Deadly Escape

The drug induced ravings of a man who lost what meant most to him.

 Deadly Escape

by: Dylan Cruikshank

 

        It was dark. It was dark in all senses of the word. It was dark outside, the lights in my living room were dimmed to match. But by far the darkest part of my surroundings was inside of me. My mind had been like a black hole of disturbing twisted thoughts sense about two months ago. It probably didn't help that I had taken to shooting heroin in my spare time, and spare time is one thing I always seemed to have now a days. 

        I sat there in my darkened living room hunched over my coffee table in a half crazed fetal position slowly and carefully opening the little cellophane baggie. I took the fine brown powder from the the plastic warping and dumped it onto my table. I began to chop it down finely just to make sure all the chunks had been pulverized. After I was satisfied with my progress I got out the spoon. It was old and once had been used for civilized things such as eating. But now a days I used it for more sinister, pleasurable things. I put the pleasure giving, life taking powder into the spoon with just a touch of water to help the process go a bit smoother. I struck the old Zippo and lit it underneath the spoon and let chemistry do the rest. As the concoction began to slowly cook down I readied the needle and cotton ball. Sticking the cotton ball precariously on the tip of the needle to filter out anything I didn't want swimming through my veins was something I always did. Besides if I ran out of smack anytime soon I could just squeeze out whatever still remained in the dirty brown filter. 

        The whole process of doing this got me almost as high as the drugs did. Once I felt ready I dipped the filtered end of the syringe into the spoon swirling it around soaking up as much as I could. Then drawing back the plunger I could see the medicine fill up the neck of the dropper. I then took up my arm and searched for a suitable vein to shoot into. I always used the visible vein in my right arm because it was easy to find and hadn’t failed me yet. I drove the needle straight down searching for that pay off. I knew I hit it when the blood from my body started to trickle up the droppers neck forming blood red swirls that danced with the heroin in such a sexual way it almost aroused me. The way it looked always seemed to remind me of flowers for some reason. 

        I began to slowly push the plunger down. I could feel that warm life giving mess begin to flow inside me. I took in as much as my body would let me. My mind felt as though it began to shrink and spin away. My body felt heavy and care free. I could feel everything coming to pass. I could almost see centuries of people just like me wasting away slowly as victims of the flower Alexander the Great once thought of as a miracle. I could smell the s****y alley ways I would hang out in waiting to score. I could see the faces of the junkies I bought from. Twisted, old, decrepit and desperate. I felt there hands grabbing at me. I could smell them breathing on me heavy and desperate. It made me feel sick and old. 

        I collapsed back on to the couch totally numbed and spinning. It was there in the darkness of my house and in the darkness of my life I began to recall what had happened all those weeks ago. It was then I started to fully understand.   

 

        As I lay there spinning in my own drug infused paradise my eyes began to feel heavy and started to close into sleep. I dozed off from drugs into dreams. 

        There I was. I could see myself. I was whole again. I was sitting in a park with her. We were together almost as one. We sat still with each other my hand running through her soft hair. The other hand caressed her pale flawless face. I could see into her eyes like I never had before. The blue of her eyes was so stunning and kept spinning in a clockwise motion like an ocean running through time. I was hypnotized by her beauty. The way her nose stood above her perfect rose colored lips. The way her lower lip protruded further than the top one in a sensual pout. The way her eyebrow could rise slightly when I said something strange or out of place. The way she smiled made my insides turn upside down. 

        I felt like I wanted to get up and dance. I leaned in to kiss her. My lips pressed against hers and I could taste her. She tasted so sweet and heavenly. It was as though for a moment in time all was right with the world. But as I drew back from her gentle face I looked upon her once again. This time when I looked into her eyes her placid blue eyes they were tainted and old. The white around the iris was now bloodshot and dirty. Her face began to rapidly age like nothing I had seen before. Her perfect lips gave way to hideous cracked lines. Her nose that once sat beautifully on her face began to rot and fall away like leaves fall of off of trees during fall. Her hair turned from a red into a grey and began to detach its self from her scalp. I drew back in horror as I saw this and I got up in a futile attempt to flee.

         The grass that we sat on began to move underneath me a what felt like a million miles an hour. The once perfectly green trees were now bent over and dead looking. I saw a children's jungle jim in the distance that was nothing but a heap of burned rusty metal. I struggled to run. My feet would not respond to the signals my brain sent to them. I fell. She leaped on top of me her decrepit hands pinning me to the ground. Her leathery face came down close to mine and she whispered into my ear with a hideous rasp “Find me.”

        I jolted up sweaty and very awake from the nightmare. My face and body dripped of perspiration. I was short of breath and not too sure where I was. I looked around my dirty empty apartment and saw the needle, the spoon, and the empty liquor bottles and felt easy again. “A dream. Only a dream I whispered.” I sat upright on the couch and wiped the sweat from my brow. I reached for my half empty pack of cigarettes that sat on the table next to the cellophane that the junk had come wrapped in. I put one of the cigarettes into my mouth and struck the Zippo. The flame from the lighter was the first light I had seen in some time and it blinded me a bit. I took my first drag off the cigarette and fell back into the couch. Releasing the smoke from my lungs toward the ceiling in a long stream that seemed as though it would never end. I let the cigarette dangle from my lips gently as I watched the tobacco at the end slowly burn and emit a sultry wisp smoke with each puff. 

 

        Scratching my head I wondered what the dream meant. It seemed to come around almost anytime I nodded off.