine binge, a fix would lift him to the heights for half an hour or more, and then let him down slow and easy. Now the cycle was quicker. Joy barely lasted until the needle was out. Within minutes the craving began and with it the seeds of dread and paranoia and self-loathing. The only remedy was another fix.
    He peered down at the street from the old frame house that was built into a hillside near a railroad bridge. Because of the slope and the retaining wall, he couldn’t see the sidewalk on his side of the street except where the stairs came up.
    A car went by; then nothing but dark rain, the drops flashing momentarily in the glow of a street lamp. The craving for cocaine turned into a scream behind his eyes. He had delayed as long as possible, trying to make it last longer. It was nearly gone. Two ounces of pharmaceutical cocaine in forty hours. That was drug use of legendary scale. With heroin he would have folded into a drugged stupor long ago. Heroin had a limit, but cocaine was different: You always wanted more.
    He found a vein and watched the blood rise. Instead of the usual practice of squeezing a little and stopping, and then doing a little more, he forgot and squeezed it all in.
    It went through him like electricity. Instantly everything in his stomach flew from his mouth. Oh God! His heart! His heart! Had he killed himself? He spun and walked, careening off a chair, banging into a wall, then into the dresser. Oh shit! Oh God! Oh! Oh! Oh!
    The flash dissipated, and with it his terror. He closed his eyes and savored the sensation. No more like that one, he swore.
    Headlight beams flashed across the windowshade. Mad Dog went to the window. A car had made a U-turn and pulled up at the curb. The retaining wall blocked his view except for the bumper and headlights. Who the fuck could it be at this time of night?
    He turned off the light and watched.
    The car below pulled away. A taxi. Sheila and Melissa, her seven-year-old daughter named for a song, came into view at the bottom of the stairs. He could see Sheila’s white face as she looked up. Mad Dog froze, certain she could see nothing except a black window. She would think he was gone because his car wasn’t at the curb. It was in the service bay of the neighborhood Chevron station awaiting his payment for an alternator, but she didn’t know about that. Good enough. It would give him time to shoot the last of the cocaine before he had to listen to her nagging bullshit. Forgotten was the surge of affection he’d felt earlier. Instead he thought of how she bitched at him about cocaine, and everything else, too.
    Mad Dog heard them come in the front door and move around on the bottom floor. He could hear the child’s quick feet, then the back door opening and closing. She was feeding the cat, no doubt. She was a worthless little brat most of the time. She disliked him and refused to do what he said until he promised to beat her butt if she didn’t straighten up. When she complied, it was with a resolutely hangdog manner, pouting and dragging her feet. The only good thing about her was her love of the cat. She was always thoughtful and generous; she’d once used her last dollar for a can of cat food. Mad Dog had a grudging affection for such loyalty.
    When he heard the canned laughter on the TV downstairs, he turned on the nightstand lamp; it threw a