Users

by Stacy Buck

  "Do you even know where you're going?" Carter asked not sure if he was being lead to robbery or to actually buy some drugs.

  Damned junkies, you never can really tell with them. There's no trusting a dope fiend in need of a fix, and judging by the fidgeting and the sweat, this particular addict needed one bad.

  "Yeah man, it's just up these stairs." The lanky man pointed straight up as if that should explain it all.

  Carter didn't care anymore. If he was being lead into a jack move, he'd lose what little money he had, but if he didn't follow the man, he'd have to start all over again with a different junkie, and one was about as trustworthy as the next; meaning not at all.

  "Lead the way," he said with a motioning gesture of his hand like a maitre d'.

  The junkie took the steps in stride like an Olympic athlete. It never ceased to amaze Carter how, when drugs were on the line, a man who was most likely rolling around the floor in agony a few minutes earlier, was suddenly Usain fucking Bolt. Carter peered down the hallway into the darkness as they passed each floor. He caught glimpses he couldn't quite make out by candlelight on some of the floors, but the sounds were all the same. Each floor echoed with the flick of lighters, coughing, the cries of babies forgotten, and moans of half conscious men and women deep in their zombie like high.

  They reached the ninth floor finally, and the junkie lead him down a long hallway filled with rooms on both sides. Carter sneaked a peak into one of the rooms as they passed and found a woman lying on her side, foaming at the mouth, a needle still hanging from her arm. He was repulsed and intrigued all at the same time. Carter had always felt he was half angel, half demon. A saint when he was sober, and a sinner when he was using.

  Before he could linger too long with his thoughts, they reached the hallway's end.

  Bang, bang, bang. His guide pounded on a metal door with the bottom of his fist. A moment of silence passed before a slot at eye level slid open and a pair of dark eyes peered out at them. The shifty orbs darted from the junkie to Carter and back to the junkie.

  "What'd you want?" came a muffled question from behind the door.

  "I'm here to see Big?" the junkie responded.

  The eyes darted again, back and forth between the two men waiting in the hall, then the slot quickly slammed to a close.

  "That didn't go so wel-," Carter started to say, but a series of clanks rapped behind the door as the locks were turned.

  Slowly, the door swung open. They stepped inside, the junkies worn shoes echoed with the sound of sandpaper as he shuffled across the dilapidated wood floor, practically dragging his feet. The room was almost entirely empty, except for a ragtag group of thugs, and a long desk with a giant of a man sitting behind it. Carter took a quick survey of the room, counting five thugs in all. None of them were holding weapons, but they were showing them off, tucked into their waist.

  The smoky air was heavy with the stench of cigarettes and open bottles of booze. His palms got sweaty and his skin prickled against the cold night air. His sense memory told his body that this was the place, it was about to get the fix it so desperately needed, and his heart rate quickened ever so slightly.

  "You must be Big." Carter stated more than asked.

  "And who the fuck are you?" Big rose, put both palms on the desk, and leaned forward menacingly.

  "He's cool man. He's with me," the junkie said putting a scrawny hand out to calm the huge man.

  Big was fat in the waist, but Carter could clearly see his arms were well muscled, despite the smoke filled haze in the room. Big wore a food stained wife beater, showing off the tattoos that covered his immense arms, chest, and even ran up his neck onto his cleanly shaved head.

  "Look Big, I didn't mean any offense. I'm just looking to score man. Can we do that?" Carter asked. He imagined he must have looked like a little girl looking for her lost puppy right about then, but he didn't want the giant man to swipe his head off.

  Big turned his penetrating gaze on Carter and eyed him up and down.

  "You sure this guy's cool?" Big asked the junkie, without ever taking his eyes off of Carter.

  The junkie nodded his head desperately, his head flopping up and down like a rag doll.

  "Then it's cool." Big said affirmatively, and reached into a drawer on the side of the desk.

  He pulled out a large freezer bag full of drugs. It was more heroin than Carter had ever seen. He gulped past the lump in his throat, unsure of what he was getting himself into.

  "How much do you need?" Big flashed a wry grin.

  Before Carter could answer there was a knock at the door. Everyone in the room froze.

  "Well?...See who it is," Big motioned to the door.

  The thug closest to the door strode over and slid the peep hole open the same way he had with Carter and the junkie.

  Boom!

  The door was blown clean off its hinges; sending him, the metal door, and chunks of metal stud framework and drywall flying across the room. Carter lifted an arm and turned away to shield his face from the raining debris. His jacket absorbed most of the blast. The already hazy room was an absolute cloud of smoke after the explosive had gone off. Carter couldn't see a thing, except for the junkie huddling in fear on the floor next to him. The chaos sent Carter's blood pressure skyrocketing.

  Then small red beams, highlighted by the smoke, zigzagged and crossed one another all over the room. The thugs must have recognized the laser scopes, because they immediately pulled their gats from their belts and started firing on the hole that used to be the door.

  "Get down you idiot," the junkie squealed.

  "Huh," Carter asked in a daze.

  He couldn't believe his luck. His day had gone from bad to much, much worse. Bullets whizzed past his head and Carter dove to the floor. Somehow, the junkie had more common sense than he had, or maybe he was just more used to this sort of thing. Carter was out of practice after all, and the adrenaline rush from the explosion had sent his internal temperature through the roof. His stomach churned with the heat of boiling water as the fluid in his gut burned his insides.

  One of the thugs rushed the door, firing a fully automatic machine gun at whoever was trying to get in. Red dots lit the thug up like a Christmas tree, and he was quickly cut down in a hail of bullets.

  "Police! Everybody get on your knees and put your hands behind your head!"

  Oh shit, it was the cops. At least that's what Carter thought, but Big didn't seem so convinced. Maybe this had happened before; some gang bangers trying to move in on his turf, dress up as cops, and rob the shit out of him, or maybe Big was just high out of his gourd and didn't give a shit.

  "Fuck you!" Big yelled and popped up from behind the desk with a pistol in each hand. "Die you mother fuckers!"

  Big fired round after round at the opening. Another one of his thugs, having no cover to hide behind, unloaded a pump shotgun on the cops, but he too was quickly cut down in a barrage of semi-automatic gun fire. The thug's chest exploded in five places as each bullet hit home. Gripping his chest, the man was dead before he even dropped to the floor.

  The cops or whoever they were, were well equipped, and greatly outnumbered Big and his thugs.

  "Drop your weapons!" A voice from the doorway called after a moment of silence. The smoke began to clear and Big's eyes darted from Carter, the junkie, and the thug that had been blown back with the door, all lying on the floor, to the one thug he still had standing, and finally back to the hole in the wall.

  "Okay! We're dropping our weapons. Just don't shoot no more," Big said.

  A quick nod from Big and the other thug dropped his piece to the floor and put his hands over his head.

  "Down on your knees," the first cop through the door said.

  They entered in a systematic and well trained fashion, approaching one after the next, then breaking off to take each individual in the room into custody. Carter quickly realized this was more than just some flophouse raid.

  Dressed in all black
from head to toe, the cops turned out to be more than just cops. The traditionally uniformed officers were supplemented with S.W.A.T. and Drug Enforcement Agents. S.W.A.T. and DEA was plastered in bright white and yellow letters across the bulletproof vests and back of their jackets, as well as the hats, for those that wore them.

  Carter offered no resistance as a DEA agent grabbed him by the wrists, and roughly forced him to his knees, but Big was not so accommodating.

  "Hey, God dammit! Quit being so rough," Big demanded as the agent grabbed him by his tree trunk thick arm and tried to tug it behind his back.

  "Quit resisting!" the agent yelled; but he had to drop his AR-15 to grab Big by the wrist, it now hung from a lanyard around his neck pointing towards the floor.

  Big spun on him, grabbed the agent's sidearm from the holster, and put the barrel under the agent's chin.

  "Don't move mother fuckers!" Big announced to the rest of the room.

  The agent's eyes went wide with terror and the room stopped.

  "Everybody just stay calm," a mustache wearing DEA agent, probably the head of this task force, said.

  The agent approached Big and his hostage, taking slow, even steps.

  "Stay the fuck back!" Big said. "Drop your guns or I'm gonna paint the walls with this mother fucker's brains!" The hostage went stiff as Big put an arm around his throat and moved the pistol to the side of the agent's head, just behind the ear under his helmet. "I said drop your guns! I mean it! I'll do it!"

  "Just do as he says," the hostage said.

  "Son of a bitch, everyone lower your weapons," the lead agent said.

  The agents, almost twenty in all, lowered the barrels of their guns, and slowly bent down to place their guns on the floor at their feet. The agent to Carter's back had to let go of his wrist to set his gun on the floor, and Carter cursed himself silently for getting into this position. If Carter let Big walk out the door with the agent, he knew the agent would never be seen alive again.

  Carter let out a long sigh.

  Lifting a pointed finger, Carter let loose the fire building within him. A flame shot like a blow torch from his finger in a solid stream to hit Big right in the face. Big recoiled from the biting fire, and Carter used the distraction to dive head first into the agent, knocking him from Big's grasp.

  "What the fuck was that?" Big asked.

  Big's facial hair was singed, but he was otherwise no worse for the wear. Carter, lying on top of the agent, made a fist igniting the pours on his skin and making a ball of flame. Carter threw the burning ball, hitting Big in the chest and knocking him back, but Big hung on tight to his pistol, and patted out the flames with his free hand.

  "You're one of those users!" Big looked to the junkie. "You brought a user into my house?"

  "I didn't know," the junkie said.

  "No matter," Big said, "now he's going to die."

  Carter rolled back and popped up onto his feet, drawing the gun's aim from the prone agent still on the floor. Indeed, he found it hard to deny Big's claims that he was about to die. Carter couldn't deflect bullets, he didn't have super speed to dodge them, and he was just as vulnerable to being shot as any other human being.

  Carter was pissed, he was wearing his favorite pair of jeans, and his hair had grown out to a length he could actually do something with, but finger torches and fire balls weren't going to do it with this ogre of a man.

  "You don't want to do this man. Just put the gun down and we all walk away from this," Carter said, but his attempt to talk Big out of doing something foolish was in vain.

  He sighed again as Big leveled the gun in his direction.

  The anger and anxiety inside him welled up, and he unleashed the fires of hell upon Big. His pours opened up from head to toe. His clothes were the first to go, lighting up like dry grass. Then the hair on his legs, chest, and head caught fire, and before Big could pull the trigger, Carter's entire body was engulfed in dancing flames.

  It hurt. God damn it, it hurt. Anymore normal person would have been suffocated, burned alive, and dropped dead, but the fire was apart of him to the very core of his being. His very heart was a fiery inferno. Carter spread his arms wide. Then he clapped his hands together, pushing the flames out from his chest and arms, and dousing Big with a wave of fire.

  Finally, Big dropped his gun as he thrashed about wildly. His arms flailed and he screamed shouts of excruciating pain. Big ran about, setting small fires on the floor until the flames overtook him.

  Big dropped dead. A moment later the fire burnt out, leaving a heap of charbroiled and crispy Big lying face down on the floor. Carter also put his flames out, and stood motionless in his birthday suit, his junk hanging out for all to see. The agents mouths, one and all, hung agape at the scene that had just played out before them. Stunned, they hadn't even gone for their guns yet, but they needn't. The only thug left standing wanted nothing to do with Carter and his fiery inferno.

  "Can I get a blanket please?" Carter asked.

  #

  Part 2

  Prologue 2

  "So that's how you got all of the bruises?" she asked.

  "No," I said. "That was a different fight."

  She sighed again. The arm on the clock over her head had only moved fifteen minutes. Time was dragging and having to stare at a clock behind her wasn't helping.

  "How many fights did you get in since last we met?"

  "A few," I answered coyly.

  "Do you find these antics of yours funny?" she asked, folding her stubby arms over her chest.

  "Kinda." Honestly I didn't, but I wasn't going to let her win the verbal joust we had going back and forth.

  "Six years you've been coming here, and in that time you've made great progress, but you let losing your girlfriend take you this low. I thought we were beyond that?" The silence was broken only by the ticking clock as I searched for the right thing to say. The woman had been my anchor after all, and I hadn't had many positive female influences in my life until she came along, and by many, I mean none.

  "I thought so too," I said. I truly did, but some part of me knew deep down that I was a codependent junkie. If it wasn't the drugs it was something else, or someone else. It had to be something. I just wasn't okay with being me, and I doubted that was ever going to change. No matter how many hours I spent in front of a shrink, how many days of rehab, how many years of sobriety under my belt, in the end, I just wasn't happy with who I had become.

  "What about your safety net? What about the steps? You could have called someone," she said. She just had to go there, spouting off that N.A. crap. And it wasn't that I didn't believe that the steps could work, it was all their touchy, feel your emotions, hug it out bullshit that drove me crazy. I hadn't gone to a meeting in years, but I hadn't told her that. I needed my meds after all.

  "I guess I dropped the ball on that one," I said. There was really nothing else too say. I had dropped the ball and big time.

  I fidgeted on the long couch, my skinny butt taking up only one of the three cushions, as she inspected me with a gaze that told me she wasn't buying it. I had to do something quick, but what?

  "So did you get those bruises in jail?" She continued to prod.

  "In jail?" I echoed in surprise. When would I have been in jail?

  "I assume you were arrested." She wore a smug expression as if she had just figured it all out.

  "Oh, you mean the cops? No, they were grateful as hell for what I did." She seriously thought the cops would care that I wasted some deadbeat drug pusher? Just goes to show you that a fancy education can't buy you street smarts. The cops didn't give two shits about big, and why should they? He was the type of guy that made their lives a living hell, he kept them in business, but the cops would rather be out stepping on some harmless pot dealers neck, than dealing with a gun toting heroin dealer.

  "But you were there to buy drugs!"

  "Oh, I smoothed that over too," I said with a sly wink. She stared at me straight faced to let me know s
he wasn't amused.

  "I can't wait to hear this," she said sarcastically.

  "In hind sight it wasn't the best decision I ever made," I said, and boy it wasn't.

  #

  Chapter 3

  Carter sat in the back of an ambulance with a gray blanket, draped over his shoulders and wrapped around his chest to cover his naked body. Just like in the movies where some innocent victim ends up wrapped in a blanket, only my blanket was keeping my dong from flapping in the breeze. Even with the thick wool police blanket, a normal man would have been shivering in the cold night air, but Carter never got cold. He could withstand subzero temperatures wearing little more than a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. The night was silent, the rain from earlier had stopped, and a low fog had rolled in off the waters of the Puget Sound.

  "You okay?" the agent whose life he had saved asked.

  "I'm fine. Happens all the time," Carter said.

  "Ha, funny," the agent said misinterpreting what Carter said as a joke.

  Blue and red lights spun all around them, painting the walls with an eerie light display. It was the kind of light show that would have normally sent shivers up Carter's spine, not that Carter didn't trust the cops, but when you've spent as much time as a criminal as he had, well...you sort of get used to avoiding them at all costs.

  "I'm truly grateful you saved my life, but I'm going to have to ask you a few questions before you can go," the agent said. "Obviously you're a user."

  Carter couldn't tell if he was referring to using drugs or using powers. They were both labeled with the same tag, and ironically both seemed to have the same effect of ruining your life.

  "Since I was born," he said, guessing he was referring to his ability to catch fire.

  Carter ran a hand over his now completely bald head and sighed.

  "And what's your affiliation with the drug cartel? Are you a pusher or just an addict like your friend over there?" The agent pointed a finger to the junkie, scared out of his wits, but still in one piece, sitting in the back of a cop car.