DXM

A DXM doser gets his fix

My legs made their way across the parking lot and up to the front door. The sliding-glass entrance made a heavy-duty metal sound that whisked me off my feet and into the blinding fluorescent lights. The kiss of cool inside air comforted me as I flew past the metal detectors and the front desk, moving through the waist-high basin containers filled with popsicles, past the shelves stocked high with sweet treats for the Halloween clearance season, past the frozen dinners and dry noodles, past the gossip-girl magazines and national enquirers, past everything else into the last column where the medications were stacked atop one another till half-past the ceiling: This aisle, benign to others, was cathartic for me. Dropping down to my heels and staring ahead of me, I took quick glances occasionally towards the attending pharmacist whom I knew had to be staring right at me. She vacantly looked down at her computer as if unaware of my presence.

Finding time to read the lists of medications, I noted the counter-indicatives they were shoving inside of bottles to stop wayward teens from glugging them down to chase pixies. Some of them in high enough doses would shoot your liver. Some would outright kill you or cause seizures, and others still would make your bowels explode upward through your stomach into your throat. These were the safety measures for which parents fought for decades to push through the courts and into our medicine cabinets -- they would rather their children die than catch that high and now some of us were doing just that.

I knew what I wanted but had no idea where they were hiding it. In some slot of some aisle of some column of this goddamned store was that s**t that I wanted and that nasty girl behind the desk was still staring at me knowing I could never honestly answer her malicious inquiries as to what I was so desperately looking for. I scoured the place, almost getting down on my hands and knees in my search when there it was, bottom corner of an aisle-ending container, my holy grail. Straight DXM. Available for five fifty-nine, and they package it up for you in a nice bottle and put it in a tiny box and they even flavor it cherry. I took a moment in the exit to gather myself, slouching and squinting my eyes as I felt the heat radiate off the sidewalk and towards me in the shaded frame of the door.

Did the road look wavy because it was so hot, or were my eyes simply distorting the world in the way they so like to do on Saturdays? Wriggling lines wormed up out of the earth, twirling and dancing through the air. I made my way towards my car and held tightly to the crinkly paper bag I had come so far to get. The heat from the sun throbbed and pulsed at the back of my head, urging me to gallop as quickly as I could towards my car. My thigh slammed against the door and I jammed my key into the slot and opened my door and ducked inside. Safe from the fiery air outside, I wiped the hot sweat from my neck and forehead. Then I looked in my hand and intently read the box I had just purchased, taking my prize out and smelling the disgusting, sobering smell of thick syrup before screwing the cap back on and holding it tightly.

The old roads back home wound wildly and I heard the empty bag being jostled with every clumsy turn as I struggled to steer with one hand clutching the bottle. At the base of the last hill before home, I felt an extreme heat penetrating through the windows of my car and onto my clammy skin; fiery hotness punched holes in my arms and legs, intruding into me, coming from all sides as the windshield began melting and dripping onto my lap. The steering wheel started peeling off, coming apart in huge swathes as I pawed at it, frantically trying to control myself. Metal scraped and banged while my car swerved up the curb and onto the sidewalk before the uneven terrain of the road-side gravel brought me to a hard stop. An empty sky surrounded me, stiff and lifeless air completely silent.

I heard a sound appear amongst the dry stillness of the hot road: something rolling slowly across the dashboard. It rolled downwards, fell directly onto the seat next to me, and lay still. A solitary drop of dark red fluid seeped out of the bottle, hung for a moment, fell, and sizzled on the soiled grey fabric. My hand trembled as I reached out to the bottle. It drew itself away from me. The distance grew each time I strained to grab hold of it as a force pulled at me from my neck and chest, urging me backwards every time I made another try at it and forcing me to recede and attempt again and again. Everything in the world fell away from me when my fingertips finally managed to graze the edge of the plastic bottle, sending it rocking back and forth while I leant in, yearning to grasp my fingers around it and moaning at my inability to do so. Picking up my left leg from the floor, I swung my entire body around as I thrust myself towards my goal, but once again I was pulled back at the last moment by that choking tension cutting into my skin. My body fell back and breathed heavily, gasping and groaning while loosening the seat belt. Wait. The seat belt.

The distant motions of my confused hands managed to free me from my polyester captor before ebbing their way towards that previously elusive bottle. Feeling its roundness between my thumb and palm brought back the heat I had forgotten about since the crash and I looked up out of my windshield for the first time, noting how pristine the glass was, perfectly clear and whole. I knew this feeling, this confusion. But it’s never been this bad before. I inhaled deeply and shifted into reverse, gripped the smooth steering wheel, and looked over my shoulder to check for oncoming traffic before flooring the gas and speeding back down the sidewalk with a jarring thunk.

The houses and trees around me blurred together as I sped home. Flying down the road before the heat could hit me again, I hardly noticed the yield sign I missed or the oncoming car that had every right to run right into me, yet decided to simply stop short and bid me farewell with a series of long horn blasts. Time was of the essence now with that dreaded heat on my tail. Ever since I had regained lucidity it had resumed its pursuit, pushing me forward and singing the hairs on the back of my head, lighting me aflame if not for the sweat pouring down from my crown. How long would it be before the sun began boiling my vehicle away from under me or melting the hands in front of my eyes?  I didn’t intend to find out,and quickly swung into the driveway and parked.

I shoved the door open and was assailed by a wave of smoldering air pushing me back into my seat. My cries of pain were stifled by the intense fire. I used my free hand to launch myself out, landing on my hands and knees in the smog of warmth floating all around me. Every motion I made was exhausting as I crawled on the bright concrete leading up to the patio. Somehow I managed to push up with my legs and stumble myself upright onto my door. I pressed against it, begging it to open up and let me in �" to protect me from this malicious force. My hand grasped the handle, pushed inward, and failed to catch me as I fell face-down on the hard tile of the foyer and slipped away, sailing out into the darkness.

Have you ever felt you were sitting in a different place in your head? Like you zoomed in or out, as if something got knocked out of place and now it was all different, akin to a light bulb waking up one morning with an audible buzz. Much like the light bulb, you’ll keep shining on, and soon the time from before the sound will seem so distant that you can’t recall it. The buzzing becomes so ordinary that its sound alone suggests the light is on, enough so that a child could be comforted solely by the sound of the buzzing, knowing that the demons and b******s of the night would be thwarted by that righteous bulb with its tell-tale buzz. In the same way, this abnormal feeling I can’t hope to understand somehow lends to me the concept that I am awake, and I am alive.

When I awoke, I was sitting in a different place. An icy draft shot up the back of my shirt, blasting me awake. My cheek was smooshed against cold tiles, my eye sealed shut with a long sleep’s tell-tale crusty eye mucus. It was dark. Stretching my arms to my sides, I pushed myself upwards so I could look up and stare forward into the abyss. Another gust of wind hit me and I jolted onto my feet and twisted around. I was standing in my doorway, facing outwards into the cold night filled by what moonlight could trickle down through the shrubbery and vines decorating the patio walls. I leant over and flipped the light switch, illuminating the porch and driveway. My car was partly on the driveway, parked crookedly on the lawn with its driver’s side door agape. Walking the moonlit path towards the driveway was cathartic. After closing the car door and turning back around, I began looking on the ground for anything I may have dropped. I don’t even remember falling asleep. It must have been pretty bad this time, and who knows what things I could have left behind? I patted my pockets and found nothing. Tracing the steps I must have made inside, I found my keys under the bench by the front door. But if I know myself at all, I’m still missing something. Going carefully inside, I worked systematically, checking every crevice, getting down on my hands and knees in my search for it. Something caught the moonlight in a very particular way and then there it was, under the coffee table, a few feet in front of the door, propped against a pair of old sneakers: my holy grail.