Chasing the Dragon

by Nicholas Kaufmann

  First things first, she thought, trying to clear the jumble in her head. The heroin took priority. Without it . . . she didn’t even want to think about what would happen without it. Then, she promised herself, then she’d go after the Dragon.

  There was still no sign of a dealer. Was she going to have to go back to Roy and take him up on his offer? Jesus. Even Zack had never asked her to trick, though in the darkest days of her addiction she probably would’ve been willing. But now? The thought of Roy Dalton’s hands on her, his half-toothless mouth, repulsed her.

  There was one more place she could look. She turned the car in the right direction as best she could remember and passed through the small downtown area. The tables in front of the ice cream parlour were empty now. Bits of trash blew and tumbled in the breeze where the young couples had sat. It filled her with a sudden and inexplicable sadness. She kept driving, past the quiet little houses, abandoned now for work and school. A few minutes later she found herself back in the warehouse district. Her last, best chance.

  She slowed as she drove past the wide, boxy buildings. Boards were nailed across the doors and windows, the walls spray-painted with everything from simple tags to a block-long mural of a lasso-spinning cowboy on a winged horse. Someone had sprayed what looked like a Chinese character on the horse’s rear end.

  Unsure of where to go, Georgia drove up and down the streets between the warehouses, looking for any sign of drug activity. She didn’t see anything. She felt itchy. She thought of the screaming faces from her visions, of the Dragon getting away and killing more people, of Roy Dalton’s hands all over her, and she started to panic.

  Rounding a corner, she spotted someone walking at the end of the block and slowed the car. It was the hobo she’d seen last night, swinging the same Dunkin Donuts coffee cup in his hand. She tailed him, driving slowly and staying far back so she wouldn’t spook him. She followed him for three more blocks until he came to a warehouse with yellow cement walls and boarded windows. She stopped the car and watched. The hobo tapped on a metal door at the corner of the building. It opened a moment later, and a kid who looked like he couldn’t have been older than thirteen stepped out onto the sidewalk. His skin was pale white, as if he didn’t spend much time outside. His skinny body swam inside an oversized Lobos basketball jersey. Gold chains hung around his neck. He wore a yellow bandana on his head, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses that were too big for his face. When he spoke, something in his mouth gleamed in the sunlight.

  The hobo tipped the coffee cup into his hand and passed the pile of coins over to the boy. The boy counted them and stuffed them in his pocket. He disappeared into the warehouse for a moment. When the boy came out again, he shook the hobo’s hand, and Georgia smirked. It was an old dealer’s trick. Shake hands and slip the package into the buyer’s palm, in case you were being watched.

  After the hobo left, Georgia got out of the car and walked toward the warehouse, her purse slung over her shoulder. The boy saw her coming and glanced back at the door nervously, but he didn’t bolt. Instead, he nodded at her and said, “’Sup, girl?” He smiled, and the sunlight reflected off a gold-plated grill across his front teeth.

  “You holding?” she asked.

  Blue eyes peered at her over the top of his sunglasses. “Who’s askin’?”

  “I’m not a cop,” she said.

  He laughed. “Girl, please. Everyone knows ain’t no cops in Buckshot. Nearest we got is the State Troopers out past the exit ramp, and they don’t give a shit what we do. Only time I ever see ’em is when rich folks get hurt.” He looked her up and down and said, “So what you lookin’ for, girl? I got whatever you need. Pot. Meth. Coke. You scorin’ for your boyfriend? You got a boyfriend?”

  “Horse,” she said.

  “Horse! Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!” he shouted, punching the air. “Girl likes to party!” She noticed a Chinese character tattooed on his shoulder, the same symbol she’d seen on the cowboy mural. A gang tag.

  “So do you have it?”

  He nodded, stroking the peach fuzz on his chin. “Yeah, I can get it for you, no sweat.”

  She felt the last of her panic drain away, replaced by a jittery anticipation. “How fast?”

  “Pssshhhhh, two shakes. It’s right inside. Gram’ll cost you two.”

  “Two hundred?”

  “Hells yeah, girl. There a problem?”

  “That’s twice what I normally pay.”

  The kid sucked his teeth. “What can I say? Times ain’t normal. There’s been a market adjustment. Ain’t no competition anymore. We can charge whatever we want. Take it or leave it.”

  She opened her wallet. Her parents’ faces swam up to meet her from the photograph inside, judging her with their silent smiles. Georgia avoided their eyes and did a quick count of the bills she’d taken from the diner. The two hundred dollar price tag would clean her out.

  “We’re the Shaolin Tong,” the white kid said, puffing up his skinny chest proudly. “Our shit’s the best there is, girl. Worth every penny, trust me. They call me Egg Foo, and I’m big around here, real important, you feel me? Ask anyone. I wouldn’t steer you wrong. So, you want that gram of horse or what?”

  Sighing, she handed him the money. She didn’t have a choice. The clock was ticking. Egg Foo counted them, then stuffed them into his jeans pocket.

  “Wait here,” he said. “Like I said, two shakes.”

  Egg Foo disappeared inside, closing the door behind him, but it banged against the jamb and instead of latching properly it swung open again. A single bulb hung from the ceiling just inside the doorway. A lone brown moth fluttered and tinked against it until wisps of smoke rose from its wings. Cool air wafted toward her on the low hum of an air conditioner. In the distance, she saw Egg Foo strutting toward a door in the far wall with the chipped remains of the word MANAGER stencilled on the frosted glass. From where she stood, it looked like it said ANGER. Egg Foo appeared tiny from behind, just a skinny little kid in an oversized jersey, and suddenly she got the joke of his name: Egg Foo, as in young.

  A moment after the boy disappeared behind the door, a large blonde woman stepped into Georgia’s field of vision. She was squeezed into a black tube top several sizes too small, her belly drooping over her belt like the top of a muffin. In her hand was an enormous Slurpee cup. The same Chinese character was tattooed on her wrist.

  “Are you here to kill us?” she asked. Though she looked to be in her late thirties, her voice was that of a child, high-pitched and innocent, but also lazy, as if it took too much effort to pronounce every word. Bright red lipstick stood out against her pale, pasty skin. Apparently there were no actual Asians in the Shaolin Tong.

  “No,” Georgia replied. “I’m not here to kill anyone.”

  The woman smiled around the straw of her Slurpee. “Then you can be my friend. Come in out of the sun.”

  She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. Immediately the air conditioning enveloped her, and Georgia, grateful to be out of the heat, felt the sweat drying on her body.

  The woman beckoned for her to follow, leading her across the bare cement floor of a large room. The cinderblock walls were covered with posters of old kung fu movies, Five Deadly Venoms, The Kid with the Golden Arm, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, Drunken Master. A poster for Enter the Dragon was tacked up over a window, the sunlight shining through and making Bruce Lee glow like he was radioactive. An ash-stained pool table stood in the middle of the room. The floor was littered with cigarette butts and old pizza boxes. Empty bottles of Jack Daniels and Crazy Horse cluttered the corners.

  The woman stopped in front of a door decorated with glittery stickers of rainbows and stars. “This is my room,” she said.

  Up close her eyes looked unfocused, dreamy, and Georgia realized she was high. The woman swung open the door, took Georgia by the hand and pulled her inside. A plush blue carpet ran the length of the floor, and two standing lamps in opposite corners painted the ceiling red
and green with their coloured bulbs. An aquarium tank atop a small table glowed blue from an internal light, turning the fish into dark silhouettes that swam in lazy circles. A glass crack pipe lay next to it, its stem marked with the same garish red as her lipstick.

  The woman went to the window at the far end of the room, where the boards nailed to the outside cut the sunlight into strips. “I like my room because it has a window and I can look outside. I don’t get to go out very often.” She turned away from Georgia, and her tone became quiet, confidential. “I saw shapes out there last night. I thought it was the Inkheads. Sometimes they try to rob us. But that wasn’t it. Whoever it was kept moving.”

  Georgia stiffened. Inkheads. She’d seen that name in the vision: Inkhedz scrawled on a wall during the Dragon’s attack. The screaming faces. “Tell me about the Inkheads,” she said.

  The woman shrugged. “They’re gone.” She spread her fingers to emulate a cloud of smoke. “Poof. Just like that. Some pothead came by this morning, said he used to buy from them but had to come to us instead. He said there was blood everywhere.”

  Georgia chewed her lip. So the Dragon hadn’t left Buckshot Hill after all. But why go after the Inkheads? The Dragon’s hunger was insatiable; she would eat everything in her path, given the opportunity. But she’d managed to control herself before, normally moving on for hundreds of miles before feeding again. What had kept her in Buckshot Hill? What could possibly be of interest to her here?

  “Did you see anything else? What did the shapes look like?”

  The woman shrugged and said, “Do you like my fish?” Her eyes followed the fish swimming laps around the glowing blue tank.

  “This is important,” Georgia said. “What did you see?”

  The blonde woman pouted. “Nothing, all right? Nothing. I’m no snitch.” She brushed by Georgia to put her Slurpee on the table. Up close, she smelled of bitter smoke, sweat and cheap shampoo. “I heard you with Egg Foo outside,” the woman said. “You’re chasing the dragon.”

  Georgia’s heart pushed into her throat. “What did you say?”

  “Isn’t that what they call it? Heroin?” She picked up the crack pipe and fished a lighter out of her pocket. “You want a hit?”

  “No, what I want is for you to tell me what you saw. Which way did the shapes go?”

  The woman laughed. “Whatever. Suit yourself. I can’t keep away from this stuff. You know what it’s like. Sometimes you chase the dragon, and sometimes the dragon chases you, right?” She lit the pipe and took a long drag. A cloud of smoke seeped from her mouth, and then her face slackened and her eyes glazed over as the drug took hold.

  “Which way did they go?” Georgia pressed.

  The woman looked up at the coloured lights playing along the ceiling. “Sometimes I think I can see heaven up there.”

  Frustrated, Georgia turned away. In the quiet of the woman’s room, she felt how hard she’d crashed — harder than she thought. Her headache was still there, buzzing just under the surface. She felt itchy again and only then realized she’d been scratching her arm without knowing it. Her stomach was twisted in knots. Somehow, watching the fish swim back and forth helped. It was calming. Serene. Another fix would help too. Just a small one, enough to get her in fighting shape to go after the Dragon. She could go right back to the motel and have a little taste.

  No, there was no time for that. She couldn’t let the Dragon slip away again. She wished Egg Foo would hurry up.

  “I could watch them all day,” the blonde woman whispered next to her. “They don’t care that they’re not getting anywhere. They just keep swimming.”

  Georgia watched the fish glide in the deep blue light. Stainless, she thought, and she tried to put it from her mind but the rest kept coming, Stainless Steel Stanley’s and “Found you, child,” and she fought against it but the fish were swimming back and forth like a hypnotist’s watch, and then the memory broke through and she couldn’t stop it from unspooling . . .

  In the empty parking lot behind a closed convenience store, Georgia sank down in a nest of candy wrappers and crushed soda cans, her back against the wall and her pockets filled with the change she’d begged off people on the rich side of town. She thought of Zack out scoring somewhere. She was supposed to meet him soon, back at the old, decrepit hunting cabin they’d been sleeping in, but she couldn’t keep her eyes open. She tried to focus on the billboard that rose high over the woods behind the parking lot. STAINLESS STEEL STANLEY’S, it said, RESTAURANT SUPPLY, EXIT 9. There was a big picture of a fish laid out on a wide steel spatula, sliced open down the middle and stuffed with lemons, its head still attached, its beady black eyes staring back at her. Disgusting. She closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to look at it. Nodded off.

  When she opened her eyes again, it was getting dark and a man was standing over her, his sickly grey skin marbled with black veins. Half his face had been shorn from his skull. In his hand was a blood-edged straight razor. “Found you, child,” the meat puppet said.

  Behind it, twigs and branches snapped as a dark shape moved through the woods toward her. The Dragon.

  Georgia struggled groggily to her feet, turned to run, but the meat puppet grabbed her. It slammed her face-first against the wall and held her there.

  The hand pressing her face to the wall pulled away and was immediately replaced by another. Scaly and hard. Long ivory claws closed over the top of her head.

  “You hid yourself well, child,” the Dragon said. “But you must have known you could not hide forever. You knew I would come eventually. It is our nature to be bound together. But I give you credit. You were not where I thought to find you. Someone else was. A clever ruse. One that shall be properly punished with agony.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Georgia sobbed. “What ruse? I didn’t do anything!”

  A second claw appeared from behind her, sliding around to her belly. The long talons scratched lightly through her shirt — not hard enough to draw blood, just enough to let her know they were there. “I wonder what you will taste like.” The Dragon sniffed her. “Dirt, perhaps. Desperation and filth and need. Very different from your father.”

  Tears spilled down Georgia’s face. Panic kept her from catching her breath. “You don’t have to do this. It’s over. The whole thing is over. I don’t care anymore. That’s why I stopped coming after you. We can just leave each other alone now. You can go do whatever you want. I don’t care. We never have to see each other again. Just go!”

  Hot breath hit the back of Georgia’s head. The Dragon was laughing. “And never taste your flesh? Never experience the joy of watching you die? No, I think not, child.”

  The Dragon’s claw tightened against her belly. Georgia thought of herself on a giant spatula, her stomach slit open, filled with lemons. Dead black eyes. “I have looked far and wide for you, child. I have earned my reward.”

  Georgia spasmed in fear, her body twisted, and instead of slashing open her stomach, the claw tore through her jeans and the flesh beneath, practically down to the bone of her hip. Georgia watched her own blood spill out of her body like juice from a carton, saw shreds of her own skin stuck in the fibres of her torn jeans, and she started hyperventilating.

  The world buckled and darkened at the edges.

  As unconsciousness enveloped her, she thought she heard a piercing, inhuman scream. Thought she saw the Dragon run back into the woods and the meat puppet stumble aimlessly like a marionette with cut strings. Then the world went away.

  Later, she woke up in the pitch black night. Bleeding and weak, Georgia crawled through the woods toward the hunting cabin. Crawled home to Zack. She found him curled on the floor in a pool of blood. He had cuts all over his hands, defensive wounds, and one big cut across his throat. The kind a straight razor might make. The Dragon had come to the cabin looking for her, Georgia realized, and found Zack instead.

  The rolled-up leather pack was still where he left it on the bed. Inside was the full bag of heroin
he’d scored. The skin around her wound was already turning grey from the Dragon’s infection. She didn’t have much time. Sobbing, she curled up next to Zack’s body. Too weak to reach her toes or even break the skin, she injected the drug directly into the open, bleeding wound in her hip. One final high as the Dragon’s infection unfolded inside her. She wondered if it would hurt to die, and if being high would make it hurt less. She wondered if the Dragon would turn her into a meat puppet, and if she’d know, if she’d be trapped and helpless in the shell of her corpse. Then the heroin knocked her out and threw her into a black void from which she knew she would never return.

  But she did. Hours later, she woke up clutching Zack’s cold, stiff hand, very much surprised to be alive. The wound had stopped bleeding. The grey, infected skin was gone.

  Somehow the heroin had kept the infection at bay. She didn’t know why, and frankly she didn’t care as long it kept working.

  The infection tried to spread again the next night, and the night after that, and each time she fought it back with the heroin. The infection never cleared up; it lived inside her where the Dragon had mauled her, but the drug dammed its flow through her system, stopped it from killing her and giving the Dragon control of her body.

  Somehow, with an irony so absurd it felt like a bad joke, her worst, most self-destructive habit had become the only thing keeping her alive.

  She buried Zack in a shallow grave in the woods and holed up in the cabin for months, leaving only to beg for change to score more heroin and, occasionally, to eat.

  Finally, when she was strong enough, when the wound was healing well and she had a handle on the infection, she loaded up the car. Then she brought a wildflower to Zack’s grave.

  “I’m going now,” she told the dirt. “I’m going after her. It’s what I should have been doing all this time. If I’d done what I was supposed to . . .” Her chin quivered. She bit her lip. “None of this would have happened. It’s all my fault. I’m going to find her.” She dropped the flower on his grave. “I’m going to make her pay.”