God Drug

by Stephen L. Antczak

  “No, I’m not. I’m Hanna.”

  “Yeah,” Deuce said. “I know what’s going on, now that I’m straight. Been so long since I had a fix… made me forget, but that was the only thing kept me goin’, kept me me.”

  “A fix?” Hanna asked.

  Laughter. “Yeah, you know, junk. Skag. Tar. Heroin.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, ‘oh.’ Anything would do it, though, if I could get enough. Crystal meth, Ex, Ice, crack, glue… even pot, but, man, I’d have to smoke it all day to get into that haze and forget. I don’t know how you did it, but I checked my ass into a chemical psychiatric ward.”

  “Did what?”

  Deuce exhaled his impatience with smoke. “Stayed you! What do you think?”

  “I don’t know what I think,” Hanna told him, agitated. “What am I supposed to think? I don’t know what’s going on!”

  “Yeah, well, I guess it doesn’t matter,” Deuce said. “Not anymore. Something happened, or you’d still be who you were before, and I’d still be happily oblivious to everything.”

  “What do you mean, something happened? What happened?”

  Deuce shrugged. “I think… we met a girl.”

  “Who met a girl? What girl?”

  Deuce nodded. “Oh, yeah, and she’s a real fine thing, too. She’s—”

  The Jeep made the off-ramp just then, and turned toward the Starvin’ Marvin.

  “She’s what?” Hanna asked.

  “Here you come,” Deuce said, nodding toward the Jeep, which was pulling into the parking lot.

  “Not me,” Hanna said. “The General. He’s coming for you.”

  “Yeah,” Deuce said. He spat his cigarette onto the blacktop, not bothering to grind it out with his boot. He shivered as the Jeep rolled toward him.

  “Why are you so cold?” Hanna asked. Wearing a leather jacket in 80-plus degrees… He should have been drenched in sweat.

  “The rest of you took all the heat,” Deuce said. The Jeep came to a halt a few feet away, and the General got out.

  “Get out of there, soldier,” the General ordered Hanna. A second later she was back in her own body, knuckles white from gripping the steering wheel as hard as her hands could since she left it to its own devices. She saw Deuce through the windshield, a ghost of a man, a ghost of a ghost. She could practically see right through him. Deuce regarded the General with tired, lifeless eyes.

  “Well, Corporal, looks like your cover is blown,” the General said. “Must admit, though, I am surprised you made it down this far.”

  “I ain’t goin’ down there,” Deuce said indignantly.

  “Yes, you are,” the General insisted. “We’re alllllllllll going there!”

  What happened next, Hanna couldn’t quite follow.

  The General blocked her view of Deuce. She heard a choked off scream, some red substance sprayed the wall of the convenience store. The General looked for a moment like he was slow dancing with Deuce, and kissing him… Then she heard a long, drawn out slurping sound, like someone sucking the meat from a gigantic oyster. The sound stopped, and the General staggered back against the hood of the Jeep. He was breathing hard, his body heaving.

  Deuce was gone.

  And she was pretty damn sure that the red substance on the wall was Deuce’s blood.

  She tried to will herself to put the Jeep in Drive and step on the gas. The General could decorate the wall just as nicely, thank you very much. If only she could… just do it… but she couldn’t. The desire was there, but so was the unmistakable unwillingness to do it. All she could do was sit there. Maybe she could make herself Go Away again.

  She closed her eyes.

  There was Deuce, buried in the dirt to his waist, laughing and crying and screaming “Fuckin’ yeah!” over the chugchugchug of hovering dragons. Held one severed leg up over his head with both hands. “Look, Ma, no legs!” He threw it at Hanna. Something funny about it all, something Hanna didn’t seem to get, but Deuce obviously did. Laughing like the joke was his own, punchline drunk, Costello to her Abbott. “We’re all in this together,” he told her, and she saw herself through his eyes, smelled her own flesh burning, afire, and she stood there a statue of flame, staring back at herself wallowing legless in blood, getting the joke, laughing at herself for not getting the joke—

  Hanna opened her eyes as the General eased himself into the passenger seat of the Jeep. He sipped from a large Starvin’ Marvin cup of Pepsi, belched under his breath.

  “Let’s go, soldier,” he ordered wearily. He looked different: paler, hair darker and longer, face smoother, younger.

  As Hanna backed the Jeep away from the wall, she saw Deuce’s leather jacket resting atop a pile of clothes on the ground. She didn’t say anything about it.

  The General’s eyes were closed, and he was smiling.

  Chapter Three

  “From the Halls of Mont-eee-zoooooooo-oomah!

  To the shore of Trip-oh-leeeeeeee!

  We will fight our country’s baaaaa-aatles!

  In the air, on land, and seeeeeeeeea!”

  A little girl’s voice barking out the Marine’s Hymn.

  “Poor Emily,” Tom said. He and Sparrow locked their bikes to the young American elm tree in Emily’s yard, then went upstairs to her apartment. Emily lived on the second floor of a house, and the whole second story was hers, rented from an old widower who lived downstairs. The door was wide open, as always, and a blast of cold air hit Sparrow and Tom as they entered the living room. The utilities were included in Emily’s rent, so she ran the air conditioner constantly at full blast, and left the windows and doors open for fresh air.

  Emily was in the kitchen making sandwiches. “Like the Weather” by 10,000 Maniacs, with Natalie Merchant’s distinct, almost childlike vocals, played on Emily’s boom box in the corner of the living room. The hum of the air conditioner almost drowned out the music. A tall, pink bong decorated a post-modern coffee table, and posters of Hendrix, Morrison, Joplin, and Marley adorned the walls. The apartment smelled of patchouli and marijuana.

  “Hey, guys!” Emily greeted Tom and Sparrow. The Marine’s Hymn had stopped coming from down the hall.

  “We heard her singing her favorite song when we got here,” Sparrow said.

  Emily sighed, but smiled. “God, I know. Over and over and over. I try to teach her some nice songs, but she never sings them.”

  Sparrow nodded toward the sandwich Emily was making. Peanut butter. “That for her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll take it to her,” Sparrow offered.

  “She’ll be happy to see you.” Emily handed Sparrow the sandwich on a plastic saucer.

  Sparrow walked down the hall, while Tom took a seat at Emily’s kitchenette table.

  “You need us to get you anything, Em?” he asked.

  Emily shook her head. “We’re fine. Want some tea?”

  “Sure.” Tom watched her fill the kettle from the tap and light a burner on the gas stove top, then turn around and lean against the counter. Her hair was braided up into thin corn rows with beads on the ends, she never shaved her legs, wore Birkenstocks… Grateful Dead ticket stubs spanning fifteen years were taped around the bathroom doorway. Emily was a few years older than Tom and Sparrow and was pretty much a tie-dyed-in-the-wool hippie.

  “You and Sparrow gonna trip tonight?” Emily asked. Just a hint of envy in her voice. She’d promised to watch the kid for the weekend, though, and on top of that she never touched LSD, only tripped au naturel on mushrooms when she did trip.

  Tom nodded.

  “Well, if you got it from Galactic Bill it should be good,” Emily said. Galactic Bill had been the source for as long as Tom had been in Gainesville, four years now.

  “I’d intended to try and get some Thai stick for you,” Tom said. “I didn’t get a chance. We weren’t too into hanging around there long enough to negotiate, you know? Galactic Bill’s a weird dude.”

  “That’s cool,” Emily sa
id. “I still have some Jamaican ganja left over from Sunsplash.”

  The kettle whistled.

  Sparrow had been standing in the doorway watching “the kid” paint. The kid was a little black girl named Io. She was about six, although no one was exactly sure of her age.

  “Hey,” Sparrow finally said.

  Io turned around, and when she saw who it was she immediately stopped what she was doing and got to her feet.

  “Sparrow!” she yelled joyously, and ran across the room to throw herself into Sparrow, embracing her legs in a bear hug.

  Sparrow mussed Io’s baby dreadlocks, little stalks of hair tied off with a rainbow of ribbons. Io wore a bright yellow summer dress but no shoes or socks, and her face, hands, and arms had streaks and smudges of red, blue, pink, green, and yellow paint on them.

  “Here,” Sparrow said, lowering the sandwich to within six-year-old range.

  Io shook her head. “Not hungry. Lookit the picture I drew!” She pointed a stubby finger at what she’d been painting.

  Sparrow looked.

  It was a face, harsh black lines and hard angles, square Superman jaw, Marine “jarhead” buzz cut, and black, beady eyes. The skin had been colored with peach, and the thin lips were blue. And the eyes… The black was outlined in red, and the red ran down the sides of the face in thick lines. It looked like he was crying blood.

  “Do you like it?” Io asked.

  “It’s…” Sparrow wasn’t sure what to say. “Who is it?”

  Io shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Are you sure? It looks like a real person… sort of. Is this a real person?”

  Io thought about it for a second, then nodded.

  “And you don’t know who he is?”

  She shook her head. “But he knows me,” she said, and laughed.

  “He does?”

  “Of course!”

  “Have you seen him recently?”

  Io thought it about it again, then nodded.

  “When did you see him?”

  “Last night, when I was ’sleep.”

  “Last night?” Sparrow frowned. “Was he here?”

  Io bit her lip, seemed to be concentrating on a way to explain it to Sparrow. “Kinda. I was ’sleep.”

  “You mean… he was here in a dream?”

  Io smiled and nodded. “Yeah! I dreameded him!” Delighted to clear up the confusion, Io went back to painting. “He’s my friend,” she said.

  To Sparrow, the face had military written all over it. Could Io be remembering her father in her dreams? But the man in the drawing, if he was even real, looked white. Io’s skin was very dark, almost truly black.

  Sparrow remembered the day she found Io wandering across the Plaza of the Americas on the University of Florida campus. The Plaza was where Hare Krishnas served up a free vegetarian lunch for the hippies, punks, rastas, artists, and otherwise “alternative” crowd. Io was walking around by herself, crying, looking lost. Sparrow took her by the hand, got her some lunch, calmed her down.

  “Where’s your Mommy?”

  No response.

  “Where’s your Daddy?”

  “He’s at the war,” Io replied with a shy smile.

  The war. Problem was, there was no war.

  “Do you have a name?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is it?”

  “Io.”

  That was it. Just Io. Either she didn’t have a last name, didn’t know what it was, or just would not tell.

  Sparrow had skipped classes that day to stay with Io. She let the little girl lead the way, hoping she’d eventually find her way home. By nightfall, however, Sparrow was convinced that Io had no home, at least not in Gainesville. So she gave her one, and Io turned into a project for Sparrow and her friends. Initially they were just going to take care of her until they found could find someone in a more… official capacity to do it. But the problem was that after reading some of the horror stories about foster families and Family Services in Alachua County, no one wanted to let Io go into that potentially lethal nightmare.

  Sparrow knew about Family Services from personal experiences in south Florida. Her parents had been having a rough time of it, fighting, and a neighbor called the police one too many times. She got bounced around from foster family to foster family for almost two years before her supposedly dysfunctional birth parents managed to get her back. She hadn’t been molested or beaten or anything, but there was the never-ending feeling that if you weren’t the perfect kid the foster parents would send you back for a better kid. After six months she’d awaken from a recurring nightmare where she discovered that she’d been through the entire supply of foster parents and no one wanted her, so they were going to have kill her.

  So Sparrow kept Io.

  Sparrow and her friends… The thought of them made her smile as she watched Io paint. They could look so… rough, with their piercings, tattoos, leather, and attitude, but they really weren’t as rough as they seemed. There was an undercurrent of nihilism and violence just beneath the surface, but deeper still there was warmth, talent, and the capacity to dream. They were the kind of people who took in a lost little girl, cared for her, picked a day at random and called it her birthday and threw a party for her, complete with an ice cream cake and presents.

  A few of them took turns watching Io, keeping her for a night or two, or a weekend, and they all chipped in for food, clothes, toys. Everyone loved her, but Sparrow was the central figure in all of it. She spent far more time with Io then the others, almost like an adoptive Mom. Almost. But Sparrow knew she was not going to settle down and grow roots in Gainesville, and she also knew she didn’t want to be Io’s Mom forever… She hadn’t quite admitted that to herself yet, but the graffiti was on the wall.

  Sparrow rejoined Emily and Tom in the kitchen.

  “Did you see that picture?” Sparrow asked.

  Emily nodded. “Yeah. Pretty weird. It looks like a real person, though, not something she just made up.”

  “I wonder if it could be her father,” Sparrow ventured.

  “It kind of reminded me of Galactic Bill,” Emily said.

  Sparrow frowned. “I don’t know. I guess…”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter,” Emily said. “If it’s her father, he’s long gone, or dead.”

  Tom finished his tea and said he was going back to his place. Sparrow decided to hang around at Emily’s for a little while with Io, and would head over to Tom’s later.

  Riding his bike there, Tom decided to pay a quick visit to Pinhead, the lead singer for a local band called the Psychotics, who lived on the way. Pinhead was there, putting together a video documentary of Gainesville’s music scene worked into the plot of a splatter movie. The idea was that each band featured in the documentary would be stalked by a serial killer and murdered. Like Emily, Pinhead rented out the entire upstairs of a house. When Tom got there Pinhead was taping a scene for his movie. Empty bottles of Karo syrup, a main ingredient for fake blood, were scattered around in the yard.

  Pinhead was aiming the camcorder at his latest girlfriend, a freshman from the university. Tom couldn’t remember her name. At the moment she was topless and covered with Karo-based imitation, processed blood substitute.

  “Okay,” Pinhead was saying, “stumble down the steps and over to the car. Remember, you’ve just eaten your boyfriend, so you’re in shock. Okay… Action!”

  With a wild-eyed leer, Pinhead’s girlfriend staggered off the front porch, mugged at the camera drooling blood, then stumbled across the yard to Pinhead’s old Checker cab.

  “Cut! Very cool, baby,” Pinhead told her. He looked at Tom. “Hey, man. Want those storyboards?”

  “Yeah, I’m getting ready to put together the new issue.”

  “Come on up.” They followed Pinhead’s girlfriend up the stairs. There was a soft-edged intensity about Pinhead, a cool fire that burned in his brown eyes. He was Emily’s age, yet looked all of nineteen with his spiked black hair, boyis
h face, and thin frame. Tom had a deal with Pinhead to published the storyboards for Pinhead’s movie.

  “You want some tea?” Pinhead asked.

  “No thanks.”

  Upstairs, while Pinhead pulled the storyboards off the wall of his dining room, Tom tried not to stare while Pinhead’s girlfriend wiped fake blood off her breasts. Pinhead’s bookshelves were packed with books about moviemaking, and his living room was set up as the practice space for his band.

  Speaking of which…

  “What time you guys playing tonight?” Tom asked as Pinhead handed him a stack of storyboards.

  Pinhead thought about it for a second, then said, “I think around eleven-thirty or so. The Chix are playing first. It might be my last show.”

  “Why is that?”

  Pinhead shrugged. “I’m thinking of moving.”

  “Where?”

  “San Francisco.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m in my thirties, man. I’ve never been in a band that toured outside of Florida or even cut a seven-inch, and only now am I making a feature-length video. It’s time to move on, you know?”

  Tom nodded. “I hear you.”

  He left. On his way to the Blue House, Tom thought about Pinhead moving. It was a common refrain, the expressed desire to move, the frustration of living in Gainesville. Gainesville was a college town, not a big city, and there was only so much it could offer. There were no jobs. There was the constant feeling that the rest of the world was passing by while Gainesville remained oblivious.

  Tom rented a room in the downstairs part of the Blue House, a Victorian mansion across the street from the helipad for the Alachua County General Hospital. The helicopter was gone. No one else was home.

  The kitchen shocked Tom into a momentary fugue state. Dishes were piled up in the sink and the stench of something rotting emanated from them. The garbage was overflowing. A tray of french fries from two days ago still sat on the stove top.

  There was only one thing to do. Tom took a deep breath, let it out, and grabbed two beers out of the refrigerator. Out on the wraparound front porch he popped one can open and took a large swallow. The beer was cheap Black Label. It was comfort food. No matter what happened, if there was beer in the refrigerator, all was well.