Lake Hinds, OH
Horse on the shore of a lake (1949) by Giorgio de Chirico
By Aiden Blasi
Johnny Cash was singing something about death on the radio. The bar was nearly empty aside from the bartender and I. I was relieved but not surprised. This place had that tragic air of a dying small business. Then again, you got that feeling pretty much anywhere you went in Lake Hinds. I didn’t go to bars much. If I was drinking, I usually preferred to grab a bottle of the cheapest wine at the liquor store and go home. Even though home was an empty shell of what it used to be, not worth going back to.
My purse was sitting on the stool next to mine, bulkier than it usually was. I reached into it and fumbled for my compact mirror. I hadn't worn this much makeup in years. I’d even curled my hair, not knowing if guys liked curled hair and coats of makeup these days. Noah spent far more time in the mirror perfecting his hair and face than I ever did, even when he was a kid. I looked like a clown. God, was there anything sadder? I tried to remind myself fifty wasn't old, not really, but at the moment I felt decrepit.
My insecurities were cut off when a bell rang across the bar. The door swung open for the first time in the half hour that I’d been there. My heart beat at the walls of my ribcage. It was him. Suddenly the name, the picture, the stories people had told me were all a single person. It all added up to the lanky, slick man before me now. It took all my power not to pounce on him then and there. He was wearing a leather jacket which was trying too hard and serious hazel eyes. He strode over to the bar without hesitation and took his seat four stools down. “Always with the fucking country music, Teddy,” he said. “Would it kill you to play some 80’s or something in here? I’ll even take Springsteen, Christ. It’s depressing.”
The bartender grumbled something in reply and handed him a drink, his unspoken order. I tried my best to watch him without looking. My hands were already trembling around my glass. He didn’t say anything else, but his mere presence, his breathing, his living was deafening. My throat clenched shut and went dry. I tried to loosen it with a few sips from my own glass. A few drinks passed, me sitting there, trying to summon my courage and hoping he wouldn’t feel my stare, him downing the alcohol and playing on his phone.
I opened my mouth to say something. The sound slipped out of my lips and only made it across one bar stool. He didn’t even turn his head. I cleared my throat, then tried again. “I’ll buy your next one,” I managed.
He turned his head and showed me bloodshot eyes and a straight face. “Cheers,” he said.
“What are you drinking?”
“Black Russians. I’m fighting a Cold War.” Already his words were slurred.
I scoffed like I imagined he wanted me to.
“What about you?” he asked.
“Jack and Coke,” I said, although in truth it was only Coke. I wanted to be sober for this.
He nodded. “Jack and I have met a few times.”
His pale knuckles were wrapped around his glass with no sign of letting go. The dew of the glass ran down like rain on a window onto his fingers but he didn’t care. Still, there was nothing to do but try. I got up from my stool and picked up my bag, then moved towards him. I tried not to stumble over my high heels. I hadn’t worn them since my son was born. I landed in the stool next to him and kept my bag on my lap. His eyes wandered down to it. “You got bricks in that thing?”
“Something like that,” I responded.
"My name’s Jay.”
The single syllable sent goosebumps across my arms and a chill down my spine. I already knew, of course, but now he admitted it. He took on his name and everything that went with it. “You won’t remember my name in the morning,” I told him.
He liked that, and gave a little chuckle. “Fair enough. Mom told me never to take drinks from strangers, though."
I grew restless on my stool. I didn't want to talk. I didn't want him to joke. I didn't want to hear the lilt of his laugh. I didn't want to hear about his mother. I would've gone without his name if I could've found him without it. "What'd she tell you about going home with one?" I asked.
He smirked. Anyone could see a trap was laid, but little did he know that it was his leg ensnared, not mine. "Pretty sure that's how I was conceived," he answered.
I hadn't had my chance yet. I was getting too impatient, I knew, but I couldn't bear the waiting, the small talk like everything was normal.
He drew in closer and my stomach dropped. "Why?" he asked. "You wanna get out of here?"
His face was a breath away from my neck when I put my hand up on the bar and felt the cool rim of my glass. It came down to the floor with a sharp shatter. I caught a glimpse of the shards glittering on the floor like headlights. "Fuck," he sighed as he jumped to his feet and helplessly tried to wipe away the coke on his shirt.
I turned and reached into my bag as he crouched down to pick up the pieces. I found the narrow glass bottle, but I barely started unscrewing the lid. "Hey, you two, don't go pickin’ that up," the bartender's voice called out from the back. "I don't got insurance."
Jay stood back up and put an arm around my shoulder. I envisioned the bones in it snapping like twigs. His glass sat on the ledge of the bar in front of me, taunting me. "You know this Jack and Coke smells an awful lot like Coke," he mumbled.
"It is in the name."
He giggled. "Just Coke I mean. Teddy probably ripped you off, I'll talk to him."
“No, don’t-”
“Seriously, he’s an asshole, he deserves it-”
“I’m-” I stammered, trying to come up with something. “I’m an alcoholic.”
His gaze narrowed on me. “What are you doing at a bar then?”
I shrugged. “A girl gets lonely.”
He smiled. “So does a boy. Let’s go.”
“Don’t you want another drink?”
“I don’t think so… If I get too drunk, it… Well, it’ll make things a little al dente, if you see what I mean.”
“I’d like to drink a bit more.”
“More Coke?”
I didn’t have an answer for that.
“Can you drive?” he asked.
I nodded. That I could do.
*
“Jay,” she called out to me, yelling into her phone the way members of the Silent Generation do. I got the call before I heard her car. When I first got her that brand new Buick, the quiet seemed unnatural and eerie to both of us. We’d been around piece-of-shit junkers all our lives. It still looked a little absurd on pothole-ridden roads in front of abandoned factories and mom and pop stores. Like she was wearing a ball gown to a meth lab.
I’d been keeping my phone on silent for the last month, once I got tired of desperate clients and suppliers trying to sound intimidating. I was sitting on the couch, nursing a P.B.R., letting my eyes glaze over while the news played on a muted T.V. Earlier, I had a Smiths record on the turntable, but the needle had run out of music to glide over, and had been spinning silently and hopelessly for the last twenty minutes. When I finally noticed my phone lighting up, she was calling me for the third time.
“What’s up, ma?” I said. “Are you okay?”
“My fuckin’ chair broke,” she answered.
“What?”
“Why aren’t you picking up your phone no more?”
“Too much noise. What did you say about your chair?”
“It fuckin’ broke. The wheel got snagged on a rock in the parking lot at the grocery store.”
“Where’s your backup?”
“It’s at home.”
“That kind of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?”
“Don’t be an asshole, Jay.”
“I’m not being an asshole,” I laughed. “I’m just saying, you’re in a predicament.”
“I know I’m in a fuckin’ predicament. It takes up too much space in the car.”
“Are you still at the store?”
“I’m in your driveway, I’ve been here for ten minutes.”
“Alright, alright, sit tight… Not that you have a choice.”
My house was big enough to feel conspicuously empty when I was home alone. When I got the house, there was someone crashing on the couch or loitering downstairs more days than not, but no one had come in weeks, and I had barely left the house for a month.
When I got to the door I found the Buick outside. She waved to me from the front seat passive-aggressively. Mostly aggressively. I grabbed my leather jacket off the coat hanger and stepped outside. It was drizzling outside with some ominous clouds rolling in from the distance. She was wearing that grey-green, grungy-ass Ohio University sweater she refused to get rid of even after I dropped out. I opened the passenger door and sat down. For a moment, she just stared at me with those eyes I inherited, set in a leathery face with wrinkles that ran like trenches even though she was barely fifty-five. Her hair seemed grayer every time I saw her, and today it was tied back in a messy bun like she used to do when she worked. “What?” I said, piercing the silence.
She smiled. “It’s just good to see you is all. You look good. A little skinny, but good.”
“You too, ma… Alright, come on, let’s go. It’s Thursday, I got my meeting tonight.”
Mom started the car and took hold of the hand controls we’d had installed. As we started cruising off, I turned and inspected the mangled wheelchair tossed in the backseat. She wasn’t kidding; one of the wheels had nearly split in half. “This thing’s fucked, huh?” I said.
She didn’t answer, keeping her gaze on the road. Then, she asked, “So, you’re still going to the meetings?”
I paused. “Yeah. Why wouldn’t I?”
“I don’t know, I just… Well, when we had our… our thing, I don’t know, I just assumed you stopped going, is all.”
“I’m staying clean, ma. Not just for you, for me too.”
“I know, I know, I just- You weren’t always so happy with the meetings, so I assumed…”
“I started going for your sake. I still fucking hate them, but… I can’t stop. For some godforsaken reason. Probably a form of masochism.”
Mom’s house was fifteen minutes from mine. There wasn’t really a center of town to be close to, but she was near all the essentials, like the grocery store and the pharmacy. It was a one story ranch-style, the closest thing to a real wheelchair accessible house between here and Cincinnati. But after we put a little work into it, it did her fine. We argued for a minute about the best way to carry her in. She felt the human crutch was the only dignified method, even though there was no one there to see us. In the end, I just picked her up and slung her over my shoulder like I was a firefighter. She started hollering and giggling and punching my back. I turned around so she could unlock the door from my back, and then I burst in and laid her on the couch, next to a pile of laundry.
I went through the house to the closet where she kept her extra chair. There were stacks of dirty dishes in the kitchen and towers of bills and other pieces of papers on the table and the floor. A dead plant sat in the window and half-read, bumpy covered romance novels were abandoned on every other flat surface. I finally found the chair in a stuffy closet and rolled it out. "Ma," I said, "you can just tell me if you need help around here."
"What are you saying?" she asked as I helped her into the new chair.
"I'm saying it looks like a fucking tornado came through."
"I'm fine. You got a lot going on. You worry about you, alright?"
"I can hire someone to take care of the place."
"How big you think my disability checks are?"
"That’s why I said ‘I.’ You know I got money, ma."
She sighed and wheeled over to the kitchen, then opened the fridge and brought out two beers. She popped one open and took a sip, then tossed the other to me. "We've talked about this, Jay."
"Don't be like that."
“Look, if you wanna give me money, give me clean money, give me the trailer park money-”
“There is no clean money, ma,” I said. “It’s a front. I lose money on that fucking park. Half my people don’t pay their rent, and I’m not gonna put anyone out on the street.”
“Maybe if they weren’t junkies…”
“It sure as shit wasn’t trailer park money that got this house or that Buick, let me tell you.”
“I- I can’t stop you, Jay. I know that now. But I don’t want no part in it anymore.”
“My loans, medical bills, I took care of all that. People died then too, they just didn’t get on T.V.”
“That don’t mean it still has to be that way.”
“You need to live, ma. What’re you gonna do? Go back to carpentry? Fall off another roof and get paralyzed from the neck down this time?”
She looked down at the beer can. She sniffled. I realized she was crying.
“I’m sorry,” I said, like the idiot I am.
“Please, Jay.”
“I can’t give it up, ma, not yet, not now… I lost a lot of money. I had to throw a whole kilo in the lake after…” the rest of the words died in my throat. I always hated things dying in my throat.
“Say it, Jay,” my mom whispered.
“After the kid…”
“How many other kids like that do you think there’s been?” she asked. Her voice broke as she said, “That kid could’ve been you.”
I paused. Then, I dug in my pocket until I felt cool brass on my fingertips. I pulled the token out and showed it to her. Six months. “If you’re worried about me…”
“I’m worried about your fuckin’ brain, kid. You’re not a bad man. You can’t go on doing bad things for long before it eats you.”
I looked at her, matching eyes meeting. “You don’t think it already has?”
“Jay…”
I downed the rest of my beer, and crushed the can. “You got recycling?”
“Jay, I didn’t mean-”
“What do I do with the can, ma?”
“Under the sink. Listen to me, I said ‘You’re not a bad man,’ listen to that part—”
“I don’t wanna do this fight again, ma,” I said, tossing the can in the recycling bin. “Can you take me home? I gotta go to my meeting.”
*
I didn’t have a chance. He wouldn’t give me one. The whole time he had his hazel eyes on me and his pale hands on his drink. If he had just gotten up to piss I’d be halfway home. If he had just stayed down a few seconds longer and let me get at his drink, it’d be over already. This was supposed to be the easy part. He was supposed to be on another planet by now. A lot of things were supposed to be. The only thing that I could do now was survive and improvise.
He was so drunk he had to lean on me in the parking lot. Or maybe it was just a game to touch me a little sooner. Either way, every muscle in my body wanted to toss him off me and smash his head on the pavement. Instead, I let him use me as a crutch all the way back to his car. It was some kind of vintage muscle car, old and ugly like a washed up bodybuilder. I threw him down in the passenger seat and got in the driver’s, and put my bag in between us on the center console. He neglected to buckle in, the way Noah used to until I yelled loud enough because it didn’t look cool. I didn’t say a word now. The car took a few tries to start, and the rain made everything slick, but soon enough we were out of the parking lot.
It gets empty fast in Lake Hinds. We weren’t down the road five minutes before the only signs of human life on the plains were distant farms and wooden fences that circled ranches somewhere behind the horizon. At night, the only light is the moon, the stars, and your headlights. But that night was a black one, the clouds that clapped above us blocking out heaven. The world seemed to end after the asphalt, until flashes of lightning revealed seas of grass which hardly looked more alive than the blackness.
I had hoped he would pass out all on his own and make my life that much easier, but eventually he spoke up. “So, are we going to your place or mine?”
I kept my eyes on the road.
“Maybe a particularly romantic parking lot…”
“Where do you live?” I asked.
“Not far… On the east side of town, past the old meat packing factory.”
I nodded, but didn’t answer his question.
I could feel his eyes on me as I drove on in silence. He stopped slouching in his seat and watched the darkness roll by out the window. A handful of lightning flashes and a couple farms later, he said, “So, where are we going?”
“I thought maybe we could go out to the lake,” I answered, slowly, not meeting his gaze. Another flash lit up the cabin of the car. “Maybe skinny dip a little. I live around there.”
“You think it’s a good idea to swim in a storm like this?”
I swallowed hard. “We’re going to the lake, okay?”
It was the first true thing I’d said to him all night, and this time he didn’t have a witty response. The lake was maybe fifteen minutes away. All I had to do was keep him in the car and off of me. The only sound was the thunder above us and the mechanical symphony of the car beneath us. I wanted to reach out and turn on the radio just for a little more noise, but I knew I couldn’t afford the distraction. He might’ve been drunk and it might’ve been dark enough that he couldn’t see the sweat I left on the steering wheel or the color rushing out of my face, but he must have heard the tremor in my voice. My heart was thumping in my ears, maybe he could hear it too. He had to know. Or maybe he didn’t know, but he had to know that something was wrong.
A few flashes of lightning later, I noticed his face growing closer in the side of my eye. Then his hand was moving. His head was over my handbag on the center console, looking down.
“Don’t look in my bag,” I snapped.
He froze as another bolt of lightning lit up his face. “I didn’t- I wasn’t-” he stammered.
I grabbed my bag and moved it onto my lap. “We’re gonna go to the lake,” I repeated, and he was silent once more.
I took one hand off the steering wheel and slipped it into my bag. After a few seconds of groping, I found the handle of my pistol and kept my hand wrapped around it. I was hardly subtle.
He sat up in his seat once more and reached for the glove compartment slowly. I saw a flash of steel and braced myself, but he reached for something else. Next thing I knew, he was reaching out a hand to me. I turned to see a little stick wrapped in foil clasped in his fingers. He’d left the glove compartment open and let me see the revolver. That was even less subtle. “Gum?” he asked.
I turned back to the road, back to the storm and the blackness. “I’m good.”
“You sure?” he insisted, waving the pack at me. “Spearmint. Sugar-free… Suit yourself.” He shrugged, putting the gum in his own mouth then shutting the glovebox.
*
You ever notice how churches smell a certain sort of way? Like the holy ghost is a cloud of must and stuffy air. Well, the basement of a church is even worse. Outside, it was cool and stormy, but in the basement the smell of stale coffee and depression lay over us all; it was like trying to breathe with a blanket over your face. Plus, all of us were sat in these Kafkaesque steel folding chairs which I didn’t have a fat enough ass to be comfortable in. We had spent the last two minutes and thirty seven seconds in complete silence, the ineffectual whipping of an electric fan in the corner the only noise. Father Wyatt had run out of hot air to blow and returned to his seat and now it was the group’s turn to speak or “silently meditate,” a process which usually entailed staring at the filthy off-white tile floor until blood erupted from my forehead out of sheer agony. I never spoke. The first week, I almost broke, until I realized this wasn’t my place to speak. The “Anonymous” part had never applied for me.
There were less than a dozen of us regulars, and most of us had run out of stories to tell. Every now and then a new one would wander through, and sometimes they even stuck around. Sometimes we saw their name in the news before the next meeting. Most often they simply disappeared.
There was one new girl at this meeting. She was a skinny, wiry thing, might’ve been young but it was hard to tell with the real junkies. She recognized me as soon as she walked in, as they always did, but it took me a minute, as it always did. I didn’t remember her name, but her rat-like face was familiar. After another fifteen seconds, she stood meekly and made her way to the podium our chairs were circled around. She was wringing her hands and didn’t look at any of us. Her forehead was dotted with sweat, but then again, so was mine. “I’m Hannah,” Rat said.
She practically flinched as she was met with a weak, raspy chorus of “Hi, Hannah.”
She hesitated for a moment, then stuttered unintelligibly like an old motor for another before she finally started talking. “I—I got this… this fucking guinea pig, when I was like fifteen or something.”
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. The crazy ones always yammered on for ages.
“It wasn’t even my guinea pig. My mom got it. She was always doing dumb shit like that, while we were living off food stamps and child support. She loved animals. Every few years she’d come home with a… puppy or a kitten or whatever… One time, she got a fucking iguana. Anyway, after about a week or two she’d realize she couldn’t take care of the thing and surrender it to a shelter, and my little brother would get traumatized all over again.” She shook her head as if in disbelief. “We kept the fucking guinea pig, though. Which pissed me off. She never took care of the stupid thing, and my kid brother sure as shit wasn’t gonna do it. So, I was stuck feeding this thing that I didn’t want and didn’t want me, just trying not to kill it. Trying not to fuck something up for once.
“I started doing heroin when I was eighteen. My boyfriend thought it’d be fun to do together. He died last August. I knew my mom was doing it too, and I mean, she was fucked up, but she wasn’t fucked-up-fucked-up, ya know? That year, the cops got her and put her in a sober house, and then a prison when she bit off a nurse’s finger. My little brother got sent to Michigan to live with some cousins we never met, and me and Pork Chop were out on our own. Pork Chop is the… guinea pig. Obviously.” She paused. I heard her fight a lump in her throat and the tears in her eyes. She gripped the podium to stop her hands shaking until her knuckles were white. “That stupid fucking rat was the only family I had. I was living in a trailer and I used to let him just walk around everywhere. He didn’t have a cage, just a little bed and a pile of newspaper and his food. I was working two jobs, and at night I’d come home, sit on the bed, and shoot up. He’d crawl up next to me and sleep with me every night.
“Last December… I was getting real low on money… But I... I had health insurance with one of my jobs, and I thought… I—” she stammered. She was really crying now. “I grabbed a hammer and I just- I fucking wailed on my foot until all my toes were broken. And then I drove myself to the E.R. and they gave me a codeine prescription.
“The next night I- I went to a bar with one of my friends from work on crutches and got absolutely blasted, and then I-... I just kept popping them, one after the other, all fucking night. I woke up in the hospital, strapped into a fucking machine with a tube down my throat. I spent another two weeks lying there. I couldn’t talk the whole time, I was just writing on a yellow fucking legal pad. I had to relearn how to walk before I got out of there. All the doctors said I should’ve died.
“When they did let me out, I got home and… I smelt it as soon as I walked in. No one knew me well enough to remember my fucking guinea pig. Pork Chop was… He got hungry and started eating wires and… got zapped.” She trailed off, and gazed at some distant horizon. Suddenly, she snapped back, and for the first time, looked up at the rest of us. “I don’t know what the point of that story is.”
Hannah lingered at the podium for another second. Then, as if snapping out of a trance, her eyes wandered back to the floor and she drew back into herself, scuttling off back to her seat. It always goes like dominoes; after the first brave soul stands up, the bravery gets contagious. Mark told us about the second time he overdosed for the third time. He cried again. Abby immediately tried to one up him by telling us all four of her O.D. stories. They shot me dirty glances when she told us about the “favors” she did for her dealer when money got low, even though I wasn’t even her dealer. There was always a few of those every week. How the fuck was I supposed to respond to that? Did they expect me to get on my knees and flagellate myself for them?
After the fifth speaker, I couldn’t take it any longer: the holy fluorescent lights, the dilated gazes, the yellow scowls. The fucking heat. I was suffocating. I rose to my feet, pushing my chair away and making it screech on the tile floor. Every head snapped towards me. I put down my coffee on the chair and shuffled towards the podium, the only noise my boots scuffing against the floor. I leaned forward resting my elbows on the podium and looking out at a crowd of eyes who hated me to my core. Not quite an army, but more than enough. I took a pause to really soak it in.
“My name’s Jay,” I began.
There were a few scattered greetings from amongst my audience, but most of them were silent.
“But most of you knew that. I don’t know why so many of you were surprised to see me here. I mean, I shot up with half of you. I have a right to be here too, I have a right to get better. You can’t take that from me.” I realized that I was near tears already. I took a deep breath or two, feeling the buzz I developed earlier and realizing that pregaming a Narcotics Anonymous meeting may have been a poor choice. “I’m sorry, I don’t wanna get emotional. It’s just… I’m the same as all of you. We were all living shitty lives with shitty jobs in this shitty town. The town doesn’t even have its own fucking name, just the lake. What the fuck else are you supposed to do around here besides pick up a four hundred dollar a week heroin habit, right? And, let’s say, all that’s coming out of your mom’s disability checks. So, maybe you do a couple things which leave your body and your pride sore, but eventually you get enough cash to buy in bulk. Only thing is, soon as you find yourself with half a kilo of heroin in your hands, you realize there’s no way you’re gonna survive the week. So, you start distributing it, let’s say. For your own good. For your mother’s sake. First, you just give some out to your friends at a very reasonable price. And you’ve already tested it yourself, so you know that it’s good, and that slightly lowers the chance of you having to iron that one black tie you own any time in the near future. But your friends got their friends, who they can all vouch for, so they become your friends. And then those new friends got their friends who have cash and just as much need as your friends. By now, you got a reputation as someone who sells good shit at a decent price. So, every dealer in the next few states wants to work with you, and they know you test it yourself, so they only give you the purest shit they can get their hands on. Now, congratulations, you’re a mid-to-high level dealer who knows a guy in New York who knows a guy in Miami who knows a guy in Shanghai.
“Hypothetically, that is,” I added. I thought the basement was silent before, when I stood up to go to the podium, but now the quiet was maddening, deafening. I tried to fill it more. “And that’s even better than the heroin. For the first time in your whole life just not being worried all the time. You know it’s wrong. You know it’ll be the death of you, but now what do you do? Maybe you get clean, but then you don’t know what you’re selling. Then kids are dying. If you stop selling, you got… nothing. You can’t stop. And if the kid didn’t buy it from you, he’d buy it from someone on the other side of town, right? Right?”
There was no answer.
“I didn’t ask for any of this. I was gonna go to college. Before my mom got hurt. I was gonna be a nurse. I was gonna get out of this town. I had it all figured out. But it’s fucking quicksand, man… It’s all quicksand, no matter where you step.”
I looked at them, circled around me. My shirt was stained with sweat and I could tell my face was flushed with red. Father Wyatt stared at me with those big dumb eyes of his. I sold him half a gram a few months ago. I made it a policy not to sell to anyone at the meetings, but I just couldn’t say no to that face.
I returned to my chair to grab my jacket, and then I left. I wasn’t gonna stick around for more coffee and conversation this week. I needed something stronger.
*
The lake was as black as the rest of the fucking state. In the flashes of the storm, I could see the water was choppy and covered with ripples from the rain that came down like bullets. I drove right up the edge of a cliff that Noah used to do jumps off of in the summers when he was a teenager. He’s still a teenager, I guess. He’d never not be a teenager, at least. He’d be sixteen forever now.
We sat there for a long time, my hand on the gun, his on the denim over his knees. Or maybe it was only seconds, but it felt like years. I started counting the flickers of lightning, but I lost track. If he had just given me a chance to get at his drink, none of this would be happening.
“So…” he said. “What happens now?”
I was struck dumb for a moment. I was looking for the answer to that question too. Improvise. “I’ve got drugs.” I blurted out, probably sounding like a cop.
He paused. “Okay.”
“Ket—Ketamine… K, you know?”
He nodded and sighed. Somehow he seemed disappointed. “Good for you.”
All I had to do was play the dumb slut a little longer. “Do you… wanna try it with me?”
His face was barely visible but I knew he was staring at me, at my purse. What was in that stare, I couldn’t tell, even in the lightning flashes. “I’m…” he began. “I’m not really about that. Not anymore.”
“Come on,” I forced a laugh. “I don’t wanna do it alone.”
He didn’t laugh. “I’m a fucking junkie, man.”
“This isn’t like that,” I stammered, trying to remember the lines the guy who sold it to me used. “It’s medicine. They use it in surgeries.” He was a technician in the vet’s office with a little side business. “It’s- It’s not addictive or nothing-”
“I was at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting before this,” he snapped. His words were slurred, swimming through all the alcohol and the anger. “I don’t do that anymore. People fucking die. I don’t do shit like that. I don’t wanna sound like a D.A.R.E. lecture, but…”
I stayed quiet, letting my own anger seethe and marvelling at the fucking gall he had. “You sure?” I whispered, barely keeping it together.
“Yes. And frankly, you can put that shit away or get the hell out of my car and walk home.”
Another moment of silence passed. I exhaled sharply, then slid the pistol out of my hand bag and stuck it in his face. I prayed that he couldn’t see my face or the fear that must have been on it, but we were close enough that I could see his: the sweat beading on his forehead, his bloodshot eyes, the tremor in his lips. He wasn’t surprised exactly, but he was scared shitless. I wanted to relish that fear but somehow it was contagious. “Put your hands up,” I said. He hesitated. I couldn’t bear to look at his face a second longer. “Put your fucking hands up,” I pleaded.
He did. His palms reached up towards the soft headliner of the car. “The K…”
“I wanted to slip it in your drink,” I said. For some reason it sounded like an apology.
“What do you need?” he stammered. “You need money? I can give you money, no problem.” There was something like pity in his eyes. “I’ve got a gun,” he said. “I don’t much like using it… I’m sure we can resolve this diplomatically. I’ve got more money than I need. Why don’t you just put your gun down, and then… then we can figure it out…”
I stared at his hands. That was easier. I reached over his lap to open the glovebox and feel for the revolver. Finally, I scrambled up its handle and took it out of his reach, stuffing it in my jacket pocket. “Keep those fucking hands up,” I ordered, trying to sound brave.
“You’ve got mine. I don’t think you need yours anymore… How much money do you need?”
“I don’t want your money.”
“Product? You need some product? Fine, fine, but I don’t keep it in my car, if you can bring me to-”
“I’m not a goddamn junkie,” I shouted at him, waving the gun in his face. I finally looked in his eyes again and he was finally the scared one. “But my son was.”
He stared at me blankly.
“Noah. Turner.”
His jaw practically dropped, opening almost as wide as those hazel eyes of his. “Oh shit,” he said. “Fuck. You’re…” His eyes pleaded with me. If we weren’t in a car, he would’ve fallen to his knees. “Look, I- I know it doesn’t make a difference to you, but I never meant for that to happen. I never meant for any of this to happen-”
“Shut up,” I whispered.
“You gotta believe me, I never wanted anyone to die. I never wanted to be this.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“I didn’t know the shit was laced, I— usually I test all the shit I get myself, but-”
“Shut the fuck up,” I screamed, thrusting the gun in his face. “You sold poison. To kids.”
“I never sell to kids, he— he told me he was—”
“You’re lying.” I told myself I wouldn’t cry. Not anymore. “He was a good kid, he was good, and you killed him.”
He was crying too. I wanted to laugh at him, but I couldn’t. “Mrs. Turner,” he said. “You don’t wanna do this. Turn me in to the police, I deserve it, I’ll- I’ll confess. I- I got a mom too, she needs me.”
I stared at the sights of my gun instead of his eyes. My hands wavered. “Have you ever killed anyone?” I asked him, then added, “Looking them in the eye, I mean.”
He hesitated. “No.”
I managed a scoff. “You’re the drug dealer here.”
“I promised my mom.”
A silence and a few flashes of lightning passed. “You’re still a killer.”
“I know.”
“How do you do it? To complete strangers… I have every reason to kill you, and still…” I can’t.
“You don’t have to do anything.”
I looked at the lake. “Do you remember him?”
Thunder rolled. “Yeah,” he responded after a minute. “I do.”
People always liked Noah. He made sure, because he was deathly afraid of them not liking him. Or worse, not noticing him. He needed a group, safety in numbers. He found that in the football team. Then he hurt his knee and lost his future, his youth, and his team in one dirty tackle. But he liked sharing, and with a few rattles of his painkiller bottles he got his new friends. All he ever wanted was to be seen.
“He really did seem like a good kid,” the bastard said. “We didn’t really talk much. He was with guys I know, they vouched for him, he didn’t look so young, I- I should’ve…”
“No.” The word burst out of my chest almost against my will. “You don’t get to speak anymore.”
I reached into my bag again until I found a little glass bottle and a needle. Without looking away from my gun, I unscrewed the lid, dipped the needle in, and drew up some of the liquid. It smelled like chemicals and cotton candy, like sugar and metal. My hands were shaking, and I felt some of it splash on my lap. As soon as I looked down, I heard him say, “I’m so fucking sorry.”
Before I knew what was happening, he was on top of me. I looked up and his face was less than an inch from mine. His weight crushed the wind out of me against the cold metal of the car door, both my arms pinned against the window. His fingernails dug into my wrists like claws, trying to wrench the gun away. The gun went off, and it was like one of the lightning bolts hit us. My ears were ringing so loud that I couldn’t hear myself scream. I was thankful for the deafness. It was bliss. It made it all less real, like a dream or a movie with the sound off. I watched his scrawny arms tremble as he summoned all his strength. What muscle he had was bulging like they were gonna pop off the boney rods grabbing me. Something wet dripped onto my cheek and brought me back to reality. I looked up to see tears in his eyes.
He was a boy. He was the man who killed my boy. He was afraid of me. He was going to kill me.
It would’ve been so easy to let him. If I closed my eyes, I wouldn’t even have to watch. But if he killed me, I wanted him to look in my eyes while he did. I wanted him to feel it, more than he felt selling a teenager a needle. He had to see me. But with my eyes open, all I could see was Noah.
I had lost the needle. I spit in his face. He flinched as some spittle dripped back on my face, maybe mine or maybe his. I flailed my legs until I hit something and hit it hard. I swung my hips from side to side as quickly as I could, crashing all my weight against his. His legs were draped over the center console and his feet were against his door from the lunge across the car. I curled my legs up to my chest and kicked, trying to push him away. He squeezed tighter on my right wrist until his fingernails pierced the skin and I felt warmth trickle down my arm. I kicked harder. His hand slipped off my left arm, though I was still close enough to feel his breath. I reached down to find the syringe, brushing the flooring with my finger tips. His right hand crashed into my face. I felt my nose rearranging beneath the blow and tasted blood in my throat. I felt something cold and metal, grabbed onto it. My hand came up with the needle as another punch hit my face. My eyes watered as the bridge of my nose stung. All I could smell was sweet iron.
I stabbed towards the crook of his left arm, where the vet technician showed me. He blocked my arm when the needle got mere inches from his skin. I could see the vein in his arm bulging with his muscle, the faded track marks from a hundred needles before this one. I wondered if Noah’s arms would look like that now if it wasn’t for the fentanyl. “Please,” he said, but I did my best not to hear.
His arm trembled and started giving way. My own hand was steady. I was strong. For the first time since Noah died, I was strong. I was alive. Death was still inevitable but so was I.
When the needle punctured his arm I felt the high before I even pressed the plunger in. It would take another minute or so for him. The clear liquid mixed with blood then I pushed it back into him. He didn’t scream. He clawed at my hand holding the gun a few more times, but soon he lost his grip and just laid inert over the center console, panting. He was covered in blood. My blood. It was on me too, my shirt clinging to my chest like a wet blanket. “I wasn’t worth it,” he sighed, sliding back into his side of the car. He propped himself up to look out at the lake. “You poor, stupid bitch.”
I barely heard him over the rumbling thunder. I sat with him for another eternity. Out of the corner of my eye I watched him melting into the interior, his limbs going limp and his head slouching into the window. My hands trembled. I stepped out of the car to vomit off the cliffside. More DNA. I didn’t give a fuck. It felt good, which made me feel bad, but that bad didn’t wash out the good, nor the good the bad.
I returned to the car and walked around to the passenger side. When I opened the door, his head flopped out and hung helplessly. He was mumbling in some language no one knew, least of all him. His eyelids were half open and occasionally fluttered, and the eyes beneath were glazed and bloodshot. I shut them for him. In his hand was a bronze coin. On one side, it was emblazoned with “6 Months” and words like “God,” “Freedom,” and “Goodwill.”
It took me too long to catch my breath and prop him up in the driver’s seat, thanking God that he was so skinny as I did. I put the car in neutral and buckled him in.
The other side of the coin read, “That no addict seeking recovery need ever die.”
Aiden Blasi is a writer currently based out of Massachusetts. He recently graduated from the University of Vermont, double majoring in English and Psychological Science. His other interests include surreal horror movies, international fusion music, and conspiracy theories (but not in a weird way).