“What the fuck?” I shouted.
I glanced down at my hand as I withdrew it from the remnants of the microwave door, and pulled a shard of hard plastic from between my knuckles. As the wound closed up, I positioned my hand upright, and blood began to run down my arm instead of onto the floor. I walked into the bathroom and ran my hand under the water. As I looked at my reflection, I noticed how frustrated I was.
“You idiot, now we can’t make food anymore,” I pointed at my reflection, “You better calm down. You’ve had all your fun today; I don’t know what else you want.”
As the night drug on, I lay in my bed in the dark, swimming through the chaos in my mind. Every fifteen minutes or so I consumed line after line of powder, adding to the swirl of my thoughts. It was dawning on me that my shadow was getting out of control. Its fuse was getting shorter, its addiction to death stronger. I needed a long term solution, and I needed more money. The assignments I was offered potentially paid very well. Payment ranged from a hundred bucks for a drug pin to around ten thousand dollars for a termination, depending on how dirty the job was. I was never offered the more critical jobs. The assignments I chose were relatively tame. It started to dawn on me that maybe my boss was freezing me out, offering jobs to other people. He would say that I take all the easy jobs and he wished to see more passion in my work. When it came to harming people, setting people up, and blackmailing them, I did not see a correlation with passion but my shadow sure did. If I wanted to eat and survive, perhaps it was time I let it have a little more control.
Chapter Two
Tantalizing and Deadly
The following day I stood in line at the local pharmacy, waiting for a refill on my medication. It was about time to see my doctor, but I had no desire to do so. I received free mental health services from one of the local offices but the help they offered was hardly beneficial at all. They simply push one drug or another to see which cocktail will sedate me sufficiently. On the upside, it was almost as if they let me choose which drugs I would like to be on. They know nothing about my life. I simply take a survey, guide them in conversation to the drug I want, and if they name the drug I don’t want to take, I simply say, “I had an unusual side effect to that drug,” and they move on to the next one.
I felt the eyes of several people on me as I approached the counter. People tended to keep their distance from me, avoiding eye contact and conversation, yet their averted eyes could not mask their intrigue. I glanced behind me to see several other customers waiting in line quickly look downward or toward their phones. It knew I looked like trouble. I had the look of a person on the brink of homelessness. I was stick thin, with an addiction my bones wished to unveil, protruding as they did underneath my skin. My eyes were overcast shadows from sleeplessness and my disposition was as unwelcoming as it possibly could be. Hard to believe only months ago I had enough money to finance a life of simplicity for years.
“Next, please,” came the pharmacist’s voice. I strolled up and placed my hands on the counter, attempting to seem casual and confident.
“Uh, yes, a pickup for Danielle Blake,” I said, and tried to produce a smile, which I felt manifested as only a devious grin. The woman narrowed her eyebrows without response and walked toward another worker in a white coat, who simply waved his hand in the air as if he could not be bothered. She walked back to me as she collected an expression of assertiveness.
“I’m sorry, Miss Blake, but you do not have any more refills available on your prescription.”
“What? That’s crazy. I must have at least two more,” I exclaimed, with false bewilderment.
“No, you don’t. You received your last ninety-day supply on the second of this month, and it is now the nineteenth, you should have seventy-three days left.”
“Oh, of course. Yes. Well, I actually lost those pills, so can I get a replacement?”
“No, we cannot replace them. You will have to speak with your doctor and get a refill or get an alternate script.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. I only have eight pills left,” I said, digging my nails into the skin on the back of my neck.
“I thought you lost your medication?” she said, restating my own words in a monotone. “My suggestion to you is to make an appointment with your doctor as soon as possible, and maybe keep better track of your dosing. Who knows, maybe go to an NA meeting or two. Next!”
She waved for the next person, terminating our conversation. Of course I wanted to react, but I knew my efforts would be futile, so I trudged out of the store and headed back to my apartment. I knew I could probably buy something off of someone, but I had no money.
As I arrived home, I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. I looked down to see a text: “Roots @ 4pm.” I smiled with satisfaction.
I stood in line at the coffee shop, our usual meeting place, on the corner of 4th and Main. Carolina and I always met here when we had to review a
