Vicious Circles

by Leann Andrews

  The sound of a full blown party pounded behind me. I was hesitant to let the sun go completely. It was as if I was afraid of not seeing it again. I’d left Lynn a note at my place with my new address and invited her to come over. I knew that I’d been way too hard on her and I wanted to make things right. I would make things right.

  “Fallyn! You’re missing your own party.” Jill called to me from the stone steps leading up to my front door. “Come on.” She waved me in frantically.

  I sighed and gave in. The house was full of people I didn’t know and drugs I’d never seen before. It was a buffet of things that could get me arrested, but I wasn’t concerned. I was relaxed and had been for most of the day. Mason had tried to call me from Dave’s phone earlier, which made the knot in my stomach loosen; although, I still felt like I’d lost him. He was lost to me or I was lost to him. I hadn’t quite figured out which.

  That night I drank and I smoked. I inhaled and popped random pills. I didn’t pay any attention to what I was doing or how much. It wasn’t until Lynn showed up and found me, bent over a line of cocaine, did I realize what I was doing. I froze when I caught the look on her face out of the corner of my eye. She looked horrified and I knew, I knew, that everything had come down to that one moment in my life.

  Chapter 20

  Lynn had run away from me. I’d called after her, crying and begging for her to stop, but she didn’t turn around. I’d lost her too.

  I staggered back into my house and into the living room. Jill patted me lightly on the back, which was all I was going to get from her. We looked at one another and I finally realized that she was all I had left. She was right after all.

  “Just forget about them,” she said with a small smile. “You don’t need her anyway.”

  “Yeah.” I started to sit but Jill grabbed my hand and pulled me upstairs to the master bedroom.

  “Where are we going?” My words slurred and my feet kept getting caught up in one another.

  “It’s time we graduated to something harder, Fallyn. This is a party after all.” She pulled me all the way into the room and sat me down on the bed. “Wait right here. I’ll be right back.”

  I waited alone in the dark while she ran off. When she returned she had some random guy in tow behind her. He was cute and he looked like he had money. She whispered something in his ear and he grinned in my direction.

  “So,” he said moving to stand in front of me. “You want to try something new?” His right hand slid down the front of my shirt and it felt fucking wrong.

  I pushed him away the best I could in my wasted state. Jill crawled onto the bed behind me and moved my hair from my neck where she began to kiss me softly. I let her touch me because I couldn’t find the strength to stop her. The strange guy moved closer to me once again and kneeled. He kissed me rough on the lips. I couldn’t make him stop, so I began to cry.

  “He’ll give us some heroin if we fuck him,” Jill said softly in my ear.

  “No…what? No I’m not fucking some guy.” My stomach was starting to knot and turn from lack of food and too many toxins.

  “Come on.” Jill begged.

  “Just let her be, Jill.” The strange guy must have been someone Jill knew because they pushed me aside and had sex right there on the bed in front of me.

  I curled myself as tight as I could into a corner of the bathroom where I eventually passed out.

  The sounds of drunken passion faded as did my consciousness. As with many other moments in my new life, I woke not knowing how long I’d been out and it took me a minute to get my bearings. I vaguely remembered Jill kneeling in front of me and putting a latex band around my left arm. My voice and strength was nowhere to be found as I watched her draw liquid from a spoon into a needle and hold it up against the light to admire it.

  “No…what’s-“

  “Shhh…it’s OK. You’ll feel so much better after this. I promise.” She smiled at me and poked the needle into my arm.

  I felt the pinch and a burn like I’d never felt before. My body immediately reacted and I was terrified. I didn’t know what she’d used but I knew she’d just shot a drug into my arm. I stood and forced my legs to walk as soon as she backed off. I looked back once and saw her inserting the same needle into her own arm. I was confused and sick.

  I reached the top of the stairs and lost the ability to swallow. My house was quiet and empty. I didn’t know what time it was. The walls and furniture began to swirl. I thought about Mason and the way he looked at me the last time we were together in that cheap motel. I tried to concentrate on his green eyes and the way they burned right through to my tortured soul. When I knew I couldn’t hold the vision anymore I let those eyes go and slowly everything went black.

  Lynn POV

  “Mason, I don’t know what to do. I can’t call the cops.”

  “Fuck, don’t do that. Fuck! OK, I’m getting on a plane.” Mason began yelling out orders to whoever was around him.

  I was still crying. I could deal with an expensive house in Malibu and a minor drug problem, or at least I thought I could. I couldn’t deal with the facts that I’d been faced with that night. Fallyn was far more lost than I had originally thought.

  “Mason, I’m sorry to call you like this. I didn’t know who else to call.”

  He sighed. I could still hear the guys talking wildly in the background. “No, Lynn. I’m glad you called. I just, I didn’t know it was so bad. How didn’t I see this coming?”

  I knew him well enough to foresee that he would shoulder the guilt for the entire messed up situation. “She had us all fooled. Just call me when you get your flight details, alright?”

  He agreed and I tossed my phone back into the cup holder between the two front seats. I was headed back to Fallyn’s apartment to clear out whatever I could find just in case the cops did get involved. She would lose everything if she were to be arrested. Mason had made the suggestion and I wasn’t entirely comfortable getting involved, but I felt useless.

  I let myself in and turned on all the lights as I went. There was clothes thrown all over the floor and the fridge was empty. The whole thing was surreal and it made the tears rise up in my throat once again.

  Slowly, I began to empty drawers. I didn’t find much until I reached Fallyn’s bedroom closet. In the box for the shoes I’d gotten her for Christmas, I found the mother load of drug paraphernalia.

  The realization shocked me completely. There was too many pills to count. They were all different sizes and colors and I couldn’t even begin to guess what any of them did. I dropped the bag and continued to dig.

  On the very bottom of the box was a picture of what I assumed to be Fallyn’s sister. In faded red ink the word London was scrawled on the back in someone else’s handwriting. I stared until my phone rang. I emptied my hands to answer because I knew, without looking, that it was Mason.

  “I’m here,” I said. “She had a box full of shit and I don’t know what to do with any of it. I’ve never even seen illegal drugs before Mason. I am really uncomfortable with this.”

  “What does she have?” His voice was weak and he sounded very tired.

  “I can’t tell. Most of it is pills and I’m pretty sure that there is some cocaine in here too.” I poked at the bag, afraid to touch it.

  Mason took a deep breath. “Just flush whatever you can down the toilet. Look, Lynn…I never meant to get you involved. I didn’t know she had that much.”

  “No one knew and I was already involved. She’s my best friend, I love her.” There was sadness in my voice which matched the tone of Mason’s own words. “When are you flying in?”

  “I checked in for a flight about ten minutes ago. I had to charter a flight…” He trailed off and I let it go.

  “Call me when you get there, Mason. I can’t go back, I hope you understand.”

  He laughed and it wasn’t a pleasant chuckle. “You don’t want to go down with us…I understand.”

  I closed the phone and pushed Ma
son from my mind so I could finish what I’d started. I grabbed all of the narcotics I’d found and one by one flushed them all down the toilet. I was numb the entire time and for good reason. My mind hadn’t processed what all of the events that night meant for Fallyn. After the last flush I backed away to lean against the bathroom wall. I stared at the swirling water and cried.

  Everything was beginning to add up. Things that were clear signs I ignored. Fallyn had never been the most stable person but Mason made her so happy. I had pointed out numerous times that she and Mason were far too clingy to one another, but suddenly that made sense as well. She needed someone to make her feel good. She needed someone to love her no matter what and I knew, without a doubt, that Mason was that man. He was loyal to her, almost to a fault.

  His instructions to go over and clear out her apartment were proof of that. He felt like he had failed her and was grasping on to whatever he could to help her salvage what was decent in her life.

  ***

  Fallyn’s POV

  I managed to open one eye with great effort. With that one open eye, I surveyed my surroundings and came to the conclusion that I was lying on the cold, tiled floor at the top of the stairs. I was far too fucked up to celebrate that I’d come back from the black abyss. Whatever Jill had injected into my veins was like heaven and I wanted more.

  I sat up slowly and stilled my spinning head with both of my hands. Once I’d regained some sense of equilibrium, I pushed myself to my feet and set off to the master bath to find Jill. She was sitting on the counter, half dressed. I shook her roughly and she woke easily, but her eyes remained closed.

  “What? Fuck…Fallyn. Fuck off.”

  “What was it?” I tried to yell but my voice was only a whisper. “Tell me what it was.”

  She leaned over and vomited into my sink. “Heroin. It’s heroin,” she wheezed without righting herself again.

  “I want more.”

  Her head turned slowly and she stared at me through knotty hair and red rimmed eyes. “Are you kidding me? You’re fucking crazy. That shit almost killed me. Shoot yourself up this time.” She grabbed a little black bag and threw it at my face.

  “I don’t know what to do. What do I do?”

  “Melt it and stick it in your arm. Jesus, give it here.” Jill snatched the case back and began to clumsily prepare the needles.

  I watched her without really comprehending what I was about to do to myself…again. The warm, fuzzy feeling was within my reach and I would do anything to have it again. She yanked my arm, the same one she had used before and tied the latex strip around the area above my elbow.

  “Just do it,” I urged her with my head turned so I didn’t have to watch. I felt the cold needle pierce my skin, followed by the slow burn of the foreign substance entering my circulation.

  “Now fuck off,” she pushed me away and repeated the same actions on her own arm.

  I stumbled back and out into the hall where I’d woken up just moments before. I could feel my limbs growing lighter and my head growing heavier. With great concentration I made it down the stairs and around the corner into the kitchen. Something was different. My eyelids were heavy but my heart was racing and I felt whatever was in my stomach rising in my throat. I tried to make it to the sink.

  Chapter 21

  Mason’s POV

  It was a small miracle that I’d found someone willing to fly me back to California in the middle of the night. It was an even bigger miracle that we’d found an airport that would allow us to land at such short notice. I hadn’t given the guys much in way of explanation when I went to them for money. All I offered up was the fact that Fallyn needed me and they pooled whatever money they had available.

  Lynn had cleared her apartment of anything illegal. I felt guilty about asking her to do it but I didn’t have much choice.

  My head was pounding when I finally boarded the small plane and buckled my seat belt. I rubbed at my jaw, irritated that I obviously didn’t know the only woman I’d ever truly loved outside of my family. She was lost and I understood that because I’d been lost once myself. I was always looking for something to fill the hole inside, though I didn’t know why that hole was there to begin with. Unfortunately, she filled her empty spot with drugs. I had filled mine with her.

  A dull ache began in my stomach and made its way up into my chest. I wasn’t prepared to deal with Fallyn and her issues. We had both spent so much time trying to pretend things were OK. I wanted her to be strong and I wanted her to be healthy, happy and so in love she couldn’t function without me. What I had gotten was so much different. She loved me endlessly and she didn’t like being away from me at all. Underneath all of that I’d created a monster and it took Lynn calling me, in tears, to realize it. She’d bought a house and was snorting cocaine. I should have been shocked, but somehow I had known things would implode all along.

  When she flew out to see me on Valentine’s Day, I noticed the change in her. She was dangerously thin and her eyes were tired. The life that I’d seen in those beautiful eyes was gone. That spark, the life that she held so tightly to the first time we’d met in Philadelphia, was missing. There wasn’t any way I could talk myself out of feeling responsible for that. I took an innocent person and turned her life upside down. She was thrust into the spotlight as I thrust myself into her life and I never once thought she couldn’t handle it. I was a selfish fucking prick and I never once considered how any of my plans would affect her. On my mission to help Fallyn, I’d helped myself to her sanity and I would never, ever forgive myself.

  I dozed off and on the rest of the flight. I had never been happier to step onto California soil than I had been that morning. The sun hadn’t broken through yet but it would soon. People would start to move around and head off to work. I only had one want and that was to see Fallyn. Lynn had sent her address to me in a text message. I rattled it off to a cab driver before asking him to go as fast as he could.

  Still, I didn’t know what I would say or if she would even see me. I hadn’t kept in touch which was just something I had trouble with anyway. Images of her leaning over a line of coke haunted me. When I drifted off into a light sleep, I dreamt of her and those eyes. Her eyes were lifeless in my dream.

  Thankfully, there was no traffic and I made it to Malibu before the sun appeared. The gate was open to the drive, but I got out of the cab at the curb and walked up the slight hill slowly. My stomach twisted and I was fucking terrified. Something felt wrong and I had never wanted to be so wrong in my life. I was never a very religious man but that didn’t stop me from silently praying for things to be all right.

  I bypassed knocking or ringing the bell and just went right in. The front door was unlocked and it opened easily. There was empty cups and evidence of a party all over the place. There was no sound besides my own heavy breathing.

  “Fallyn? Baby?”

  The feeling of dread thickened. I decided to search upstairs first. Each step was harder to take than the one before but eventually I reached the second floor. I could see, in the early morning light, that there was a small vanity light on in the bathroom. I hurried into the bedroom, calling her name the whole way.

  Of course, I didn’t find Fallyn.

  Jill lay face down on the bathroom floor, her face covered by her dark hair. I tilted my head, unsure of what to do. From where I stood it looked like she was sleeping, but as I got closer I realized she wasn’t asleep. I knelt down next to her and felt for a pulse. As soon as I touched her wrist, I knew she was gone. Her skin was cold and that was all I needed to know. I drew my hand back as if she’d burned me. My breaths sped up as I scrambled back into the bedroom.

  “FALLYN,” I screamed. “Fuck, fuck…”I muttered to myself.

  Jill was dead. She was cold and dead on the floor of some house in Malibu. I’d never seen a dead body before. I was scared in that moment.

  I jogged through every room in that damned house until I saw her. Her bare feet protruded from the archway
leading to the kitchen.

  “Fallyn, please be OK.” I mouthed the words to myself as I ran to her side.

  My shoes slipped in something dark on the floor as I fell to her side. I didn’t realize that it was her blood until I turned her over and saw the gash along the top of her head. She was breathing, but barely, and I shook her before I could actually process the scene. Blood, her blood, was everywhere from the head wound.

  I grabbed her chin between my thumb and index finger roughly. “Jesus, Fallyn. Baby, wake up. Wake up baby, I’m here. I’m calling someone.” I was rambling and digging for my phone in my pocket at the same time.