Fiend Read Free

plumes of smoke slip out from the upstairs window. As we’re driving away, something in the front yard catches my eye. I press my face against the window. It’s the carcass of a rottweiler.
10:15 AM
    We drive down Summit Avenue. The houses are nice and then they’re not. I tell Typewriter to go five under the whole way. He tells me there aren’t any cars anyway. I haven’t noticed. But then I do. I look around Summit. It’s just Victorian mansions with rows of evergreens like please stay the fuck away, cars parked in driveways, empty streets.
    I’m so spun.
    I look at the dashboard clock. It’s a quarter past ten. Maybe everyone’s already at work? We’re down Summit Hill and onto West Seventh. This is my stomping ground. Has been for a year. Strip malls with laundromats and apartments above Chinese takeouts and narrow barrooms filled with smoke and televisions, none of them flat screens. I know what this area’s supposed to look like. Busy with people standing atbus stops and girls standing on corners and brothers spitting balloons of dope out of their mouths. But it’s not. It’s empty.
    I ask Typewriter if it’s a holiday or something. He doesn’t know. I check my shirt to see if it’s still covered in blood. It is. I flick off a nugget of skull. It sticks to the dash. Nothing makes sense. I keep telling myself I’ve spent the last hundred and sixty-eight hours smoking meth, that I’m beyond delusional, beyond sane, one more awake hour away from completely breaking the fuck down.
    We turn onto Marshall. I see my boy Tibbs walking down Seventh. This makes me feel better. Like things are normal, okay. Type says, Bet Tibbs is holding, could hook it up with a teener for the road.
    Not trying to flee yet, I say.
    Huh?
    Get to my apartment. Got a few Klonopin. I need to sleep, man, like my head is bad.
    Feel you, Typewriter says.
    We pull over at my sublet. I get out. Stretch. I wonder where the hell everyone is. Nobody’s waiting for the bus, nobody’s driving or honking, there’s no foot traffic over at the Groveland Tap. Typewriter scans the streets too. He looks at me. I shrug.
    We go around back of the split-level and it’s nothing but red chipped paint and cracked sidewalks but Rebecca gave me the tiny-ass apartment for three fifty a month, so whatever. I open the door. The house splits inside the tiny foyer, one door to the two upstairs units, one door to my dungeon of an efficiency basement. The mildew stench from the walls is at anall-time bad. I think about complaining to Rebecca but decide against it, having smoked July’s rent.
    It’s a strange feeling inside my apartment—part relief, part dread—and I wonder if that’s what everyone feels coming home. Like, yeah, I see the one piece of furniture I own, my mattress covered in unwashed navy blue sheets, and I’m like, motherfucker, I missed you. But I see nothing but dust bunnies on the scratched wooden floors—and I’m like, motherfucker, this is it. This is my life.
    What’s up with those benzos? Typewriter asks.
    I walk to the bathroom next to the efficiency kitchen. It doesn’t have a door. I open the tiny medicine cabinet. A toothbrush that has gone unused for weeks sits next to an Advil bottle. I pour out its contents—four beautiful Klonopin. I think about swallowing them all, the four of them spreading through me like the warmest of quilts on a January night. I run the faucet. I want to sleep and forget what happened with the umbrella-socked demon. I glance up. Something is staring back at me. I nearly scream. It’s me. My eyes are the deepest of oceanic trenches.
    Give it here, Type says.
    I hand him two pills and swallow mine.
    I think about how much time I spend trying to find a balance between artificial moods, the equilibrium of acceleration and deceleration.
    I plug my cell phone into the charger. Typewriter lies on my bed.
    Get the fuck out, I say.
    Bro, where am I—
    Not on my bed.
    But there’s no other