“One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love.” – Sophocles

 

It took only eleven minutes for my world to tear apart at the seams. Through my inaction and stupidity, I was the rusty nail that the yarn of my being caught on and unravelled.

 

December 24th - 9:23 PM

 I pulled into the driveway of my dealer, Claude. My affectionate nickname for Claude was Sirr – an abbreviation of serpent, because of the poison he sold. I needed a pre-Christmas gift - for myself.

 

Sirr lived in one of those tiny townhouses that are joined with its neighbour – a fact that was most annoying when you wanted to have a loud, wild party. The neighbours forever complained about the noise, and if it wasn’t because of a party, it was because Sirr was playing Slayer, Megadeth and other death-metal bands at an ear-shattering volume. This was the case when I pulled up – I could hear ‘Raining Blood’ by Slayer just breaking through to the chorus. I locked my cheap Toyota as I walked up the path, and rang the doorbell numerous times, hoping Sirr would hear it over the screaming vocals coursing through the small building.

 

My prayers were answered – Sirr opened the door shortly after I rang the bell. “Felix!” he shouted, the music still blaring over top of him. “Come on in!”

 

I walked in and kicked off my shoes, still encrusted with mottled brown and white snow. “Don’t get snow all over my ##!#ing house!” Sirr yelled as a particularly large clod of snow shot across the entrance to the living room.

 

“Can you turn down the music just a little man?” I implored him, ears already beginning to ring.

 

“Sure, sure!” he smiled. His cheery mood informed me that he had already fed his own filthy habit. This was good news – it meant he’d give me a good price or a good quantity for my money.

 

Sirr turned down the endless anti-religious wails of the Slayer CD to a human level. “So, what can I do you for my man?” he asked.

 

“A hit for now, and I’ll buy some more before I get out of here for later,” I answered.

 

“Sounds good, sounds good,” he rambled, his mind scratching the upper mesosphere, leaving his body to act of its own accord.

 

He walked over to his diminutive kitchen and pulled out his stash, doling out enough for a solid Felix-sized hit. “Get the @@#* over here and do this,” he commanded jovially.

 

“You got gear here?” I asked.

 

“Yea, but you’re not @#&!ing sharing needles with me. You remember Scott? He’s positive now. He hasn’t gone full-blown AIDS, but he’s HIV-positive.”

 

“!&!#, you serious? I think I shared with him before. Jesus Sirr, I could be &#&%ing positive myself!” I gasped.

 

“You’re not #@$%ing positive…trust me. Take the test if you want a doctor to back me up.”

 

“You better believe I will. But we’re getting off on a tangent here…pass me one of your spoons, would you?”

 

I cooked up, slowly stirring the brown powder until every granule of the drug had dissolved. Taking every last dreg into the syringe, I pulled out a fresh needle to cap it with – courtesy of the safe injection site. Letting the readied syringe wait on the countertop, I ripped off my belt and made a tourniquet with it around my left arm, just above the elbow. Tapping up a vein, I pricked it before it could sink back down into my arm. I pushed in a little of the heroin – and then drew it back, a faint swirl of red polluting the lovely brown in the syringe, before slamming the entire cocktail back into my vein. My eyes rolled back into my skull, and my lips parted into the soft o’s of pleasure that accompanies a hit – for non-junkies, the soft o’s that people get during sex.

 

I remember hearing Sirr say something like, “It’s good &^*$ing @$!#, Felix,” before I was lost to the high.

 

9:52 PM

 I called Felix earlier, wondering if he was free tonight. There was no answer, so I left a message on his voicemail. That had been around nine. I was now getting antsy – usually when he doesn’t answer, it means he’s using, about to use, or just used.

 

A lot of people ask me why I’m still with Felix, even though his first love is heroin. I usually give people a polite, vague answer, and hope that they don’t press the issue. To the people that are truly close to me, I confide in them a little more. I know that if I left Felix, he’d just end up OD-ing. I’m the one that is keeping the demons just barely at bay.

 

Plus, I love him. If I abandoned him in his time of need, what would that say about me?

 

10:03 PM

 I decide to watch TV and wait for Felix to return to Earth and give me a call. I nearly laugh at my pun – if my theory is correct – as it usually is – he really isn’t on Earth right now.

 

10:05 PM

 I think I just heard something outside – but I’m probably just paranoid.

 

10:07 PM

The weather section of the news is on to the TV. The weatherman makes some vague predictions – and I see a burly man walk into the room, balaclava donned and knife in hand.

 

“Get on the %$%%ing ground!” he yells at me.

 

“Don’t hurt me! Please, don’t hurt me!” I scream, following his order.

 

As he moves towards me, all I can think is, I wish Felix was here. I wish Felix was here.

 

December 25th – 5:59 AM

 I woke up on Sirr’s couch, the feeling of dried drool on the corner of my mouth. It was still dark – I wondered what time it is. Checking my cell phone, I saw the time switch from 5:59 to 6:00 AM.

 

“$^Fuck…” I mumbled. “Why the !@#! did I wake up this early…?”

 

I then noticed the voicemail icon on my phone, and realized what day it is. “Oh, &@@$ me…” I cursed, reality hitting me as hard as the come-down will shortly. I opened my voicemail, and listened to the messages.

 

“Hi Felix…it’s me…Celene…I’m just wondering where you are…I thought we were going to do something tonight, but I know you have your own life. Give me a call when you get this…bye… MESSAGE LEFT…EIGHT…FIFTY…THREE…PM.”

 

“I am such a @*$!-up,” I chided myself. I rolled over, and decided to sleep for another hour or so. Things couldn’t get any worse than they already were – at least, that’s what I thought at the time.

 

8:03 AM

 Regaining consciousness, I found Sirr passed out in a jumbled mess of sheets and blankets in his bedroom.

 

“Sirr…wake up…Sirr…get the @!$! up…CLAUDE! WAKE THE *%$% UP!”

 

Sirr doesn’t like being called by his name. He thinks Claude sounds pretentious and uppity – so if you need to ever wake him up quickly, you use his actual name – because the people he associates with using his actual name are the police, paramedics, and worst of all – his parents.

 

“Wha…what’s going on?” he stuttered, trying to extricate himself from his sleep-induced stupor.

 

“I’ve got to #&&^ing go man…I need to grab some @$$^ off you before I go though.”

 

“Alright…you count out what you need, I’ll be…I’ll be right down,” he yawned.

 

Counting out half a hit’s worth, along with five hit’s worth for later use, I wait for Sirr to make his way downstairs by cooking up the half-hit. When he does, I toss him the money, do the half-hit, and get out of there, speeding to Celene’s for the day’s festivities.

 

8:12 AM

 The panic I felt upon seeing the police at Celene’s was twofold – one, because of the quantity of highly-illicit drugs I was carrying – two, because that meant something happened there.

 

Pulling up to the house, I park on the side of the street. Getting out of my car, I locked the doors and walked towards the police officers present at the scene.

 

“I’m sorry sir, but we’re going to have to ask you to leave…there is nothing here you want to see,” a stocky cop informed me.

 

“What the @%*! does that mean?” I asked, a lead ball forming in my throat. “My *!%!ing girlfriend lives here! What the *$^^ happened?!”

 

“Peters, get over here!” the cop yelled, calling a tall, lanky officer over. “I can’t deal with the second-hand casualties.”

 

“Sir, can we talk over here?” Peters asks me. “We can’t have any contamination of the crime scene.”

 

“Yes…I mean, what the %$#@ happened? Crime scene? What crime?”

 

Peters sighed, the lines around his eyes lengthening. “Sir…this is not easy for me to tell you, and I didn’t even know your girlfriend. Someone broke into her house and…and…”

 

Peters stopped, biting his lower lip. “I’m sorry sir. Someone…raped her, before they stabbed her to death.”

 

The news temporarily turned off the part of my brain responsible for motor function, causing my knees to give out. The heroin still in my veins numbed the pain of my bones smashing against the concrete, but it did nothing to soften the emotional pain felt from the information I had been given.

 

The volume of the world around me shrank to the point of being muted – I saw Peters’ mouth moving, and a paramedic running over to help me. I said no – or at least, I think I did – I didn’t hear myself say it, but my mouth made the shape necessary to vocalize that word. My denial of aid was not accepted – the paramedic helped me over to the ambulance, and sat me down. At the time I didn’t realize it, but I was scant inches away from Celene’s corpse, wrapped in a body-bag, lying supine on a stretcher inside.

 

All I remember thinking is, This was my fault.

  

December 28th – 10:10 PM

 I later learned that she had tried to call me, after the guy raped her, and before he killed her. Her blood-stained fingers clutched the phone to the very end, my cell dialled, with one mis-pressed number. I learned this, because the police didn’t know the significance of the number when they first found her. While I was bombed out of my box on smack, she was being violated, desecrated and debased. While I was dreaming of my next hit, she was being stabbed, bleeding out on the living room floor.

 

It seemed fitting then, what I decided to do in response to my impotence as a human being. The five hits I had purchased off of Sirr were cooked and ready for injection.

 

If she had died because of my drug abuse, it was only fitting that I died from it too.

 

The first hit is ecstasy – the second, mind-splittingly euphoric. My heart fibrillates and then -

 

 

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