Love dries up

Here's the cure. Pass it on.

I'm suffering from cotton fever. It's in my blood, itchy like the name. Absorbent, mopping up all the life that flows red and rusty. It wants to leave you dead and dusty, this disease, but I won't allow it. No. The cure is to give it to someone else, to pass it on, cuz misery loves company.

I like to find myself an innocent and shake them down. One good trick is to find someone trying to hail a taxi. There's a taxi rank right around the corner, you say, your lips curling with the pleasure of lying. Here's a shortcut and, oh!, most people are too grateful to question you.

When they're knocked out you prick 'em with the needle -- the same needle that pricked you. Hair of the dog, they call it, hair of the dog that bit you. Well, this dog has only one tooth and its bite is small but damn can it leave a trace of itself behind. You get 'em good with the needle. Leave them marks. Leave them a memory of mosquitoes making a beeline for their mainline, royal blue, jutting from the skin. Extra points if their lover will say, I don't believe your story, you an addict. Extra extra points if their mom will cry, How did my baby turn out this way? Who was it that turned them onto this path? You gotta bottle them tears, son, they'll be worth some thing some day. Mommas don't cry forever. Love dries up, dries up like the blood when you got cotton fever.

Press the cotton to their bleeding. Watch the red berries beading. Wait for that bad cotton, those long itchy fingers of cotton, to flow into them.

Reviews

[jkhatz]

If there's ever a sign of any kind of talent a writer may possess, it's within the scope of giving the reader an insight, a clear point of view of the character he is presenting -without having to hit the reader over the head with a wooden baseball bat. When I go to read something, I will immediately be captivated if there is stunning subtlety. You have lived up to that and more. Why, dear sir, are you writing here and not for a publisher?

Technically, it's perfect. You are not here to collect invisible internet points, it absolutely shows. You are a thoughtful writer and member of this site. You also express yourself vividly and with some of the most beautifully written poetic prose I've had the pleasure to view on WC.

[TLK]

Publishing involves rules, man. I had enough of rules in 'Nam. (Was born in '82).

Thank you for the truly breath-taking praise. My words will strike into each other with increasing frequency after this -- and each mangling of syllables is a potential sentence.

[Ben Walker]

Your writing's like poetry, love it. Although this made be feel rather sick, I feel like I need to have a shower, in fact I will. Fantastic.

[TLK]

I will treasure your reaction as the very potent compliment it was meant to be.

I don't know where this came from: I have never used drugs, and am even tee-total. But I fell across the Wikipedia page for cotton fever and... how 'love dries up' got in there I don't know. But every time I read it, it thrills me with sadness.

I wonder how addicts really feel. Perhaps their purgatory is entirely perfunctory, and they only spin romance out of it to turn pity into access to more morphine.

[s y e]

Good job! I liked it!

[Brother Rooster]

Your writing has such lyricism about it. And the imagery-one picture after another-makes me feel like a child in a dark room, watching a series of illuminated images from an old black and white movie. 'Watch the red berries...' is so strong an image it's scary.

[TLK]

I wouldn't like to be the child in that room.

[Sam]

man this is so successfully eerie, I believe this man is out there, waiting for me the next time I hail a taxi..and somehow that next to last line, 'watch the red berries beading' seems the most sinister, that he'll punch you with that needle just to see the red berries beading, really well done, excited to read more.

[TLK]

Thank you for enjoying the eerieness.

[Rivers Pinder]

Wow.
Good job.
Its very... eccentric I guess I could say.
Very sadistic, yet poetic.

[TLK]

Thank you for calling it 'sadistic, yet poetic'. I've just re-read it (and will quickly edit out the double spaces after full-stops -- I've only recently realised that's incorrect) and I have to agree.

This came from reading up on 'cotton fever', and I guess something in it just shined for me. I am very happy with this piece, even if and only if the three words "love dries up" are so chilling.

[SHEEMA HUQ]

a very nice, conversational artful style you have, initially i thought that this was a meancholic prose, sentimental and nicely paced.

[TLK]

After 'Clenching', I must've wanted to write something from a baser register. So, here it is. Drugs, muggings, and momma's lovings. All in one melancholic bundle.