by Alex Hughes
I caressed the side of the bottle again, almost tasting the salt of my poison. It would feel so good….
But I saw the death in it this time. Saw the results of that path.
And I realized something, something huge—and something I’d known quietly, obviously, for weeks.
I wanted to be clean. Not just not shooting up at the moment; not just not taking my drug today, but to truly not be a junkie. I wanted to be a real person; I wanted the life I was building. I wanted to be clean.
I put my hand down, away from the bottle, cursed myself for a fool—who knew when I’d get another chance at this?—and searched through the white-laminated wooden cabinets and drawers until I found a packet of aspirin. I also found a pile of quarters, which I took. Then I hauled ass out of there, away from temptation, as far away as I could.
The vending machine was down the hall, next floor down, and if I remembered right, it had good, cold water for sale.
But with every step I took away from the mother lode, I paused. Then I made myself take the next one. I was going to regret this for weeks, like bitter gall. Weeks. Years, maybe.
And maybe, just maybe, not at all.
Despite all the promises of backup, the return trip to the lab was uneventful. I announced myself before walking in the door.
“What took you so long?” she complained, her voice rough and testy.
I knelt down next to her and offered my spoils.
The aspirin was easy. But half of the water ended up on the tiled floor—she wasn’t good at drinking lying down, probably not enough hangovers—but in the end she got it down.
I settled down next to her, leaning on the leg of the lab table, watching Bradley’s chest go up and down. The blood from his shoulder slowly stopped. And I waited.
I wanted to offer to fix her headache, to use the shape of my mind in Mindspace to reset her mental polarity, reboot her brain waves—I used to be really good at that. It wasn’t exactly a low-stakes procedure—one of my students had made a migraine permanent; another put a guy in a coma I’d had the hardest time getting him out of. But I used to be really good at it. Good enough to stop the migraines completely for a couple of months.
I wanted to offer; I wanted to ride in and be the hero, to fix everything. Make her grateful, make her proud. Maybe with the link she could have read my confidence, maybe she would even have let me do it. And maybe pigs would fly outside of an aircar. But I wanted to offer.
I couldn’t, though, not now. More burned out than I’d been since I was a teenager, I could feel literally nothing but the inside of my own thoughts. I’ve sprained something, I thought, in my head. Who knew what I’d have to do to fix it. Who knew if I even could. I held on to the annoyance I’d felt from her earlier, a thin, faint feeling; I held on to that feeling like a lifeline.
Exhaustion swept over me like waves on a seashore. And by the time Branen, Paulsen, and another set of SWAT showed up, I was out cold.
They couldn’t wake me up by screaming at me—so Paulsen shook me awake, her hand on my neck. She was pissed—pissed and relieved; I could see it on her face. But I couldn’t feel it.
I let her help me up and push us to the ambulance-flyer.
CHAPTER 30
Cherabino’s side was so taped, she could barely walk. She’d made me go with her to buy a black button-down shirt. Carry everything for her. Hold the keys. Because, she said, we were going to the funeral.
We stood in the back of the tiny group of mourners, squinting at the bright sunlight. The department and the Guild had competed to see who could send the largest—and most ornate—set of flowers.
People got up to say quiet, awkward things about a man no one quite seemed to know. Neil had gotten himself into unimaginable trouble but then had somehow decided to end it. Tipping off the police to Joey’s involvement had been at considerable personal risk. It boggled the mind.
I regretted deeply not arguing more with Paulsen, not acting on the vision sooner. Not pulling strings with Kara. Not sticking it out with Cherabino. Maybe if I’d done more, said more…
But then I looked over at Cherabino, battered and bruised but still very much herself. And I could feel her tiredness, just a little, through the link. If I could feel no one else, I could feel her. And maybe that was enough.
Pay attention to the preacher, she snapped at me mentally.
So I put my eyes back on the little man talking about ashes to ashes, and a life ending. No one was crying, and no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t either. I couldn’t even manage sadness—just guilt, inexplicable, unreasonable guilt, and it ate at me stronger than a supercancer.
The funeral home started the machine that would lower the flower-covered coffin. It squeaked horribly, and we all tried to pretend it didn’t.
Cherabino accidentally met my gaze and looked away. She was learning to lock me out more and more, but had chosen not to today. She was starting to understand I panicked without some kind of mental connection with the world. I’d tried to tough it out one too many times, and she’d caught on. But, with respect, I kept it light and let her control the connection. I was in no position to push for anything.
Bradley was still in a coma at the hospital, and there was talk about bringing in a Guild expert to fix whatever was wrong with him before he stood trial. Kara wanted me to be there, to talk the expert through what I’d done. I wanted more than anything to leave the Guild to it—to rub their noses in their part of this. But if there was any hope, any hope at all that we could reverse what I’d done to Bradley…I’d call her.
The department was still putting together details, still trying to figure out what had happened. As political as this case was, as many unanswered questions as it had, I thought we would be at it for a while. The Guild was making a full inquiry into the events of the last month, and I would have to testify in front of a full panel of telepaths, probably mind-deaf while I did it. I was going to tell the whole truth, mind-deaf or not. Let them face up to what they’d done. Make sure this never happened again. The old idealist in me demanded that much.
Here, at the funeral, the first shovelfuls of dirt hit the coffin, and the group started to disband. Cherabino and I stood there a long time, out of her sense of respect for the dead, and especially respect for an informant. Good or bad, Neil had broken the case at considerable personal cost.
Finally it was over. I walked toward the car, trying to be sedate so Cherabino could keep up without straining herself. She minced behind me, struggling to keep her feet in the high heels and not hurt her taped ribs—at the same time. She’d insisted she’d had to wear heels to the funeral but cursed herself in a constant litany at the back of her mind. The sound of that cursing was the best thought I’d ever heard.
In the parking lot, with us standing in the marginally cooler shadow of an old pine tree next to the car, Cherabino’s radio spat static. She turned it up, listened. “Understood,” she said into the mike, and put it back on her hip.
She looked at me. “They have a new high-level interview for you.”
I sighed. “Do I have time for a cigarette?” It might help me ignore the craving for Satin. I might try praying again, too, maybe. Swartz said I should get more serious about the God part of the Twelve Steps.
“Probably, if it’s quick.”
I could do quick. I fished the pack out and lit up. She sat on the side of the car—wincing at the heat, even at ten o’clock in the morning.
“Want me to change out your shoes?” I asked her.
“In a minute,” she said. The whole right side of her face was covered in splotchy colors. She held out her hand; I handed over the pack.
“Branen going to let you get back to work soon?”
She looked at me, annoyed I’d brought it up. “Couple weeks, if I heal up right.”
Rumor had it Branen had told her getting herself kidnapped was against department policy. An amateur mistake. So now she was on administrative leave—could only work twenty-hour w
eeks, desk work only—until she did her time and healed properly.
She was getting full pay. Some people would have just sat back and enjoyed the sick leave. Instead, Cherabino sat there on the hood of the car and plotted how to get around it. Like I said, everyone has a poison.
That evening, after another long day of difficult, nasty interviews, Swartz took me to an NA meeting a little outside my usual stomping ground, one that met in Midtown.
He turned on the radio in the car to listen to the news. They were broadcasting the big press conference from this morning—Kara and the mayor of Decatur both taking credit for catching the serial killer due to the “amazing joint effort” of a bunch of people who weren’t the cops who’d actually made the arrest. Neither Cherabino nor Paulsen was mentioned—I snorted and changed the channel. At least Kara was getting something out of this.
We parked in a grungy pay lot, feeding paper bills into the slot to pay for the parking outside the church where the meeting would be held. Swartz walked beside me companionably. The soot-covered arches of the church stood like sentinels against the night.
The meeting was held in the church basement, a badly lit twenty-by-thirty space covered in Sunday school drawings. The concrete walls and old carpet smelled like dry mold and hope.
I got a cup of coffee and a slice of real lemon cake from the long, chipped table, and took a seat. I didn’t know these eight people—neither did Swartz—but I knew what would happen. We opened with the serenity prayer, and moved on from there.
When the turn came to me, I put my coffee on the floor and stood up.
“My name is Adam, and I’m an addict,” I said.
“Hi, Adam,” they echoed.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alex Hughes has written since early childhood, and loves great stories in any form, including scifi, fantasy, and mystery. Over the years, Alex has lived in many neighborhoods of the sprawling metro Atlanta area. Decatur, the neighborhood in which Clean is centered, was Alex’s college home.