Drew was shaking. His guts hurt so bad he couldn’t breathe and his skin crawled with what felt like millions of ants. He swore he could almost see them moving around.
The sun was setting, but he could barely tell. The sky was still overcast from the freak winter storm that blew up the coast dropping snow at the end of October. He was cold and had lost weight over the last few months. Normally he used a little more meth to ignore the cold, but the storm had kept him from getting out to score some more last night. The need was killing him.
As he trudged down Capitol Street in front of the library, he saw a sign for a Halloween party.
Halloween, he muttered to himself. If people want to be scared, they should see what I see when I close my eyes. That’d scare the hell out of them.
“Did you say something about scaring the Hell out of someone?” a strangely calm voice asked behind Drew. Well, he thought it was behind him. The voice sounded almost as if it was coming from inside his head.
“What?”
“I said, did you say something about scaring the Hell out of people?”
Drew looked around and then jumped backward. The source of the voice was standing directly behind him; almost touching him.
“Nah man, I’m good. I was just talking about Halloween. I said people would be scared if they saw what I saw when I closed my eyes at night. That’s all,” Drew said stepping back. The man in front of him was too small for the voice that boomed out of him. He was barely five feet tall and there wasn’t a wrinkle on his pubescent face. His dark hair was combed neatly. Drew would have thought the man in front of him was only a boy—a student at the local Catholic high school—if it weren’t for the voice. That voice. It sounded almost ancient, yet familiar. The boy/man’s lips weren’t in sync with the sounds Drew heard in his head.
Drew felt the urge to run away, but his feet were fixed to the ground as if they were full of cement.
“I get the feeling you need something,” the voice said. “Can I help you?”
“What I need is a fix. My skin is crawling and my head is pounding. Don’t suppose you could help me out that way, could you?” Drew asked.
“I don’t carry much on me, just a little bit. Just a taste. I don’t have enough with me to do what you need. Take this sandwich and eat it. There is something in there that will put you at ease for now,” the voice continued. Drew had stopped looking at the man/boy’s mouth since what he saw with his eyes and heard in his head weren’t making sense together. “Come to my place just before midnight and I’ll fix you up with as much as you want. You’ll never have to look for another fix again.”
“Where is it? I don’t know where your place is,” Drew replied, but then again, he did know. He had even been to that house a couple times to get what he needed. But no one had talked to him about hooking him up like that before. And he had never seen the man/boy with the voice.
“Eat that sandwich. Get some rest. But show up just before midnight. That is important,” the voice said.
“Man, I don’t have no watch,” Drew said. “Why’s it so important to be there before midnight? I never heard of no meth house with closing hours.”
“Just be there,” the voice boomed inside Drew’s head so loud his eyes went blank for a second and his knees buckled. When he could see again, the man/boy was gone and so was the voice. Drew was on his knees on the sidewalk. He still held the sandwich in his hand.
Drew climbed back to his feet using a park bench as a ladder. He stood there shaking. Looking at the sandwich, he realized he was actually hungry. And then he realized he was more than hungry, he was starving. He looked around to make sure no one was watching him, and more importantly to make sure no one was going to take the sandwich away from him. He took the first bite from the sandwich and felt like he was flying. He felt like he had just taken his first “hit”. He remembered that feeling and had chased it nearly every day since, but hadn’t been able to find it again. It didn’t matter how much of the stuff he took, it never matched the first time.
“Must be some good shit if this is just a taste of what he’s gonna give me tonight,” Drew said to himself. His first instinct was to eat the sandwich quickly, but something made him slow down. He took another bite and walked slowly down the street. He found his accustomed hiding place before he took another bite. Whatever was in the sandwich was lifting him off of his feet and he felt like he was flying, soaring like superman. He could see everything in town clearly for once in his life. He saw families spending time together, kids out trick or treating on neighborhood streets and laughing together over costumes. In spite of the darkness, that part of town looked light and good. Then he saw the darker side of town…where he normally spent his time. It pulsed like a black cancer on the city. The meth houses and people taking prescription drugs. Women selling their bodies for another hit. Drew wanted to fly back to the light parts of town, but he couldn’t. His body wouldn’t work that way. It didn’t want to obey him.
Drew woke up in his hiding place feeling cold and hungry. There was something missing, but he couldn’t quite remember what it was. He saw the sandwich wrapper in his hand—empty—and knew where he needed to go. To the house. The man/boy with the voice had told him all had to do was show up before midnight and he would never have to look for another fix again.
He started walking—heading straight for the “house” in his mind. It wasn’t far. He didn’t know exactly what time it was, but it couldn’t be midnight yet. There was no way it was past midnight. And who ever heard of a meth house closing anyway. Everyone there would be so cranked up they wouldn’t sleep until morning. There was no way they would close up.
It didn’t take long until Drew found the house he was looking for. It looked like a normal house, but then most of them did. Most of the places he went to looked rougher than this one, but it must be a new place. It hadn’t had time to fall apart from abuse and lack of maintenance. It didn’t really matter if they fixed the house up or not. Cooking “meth” inside a house ruined the house forever. The vapors got inside the furniture, the carpet and the very walls. People could never live there again.
Drew walked up the steps to the house wondering about the quiet. A light shown inside and Drew thought he could hear a television playing, but none of the “normal” sounds he heard in places like this. All he could think about, though, was a bigger hit of what he had gotten earlier. He wanted to feel like that for the rest of his life.
At first he knocked quietly on the door. When no one came, he knocked harder. Before he realized it, he was pounding, rattling the glass in the windows. The feeling he had earlier that day, the one before he met the man/boy with the voice, came back even more intensely. His entire body was on fire with the need for another hit. He was shaking, sweating and could hardly see. It was agony, made worse by knowing his salvation—his forever fix—was on the other side of the door.
“Let me in. I need some now!” he shouted.
“I don’t know who you are, but you can’t come in. It’s after midnight. Trick or treat ended hours ago. Now go away,” a voice yelled back from inside.
The voice from the other side of the door didn’t sound like the one Drew heard on the street earlier, but that didn’t stop him.
“I don’t care what damn time it is,” he growled. “Let me in!”
Drew pulled the screen door open and jiggled the doorknob on the wooden door. “Open this door and let me in!”
“Get away from here. Don’t you touch that door again,” the voice said through the door. “I’m warning you. It’s after midnight, now go away.”
“I’m coming in. You promised me as much as I needed. I won’t leave without it!” Drew threw his shoulder into the door with all of his might. It rattled and he heard cracking noises, but the door didn’t open. Drew was panting from the exertion and pain, but he wasn’t about to give up now. He slammed his body against the door again. More cracking noises. He heard shouting noises from inside, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying any more. His own blood was pounding in his head. All he could hear was his own heart beating, about to explode.
Drew gathered his strength and threw his body into the door as hard as he could. The door flew open so quickly that Drew stood there surprised for a moment. He was shocked to be inside the house. A moment later, he heard an explosion and the next thing he knew he was on his back staring at the ceiling.
“I told you to be here before midnight,” the loud booming voice echoed in Drew’s ears. “You’re late. You almost missed the bus.”
“What bus? What are you talking about?” Drew asked from where he lay on the porch. The face that hovered above him wasn’t the boy/man he saw earlier in the day when he got the sandwich, but the voice was the same. Somehow it all still made sense. The man he saw now was wearing a bus driver’s uniform. He had skin dark as coal with dreadlocks sticking out from under his hat and a bushy gray beard.
“If you’d been here before midnight, you could have had all you wanted, but now, it’s time to get on the bus and go,” the voice said, pounding in Drew’s ears. It was still the same voice from earlier, but Drew realized it had a slight Jamaican accent “You should be ‘appy I come around the block one more time fer you.”
Drew stood up and dusted off his clothes. For the first time in a long time, he didn’t hurt anymore. And the burning need in his gut was gone too.
“At least I’m going somewhere,” Drew said to the bus driver.
“Boy, you was always goin’ somewhere,” the bus driver said. “You’re just getting there a little faster now. Doesn’t look like you’ll be scaring the Hell out of anyone now, though.”
Drew stepped onto the bus and took a seat. He could hear the sound of a police siren behind him as the bus pulled away.
*****
The Charleston police officers took the statement from the homeowner, but it was pretty clear what had happened. The homeowner had fired a shotgun at nearly point blank range into the side of the intruder when the man burst through the door. The homeowner stated he had warned the intruder to go away several times, but the intruder hadn’t listened. The homeowner reported the man kept shouting something about not caring about it being after midnight.
“I recognize this mutt,” one of the cops said. “We got a report about him earlier today. He scared some kid out of his lunch. We looked for him, but he was hiding somewhere.”
“I wonder what made him try a home invasion?” the other cop responded.
“Who knows? You know these guys. When they’re looking for a fix, nothing else matters.”