Young Writers Society

Chapter Four

I leaned against the open doorway of my motel room, watching the foxy brunette walk out to her taxi, red high heels in hand. The cool night air washed over my bare chest, cooling the sweat beading there. The brunette turned and waved as she swung the cab door shut.

As nights go, this one hadn’t been bad, but Sarah - Sara? Sophie? - had work tomorrow so it had all wrapped up a bit too early for my liking. I still felt wide awake, and now I was alone and half naked in an empty motel room with nothing but a needle and an ounce of meth for company.

I heard the door next to mine creak open, and looked over, expecting to see another guy like me, or maybe a prostitute instead. But wide blue eyes stared out at me in shock from the doorway.

“Hey,” I said, starting towards her. “It’s you.”

“Nope.” The girl who mugged me quickly shut the door, but I slipped my hand in just in time. The door crushed my knuckles instead.

“Didn’t your friend already do a good enough job on my face?” I politely enquired, trying not to let the pain show in my voice.

Either my weight pressing against the door finally grew too much for her, or her guilt made her stop fighting back. The door swung open. Her and the two other girls and the little boy stood around the motel room, dirty backpacks on their shoulders, staring at me in alarm.

“We’re sorry we mugged you, you can have your stuff back!” the little blond boy shrieked, reaching for my leather jacket on the bed.

Before he could hand it over, the short girl with black hair grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him behind her. “Get out before we call the cops,” she snarled.

I smiled like a wolf who’d cornered a sheep. “You snuck in here, didn’t you? And you mugged me. You’d only be calling the cops on yourselves.”

The black-haired girl went red around the ears with embarrassment.

“We just want to be left alone,” Blue-eyes said more politely, but her tone of voice still said ‘get the hell out’.

The third girl hung behind blue-eyes, looking nervous. Blue-eyes sure didn’t look nervous; she stood tall and strong, daring for me to touch any of her friends so she could tear me a new one. That’s exactly what her expression said; ‘do it; I’ll chop your balls off’. Black-hair’s expression said ‘I’d already be chopping your balls off right now if I had a knife’. The young boy just looked at me curiously with wide, grey eyes – the same grey eyes as the black-haired girl holding on to his wrist.

“What do you want from us?” Black-hair demanded.

“I want,” I said, a smile spreading across my face, “to help you.”

*

You know what sucks? Going cold-turkey.

Fucking idiot, I thought. You know you should’ve weaned off them.

All day, my heart palpitated, slamming against my rib cage like a bull trying to escape. I lay in bed, the slightest movement causing my heart to pound alarmingly faster. Sweat poured off me. My body shuddered and trembled beyond my control.

Withdrawal symptoms freakin’ suck.

Jasmine brought me a bottle of water and a bucket in case I chucked up. She looked like she didn’t want to stick around, too disgusted to look at me. But when she reached the door, I said in a moment of fever delirium, “It was supposed to be simple.”

Jasmine paused, looking back at me. “What was?” she asked softly.

“Saving the damsels in distress.” I fought the shudders that shot through my core. “I give four homeless kids a home, I give my best friend and his wife four bright children just like they’ve always wanted – everybody wins.”

Everybody except for me. I saw that now. It was so goddam simple in my head at the time. So basic a four-year-old could’ve thought of it. ‘Here! Have some children!’ like a materialistic gift of some kind. Like some huge ‘ta-da, look what I did! Aren’t I great?’

I wasn’t supposed to fall in love. I wasn’t supposed to fuck it all up.

Jasmine walked over and sat beside me. She was always the compassionate, motherly type, so I was expecting her to console me or something.

“Don’t pretend this was for me and John,” she said quietly, her voice shaking with anger. I looked up in surprise. “I saw the way you looked at her from day one. I saw you win her over. I saw you convince her to pressure her friends into meeting John and I. I saw you trick them into thinking that you weren’t an addict so that they would move in. If this was really for John and I, you would’ve let us handle it. You would’ve stayed out of the way. This was for you, and your ego, and your sex life.”

The last part made me lose it. “She’s fifteen! For the last fucking time, I never touched her – not in that way!”

“Well how do I even know what to believe now?” Jasmine exploded, tears in her eyes. “You lied to us for months!” She was all red around the ears. I realised she felt like an idiot for not seeing it sooner. “I don’t know who you are anymore, Joseph. I thought you had just lost your way. I thought with a little compassion and understanding, you’d find it again. John and I trusted you. She was our responsibility, and now she has a fractured skull.” Her voice broke on the last sentence.

Oh, god. “Don’t blame yourself,” I said.

“She was my responsibility,” Jasmine repeated dejectedly. Tears dripped down her cheeks.

“Don’t,” I said desperately, taking her hands in mine. “Blame me. Be angry at me.”

“What kind of a mother would I be if…” She hiccupped in a sob, then pulled away from me. “I hope you feel better soon, Daine,” she said as she walked towards the door. “Because as soon as you do, you’re out.”

*

I lay there on the cool floor, twitching, watching the angle of the light change on the ceiling until the room plunged into blackness. I felt like crap and all I wanted was some vodka. I felt utter panic as my heart continued slamming against my ribs, my chest tightening as it grew harder to breath.

Raven brought me a plate of food that Jasmine had cooked and I think I said thank you and to just leave it on the desk. I thought she’d left. But when I opened my eyes, she was still sitting there. How long had she been there? I had no concept of time.

“Rav, what are you doing here…?” I wondered, my voice croaking and shaking.

“You deserve this,” she said, pulling out a knife. I always knew she was the paranoid one, but crazy? Psycho? Oh, god- I was going to be stabbed to death by Alexis’ crazy half-sister and there was nothing I could do.

I tried to stand, but I collapsed straight away. Raven lunged with the knife, then her whole body fell apart, dissolving into a pile of writhing black worms squirming over each other, inching towards me. I tried to yell out but I don’t think I made a sound.

Light flashed beneath my eyelids every time I blinked. The worms were suddenly the least of my worries as beetles crawled under my skin, painful and itchy. I scratched at them, but my fingernails seemed to glide over my sweat-slicked skin with no affect, I couldn’t even feel them. I felt like I was going to die. A sense of impending doom closed in on me. All I could do was retch and shake and oh god- my nose- blood was pouring out of my nose.

“I’m calling an ambulance,” someone said somewhere.

“I’m gonna die,” I groaned.

Who knows how long I lay shaking and shivering on the floor, scratching at the bugs under my skin, before two paramedics came and lifted me into a gurney and wheeled me over to the ambulance.

“No, no, don’t do that,” one said, grabbing my hands. Do what? I wasn’t doing anything.

Then there was nothing but the long drive. The endless sound of wheels turning over tarmac. I thought we’d never get to the hospital. I thought I would die in the back of the ambulance with no one to care about me, just the apathetic paramedics who’d seen it all before, who didn’t want to take care of a junkie like me.

*

The next week was spent in a different kind of drugged up stupor to the one I was used to. The type where instead of feeling electric and high, I felt nothing at all. Jonathon visited me as soon as the doctors told him I was lucid enough – around the second or third day.

“I’m sorry, Daine.” He was sat by my hospital bed, looking way too serious.

“For what?” I asked, my voice gruff and crackly. My throat tasted like stomach acid. I stared at the white ceiling with its florescent tube lighting. I’d traced the cracks a thousand times, waiting for the pain to stop. It eventually had stopped, and now I was just left feeling empty.

I glanced at Jonathon, watched him shift and look down. Was he ashamed? “If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have started doing drugs in the first place,” he said at last.

I looked away, memories from ages ago running through my mind; meeting Jonathon, doing meth for the first time. I’d felt invincible, like nothing could bring me down, and no one could stop me. I couldn’t even stop myself. “Sure I would’ve,” I grunted.

“No,” Jonathon insisted. “You met me. I was a recreational user; I introduced you to that crap-”

“All three of us were recreational users!” I half-shouted back at him. Didn’t he remember? It was Jasmine too. It was all our friends. Everyone was doing it, nobody cared. “Only I got addicted. It’s not your fault, John. I’m just weak.”

“No, Daine,” he said, and his voice was soft. There was so much care there, so much guilt. No one had ever cared about me like that before. “You were in pain. You started using them more than you should’ve to escape it.”

I said nothing, my teeth gritting and my eyes fixing on the silent TV hanging from the ceiling at the end of my bed. Because he was right, wasn’t he? Goddammit, he was right.

He took my silence as agreement, speaking his next words like he’d won a battle. “So, I’m going to pay for you to go to rehab.”

“That shit’s expensive-” I objected, but he cut me off.

“I have savings.” Jonathon’s flat brown eyes glinted with resolve.

“Jonathon – no. That’s for you and Jasmine to restore that old house – that’s your dream-”

“I can live without it. This is more important. Please, let me help you.”

I sighed, slumping back in the hospital bed. “Rehab, hey?” My eyes met his.

He gave half a smile. “Yep.”

I wouldn’t go. I would prove to Jonathon that I could quit by myself. I’d already made it through withdrawal, I could do the rest on my own.