Psychostasis

by Ezra Blake

  She snorts. It’s a wet, ugly sound reserved for cripple jokes and Louis C.K. specials, stuff she feels sort of guilty laughing about. For some reason, it makes Elliot want to fucking cry.

  He steadies his breath and says, “Mom, can I ask you something?”

  “Shoot.”

  She presses a kiss against his faintly stubbled jaw, and the questions flood him like cortisol floods him, every morning upon waking. What are we going to do when Travis gets out of prison? When I’m a doctor, will I be your doctor? That night I slept in your bed, was that real? Did that happen?

  She can’t answer any of those questions, so he says, “You need me, right?”

  Her dark eyes narrow and skim down his body. Then she shakes her head, smiles, and says, “I don’t need nobody, Eli. But I want you here.”

  When Ash was in middle school, he had a horrible bout of some viral infection which left him bedridden for three weeks. He still remembers the awful, penetrating ache which seemed to scatter under his attention, only to reconvene elsewhere in his body. When his mother tried to drag him to school on Monday morning, he could barely form words to explain what was happening. Take-home work piled up at his bedside. He took enough Tylenol to shrivel a grown man’s liver and still didn’t feel better.

  That was luxurious.

  “I can’t do this,” he sobs, sapping Jake’s body heat like a leech at low tide. “Please call him, I’m sorry. I ain’t going nowhere, please.”

  Jake shakes his head. “I flushed it for a reason. Pastors can’t get high. It’s a sin, you know.”

  But Ash knows sin, drowns in it daily, and torturing one’s fellow man is higher up the list.

  “I can run a bath if you want. The hot water will help.”

  This is how he dies: in the frantic, pungent heat of withdrawal, curled up like a shivering fetus, begging Jake for drugs which have already dissolved into the sewer system. “Please call Gavin,” he moans into the pillow.

  “I can’t do that.”

  He sits up as much as his tied wrists will allow. Every joint screams in protest. “You can. You’re saying you won’t.” When he relaxes his tight shoulders, that hurts, too. “You like watching me suffer.”

  “Fucking hell, Ash, no I don’t.” Jake pinches the bridge of his nose. “You have to get clean so—”

  “I don’t want to be a pastor. I only said it because I was mad at you and I dunno what else to do with my life. I’m a waste of space.”

  “That’s not true,” Jake says quietly.

  “It is and now I’m a junkie too.”

  He lays a hand on Ash’s shoulder like he thinks it’s a comfort. He thinks he’s helping.

  “You’re not a junkie,” he says. “You’re not a waste of space. I know at least one person whose life would suck ass without you.”

  Ash lies back on the pillow, and a moment later, so does Jake. He gently pulls apart the knots binding him to the bed.

  “I can’t do this,” he whispers. “Please call him. Just get me a little bit. I’ll do anything.”

  Jake winds the tie around his palm and clenches the fabric like brass knuckles. His fingers turn white. Then, one by one, he releases them.

  “I’ll do anything, I mean that. I was stupid, I was being an idiot earlier. You’re so important to me and you don’t deserve this either. Forget all the stuff I said.” He reaches across Jake’s torso. “I was being so selfish, but I see it now.” Slips his fingers into Jake’s back pocket. “I don’t have to leave. I don’t have to go anywhere alone.”

  Jake screws his eyes shut—and why should they do this if it hurts them both?

  “I know I went crazy after camp, but if it had to happen once…I dunno. I’m glad it was with you.”

  Jake’s chest rises and shudders against him. They’re so close.

  Ash cradles the back of his greasy head, leans in until their lips are centimeters apart, until he can taste every exhalation, and whispers, “I won’t leave.” He slips the phone out of Jake’s pocket. “I need you.”

  Jake rolls out of bed, nearly toppling the nightstand. “No,” he says, and slams his fist into the drywall with an anticlimactic thud. “You’re just like the rest of them. I’m not calling Gavin so you can stay in bed and fucking wallow in it.” Before Ash can react, he slams the door behind him.

  Then it’s quiet, central heat and a drumming headache. Ash cocoons himself in blankets. The Lord detests lying lips.

  He pushed too hard. He’s a crappy liar—but where was Ash supposed to learn how to act in-love? Who was supposed to teach him?

  For a few minutes, he takes Jake’s advice and wallows in self-pity while his savior stomps around downstairs. He can only tolerate it for so long.

  Ash has the phone. The money is in Jake’s mirror cabinet; he can probably crack the code. How hard can it be? He snatches the cell from under the pillow. It’s one of those pattern locks, and there are only so many patterns. The letter J, for Jake? No. C for Caruso? A triangle? A square?

  The phone locks him out, so he lies back and bites his tongue for five minutes, painfully aware of every breath. Is it an X? The letter A, for Ash?

  And he’s in. If he can do this, he can do the mirror, too. There are only ten numbers, it’s a four digit code, and ten times four is forty. Forty possible combinations, right? This will work.

  He scrolls through Jake’s contacts, grits his teeth, reads his texts. “Come on,” he breathes. If God cared about him, he’d give him the goddamn number. He scrolls, scrolls, lies back, twists through the discomfort. Takes the phone, scrolls. Again. It’s not there.

  “No, no, crap. Come on.”

  Swipe. Swipe. Nothing.

  “Come on, please, I’ll serve you perfect my whole life. I’ll call Dad and apologize for everything.”

  Then his gaze falls on the bedside table: the collection of dressings and ibuprofen, the crumpled care sheet. Call me if you need anything.

  None of Jake’s friends have called him since the party, not even to buy drugs for dirt cheap. He obliterated his distribution network in an avalanche of shit. Rose didn’t even answer the phone for her fucking dog, so Mocha the terrier is still running around the patio, barking and eating all the trash he missed. He shouldn’t have flushed the heroin. That’s money down the drain, and he needs money.

  He smokes weed. He glances through job listings. He’s been frozen in indecision since he quit speed, oh, twelve hours ago? It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now he has shit to do, and he’s in desperate need of a jumpstart. He has plenty of gas; no battery.

  Not that it matters. He’ll never get another decent job with such a huge gap on his resume. Maybe he could list “independent salesperson.” Or maybe he could start a business. Drop shipping. Fake Gucci bags. The money’s out there. Ha ha.

  Bang! Bang!

  That’s the door. Jake’s ass is glued down. He ignores it for a good five minutes, but then the trespasser finds the bell.

  “I’m not interested.”

  The driveway is littered with fallen leaves. The sky spits dirty rain. Elliot leans on the steps’ railing and smirks like he won the lottery, was elected president, whatever.

  “Your boyfriend called me,” he says.

  Jake shoves him to the side and says, “Go home. I already have a connection.”

  Then he’s driving through a gray drizzle. The dog is supposed to be in the back seat, but she keeps climbing onto the console and giving him sad eyes. Half of him prays she’ll jump in his lap. He’ll get distracted and drift into oncoming traffic and then boom, Jake’s head is split on the crumpled dashboard and Mocha is crushed to paste between his chest and the wheel.

  He turns his tires toward the opposite lane once or twice, thinking about Brad Pitt in Fight Club saying what do you wish you’d done before you died.

  If Brad Pitt were driving this car, there would be no issue. They’d go home. Brad would fuck Ash’s brains out, Ash would get over himself, and nobody would need drug
s.

  His first stop is Mocha the human’s West Philly shithole. Here’s your dog, I need some smack, I’ll give you my PlayStation. She isn’t home. He drives half an hour to Hunting Park, speeding when he can, loosening his grip on the wheel every time he turns.

  What do you wish you’d done before you died?

  Mocha curls up in the footwell while he waits at the door, hands shoved deep in his pockets. He was supposed to text, but his phone must be in his other jacket. Maybe Gavin will get trigger-happy.

  Gavin answers the door with a towel slung low around his hips. His chest is covered in tattoos and he’s fucking ripped, which Jake should have expected, and the first thing he says is, “Did you text?”

  “Yeah.” He steps inside, sits on the couch. All the drug dealers he knows have the same couch in different colors. There are a half-dozen stores around here that sell them for cash, alongside elaborate hookahs, flat screen TVs, and other expensive shit for people who have plenty of money but don’t know what they want.

  “What’ll it be today?”

  “I want to trade the Glock in for some smack,” Jake says.

  “Hell no.” Gavin steps into the bathroom and grabs some jeans from the laundry basket. “You can say you didn’t shoot anyone, but I can’t know for sure.”

  “Can you front me some, then?”

  Without closing the bathroom door, Gavin drops the towel to reveal his massive, swinging cock. “I gotta be real, man. You went like a year without hitting my line.” He tugs on his jeans. No underwear. “Can’t you just pay? You between shipments or what?”

  Jake shrugs. It’s hard to have a conversation when his brain’s talking to itself, but it’s even harder when it’s dead silent. “I’ve got my game consoles in the car. Would you trade for that?”

  “Depends.” He grabs a gun from the kitchen counter and tucks it into his waistband. Jake probably should have noticed the gun first thing. “What consoles?”

  “All of them. Come see.”

  Gavin follows him, shirtless, out to the car. Jake pops the trunk.

  “Whatever you want, they all work. You can look through the games, too.”

  Gavin picks up the cardboard box of disks and rifles through it. “There’s a couple in here I don’t got,” he says. “They all yours, or did they fall off the back of a truck? ‘Cause I don’t usually fence—”

  Mocha leaps over the back seat and slams into Gavin’s chest. The box flips. A thousand hours of wasted time clatter to the ground.

  “Oh shit. Fuck, sorry—”

  “Hold up,” Gavin says, extending the squirming dog to arms’ length. “Who’s this?”

  “Uh, her name’s Mocha.” He scrambles to collect the cases, but they slide around the concrete and get all scratched to shit. “My friends left her with me but now they won’t pick her up.”

  “So you’re looking to get rid of her?”

  Jake rights himself. “I thought you wanted a beefy guard dog.”

  “Maybe, yeah, but it’s been quiet around here since Cam’s mom left. And obviously the kid ain’t…” He shrugs. “Yeah. It’s been quiet.”

  He glances again to Gavin’s scalp tattoo.

  “I’ll do you a gram for the dog and all your FIFA games.”

  “You seriously want her?”

  Gavin shoots him a bemused half-grin. “Fuck yeah, man. Fuck yeah I want her. Let’s go inside and sort you out.”

  Elliot has always wanted to climb a trellis or pelt a second-floor window with rocks, but Jake’s house has neither a trellis nor rocks, so he uses the side door. It’s unlocked.

  He steps inside and is sucked back in time.

  Thrumming bass; soft stench of body odor, cigarettes, marijuana. Careless feet grind spilled Doritos into the carpet. Elliot scans the room for Lucas. He’s usually seen dragging himself to the lecture hall in baggy sweatpants and hangover sunglasses, but he looks good tonight, in tight jeans and a designer button-down, chatting with a man bun who isn’t coherent enough to listen.

  He shouldn’t be nervous. He and Lucas have been discretely hooking up for a few weeks, and this will be no different: get a room, get his mouth fucked, get some Adderall. Maybe if he’s lucky, Lucas will even ask him how he’s doing.

  A gust of wind smacks the side door shut. He jumps back into his skin. The place looks eerie without trash or warm bodies. He takes a few tentative steps inside. There’s the couch where he loitered, clutching his solo cup like a shield while he waited for Lucas to finish his conversation. There’s the kitchen with more alcohol than counter space.

  The bedrooms are upstairs. He remembers.

  Elliot is here to do a job. He promised to help Ash if anything went wrong during recovery, but he can’t quite bring himself to climb the stairs. He wanders instead, rifling through cupboards and flipping through books. The Mothman Prophecies. The 5-Hour Work Week. Erotism: Death and Sensuality. Eclectic. He flips to a random page of The Psychonaut’s Guide to the Invisible Landscape and reads:

  There is Machinery Behind. This is peculiar “machinery” though. It can selfreplicate. It is full of mind-from-within. It is expanding in the Deep, building more of itself through some secret blueprints—blueprints that are created as they are followed. The Mind of God is pure paradox.

  He snaps it shut. There’s no dignity in snooping and no courage to be found on the bookshelf. Jake fills his head with gibberish, apparently. No wonder gibberish comes out. He replaces the book on its haphazard stack and fishes a syringe of amphetamine salts from his backpack; he shoots it up his ass right there in the middle of the living room. That’s better. He climbs the ugly glass staircase.

  Ash’s sickroom is identifiable by its smell alone. The atmosphere is that of a poorly-attended wake. There’s an empty vomit bucket near the bed, and Ash is trembling under a thin, stained sheet. A sliver of a person. A mistake.

  “The doctor is in,” Elliot says.

  Ash groans and props himself up on his elbows. “Thanks for coming,” he says, and he couldn’t sound less enthusiastic if he was comatose.

  “You owe me big time.”

  It’s Elliot’s voice, but the words belong to Lucas. They’ve been in this room since the party, floating in the ether, waiting for Elliot to appear and put them in his own mouth.

  He crouches by the bed. The smell is worse at this distance, sweet and filthy like rotten fruit. He fishes the baggie of brown powder from his backpack. “This is from my personal stash.”

  Ash’s eyes widen and he grasps weakly for the bag, but Elliot snatches it away.

  “Fifty bucks.”

  “I don’t have any money,” Ash says.

  “I’m sure we can work something out.” He steps around the bed. “Let me see how you’re healing.” He folds down the sheet without waiting for a response. Ash doesn’t help remove his underwear, but he doesn’t fight back, either. His dressings are yellow and brown. Elliot peels them off expecting pus and finds nothing but a smooth, white scar. He’s completely healed.

  “What happened here?” He asks, though of course Ash won’t tell him. “You should be out of commission for another week.” He prods and fondles with unwashed hands; he even tries to spread the scar open, but the flesh has knitted itself firmly together. Ash is a eunuch.

  And Elliot did that.

  “Does it still hurt?” He pats the bare mound where Ash’s cock used to be, eliciting a soft grunt.

  “Everything hurts,” he says, and bites his lip. It seems orchestrated, somehow. Elliot ignores the feeling until he bats his long eyelashes and adds, “Doctor, please.”

  Fuck medical school. This is all he needs.

  “Lie back and show me your arm.”

  Ash obeys instantly. “I need a lot for it to work,” he breathes. “I been on it every day.”

  He makes a fist while Elliot cooks. It’s a weak fist, but his veins stand out, and the needle goes in on the second try. He draws up a hard-won droplet of blood, watches it mix with the brown tar,
squeezes the plunger. The body beneath him goes limp.

  “There we go. Very good.” He presses his lips to the shell of Ash’s ear. “How’s that feel, hm?”

  Ash doesn’t answer. Not even a sigh.

  Chapter 20

  Naked together between the soft, cold sheets, they sleep off the profound irritation of cross-country travel. Only their hands touch. This place feels as much like home as anywhere Chris has slept in the past year.

  He rolls on top of Ivan’s hard body and kisses a trail down his chest. He’s undoubtedly been awake for at least ten minutes, so when he stirs, it’s for Christopher’s benefit. It all feels tantalizingly normal.

  “We don’t deserve this,” he mutters into Ivan’s disheveled hair. Attractively disheveled, like he’s paid a stylist to make it look like he just woke up. He can’t even drop it when he’s sleeping.

  “Mm, what don’t we deserve, darling?”

  “This,” he says. “Acting like people on vacation.”

  “You’re very concerned with contradictions,” Ivan mumbles. “Remember, the path leading forward also leads back.”

  Chris sighs, rolls onto his back, and bends over to touch his toes. The stretch is lopsided and inefficient, but it feels good.

  “How’s your leg?”

  “Sore,” he admits, “but I can do some walking, as long as we take breaks.”

  “No breaks. I plan to work you until you keel over.”

  “Are you…joking?” He squints at Ivan through the gentle morning light. It softens his cheekbones and makes him look young.

  “I’m completely serious. The purpose of this trip is to inflict so much pain and stress that you become permanently crippled.”

  Chris blinks. Ivan maintains his granite expression for about five seconds longer than necessary. Then he smiles. “No, of course we’ll take breaks.”

  “Jesus,” he mutters, pulling on his socks. It’s been less than twenty-four hours since he was panting and sweating over his friend’s dead body, squeezing purple bruises into her breasts, moaning Ivan’s name. In the end, they made it about themselves.