by Amy Lane
Owens laughed and ran a thumb down the side of Jackson’s face with the bowie knife still clenched in his fist, scraping blood off on Jackson’s shirt.
“I thank you for your candor,” he said, almost courtly-like. “Here.” He reached into his pocket with his free hand and pulled out a… oh God. Oh God. A pressure syringe, needle capped, full of a pale liquid barely visible in the gleam from the soda lamp as Owens stood.
“No,” Jackson whispered, taking a step back from the knife, from the heroin, from all of it.
“Oh, come on now. Don’t tell me you’ve never tried it!” Owen’s laugh assumed so much between them—and it rang shrilly with a brain that had obviously cooked a cell or a thousand of them using something very like that deadly little bottle.
“Not once,” Jackson replied. I can make it. I can turn and I can run and I can make it.
“That’s too bad.” Owens took a step forward, a cobra advancing on a small prey animal, but Jackson couldn’t help his retreat. “I thought you were so… pretty. Violent and pretty. Saw your picture in the paper—I was glad you lived.”
Even the shadows couldn’t hide the twist in his leer.
“That’s kind,” Jackson muttered. One more step. “It’s nice when people are rooting for you.” He’d seen his mother smoke, snort, and shoot up for his entire childhood.
The needles had been the worst. They’d lain about the apartment, wherever she’d dropped them. He’d preferred the coke mirrors, actually, but she kept those up on counters, probably as a throwback to the days when she cared if he lived or died.
Owens flicked the syringe lovingly. “I could make you so dirty,” he purred.
Jackson bolted.
One step… two steps… the gate was almost there… three steps….
But he hadn’t eaten in twelve hours, and he’d been bleeding all day. He’d gotten less than five hours of sleep the night before, and his day had been… his day had been—
He felt the hand yanking on his hood first, lifting him off his feet, and then a strong arm around his chest as the syringe sank into his neck.
And things got ripply and swimmy and purple after that.
And filled with the worst dreams.
ONCE UPON a time, an informant he was hitting up confessed that he’d just dropped acid.
“So, uh, how’s that working for you?” Jackson had asked.
“I was in a real good place when I took it,” the guy confessed woozily. “That makes the trip go smooth as silk. You’re in a shitty place, the trip’s no good.”
When the heroin hit his bloodstream, he was in a really fucking shitty place.
When he came to, he was propped against a wall in a filthy living room, legs sprawled in front of him, his throat sore from what felt like screaming.
Tim Owens was standing above him, masturbating.
Jackson had just enough of himself left to close his eyes and his mouth and turn his head as ejaculate splattered on him. He used his sleeve to wipe himself off and looked around in the glare of one dim light.
There were people in here.
Some were lying, still as death, their breathing barely enough to sustain them. Some were sitting against walls, knees drawn up against their chests, in various stages of drug use.
A few were shaking out withdrawals.
And a few—like the guy across from Jackson with the swollen tongue and bulging filmy eyes—were actually dead.
Owens fell heavily to his knees next to Jackson and licked his cheek. Jackson’s limbs—which had not been his own for however long he’d lost time—strained to pop him one.
But Jackson wasn’t alert enough to win that fight. He needed to save his strength until he could try. He held still, kept his eyes at half-mast while he tried to orient himself.
“That was lovely,” Owens muttered. “Can’t get off with any of these assholes—all too dirty, you see?”
Must not flinch from dead body in front of me. Must not vomit.
“I mean, I could keep you stoned for ages and just use you however. I had to get the first one off kind of quickly,” he confessed, as though a little embarrassed. “Jackson, you’ve got to understand—I’ve been waiting for you for so long.”
Jackson let out a whimper on purpose. A reaction.
“Yeah, I know. I should have been going after your boyfriend—he’s the brains of the operation. But he’s besotted with you. Anyone could see it. And you were just so….” He licked Jackson’s chin and the crease of his neck. “Delicious. Better to go after you, dirty up all your fucking pretty. And you have to admit, running into your mother’s dealer—that was special. I got all the drugs. I got to give away all the drugs. Just look at this place. It’s a testament to unholy greed and addiction. Ain’t it grand?”
I need to get him off me.
“Someone’ll see my car,” he slurred, only partly on purpose, but it had the desired effect.
“Right you are,” Owens told him. His hand in Jackson’s pocket brought back the stunning nausea of the crashing hit, and Jackson shuddered hard and tried to stay limp. “Oh, you’re coming down a little.” He kissed Jackson’s cheek and grabbed his crotch. “Don’t worry, pretty-pretty. I’ll come back and dose you up again.”
“No,” Jackson protested—a real protest, one he couldn’t stop making. “Head’s all swimmy.”
“Yeah.” A tender kiss on the cheek. “That’s the idea, pretty. Keep you all dirty, use you. You’re not as young as my usual toys, but you’re feistier. They never threaten me with discovery, for one. Why, Jackson, I think you’re hoping for the police to show up—and we all know how you hate the police.”
“Fuckers,” Jackson slurred, and Owens chuckled.
“Oh hey—” He stopped, rummaged through the front pocket of Jackson’s hoodie, and came up with Jackson’s phone. “Look! Something else to get rid of.”
He pushed himself to his feet and zipped up his fly. “Juice always does it to me,” he admitted, like this made him special. “Every single time.”
Jackson’s cock ached in his jeans—a side effect he’d read about, but God, he could have done without the real thing. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t use it. “Mm horny,” he mumbled.
“Oh, you hang on, Jackson. You and me are gonna play.”
Jackson kept his eyes unfocused in the direction of his dead friend with the black tongue. “Play,” he whimpered.
Owens caught him by the chin and turned his face so they were nose to nose. Like Ellery had noted, he was beautiful, even strung out. Bridger had said the guy used when he was on the force, but apparently Billy’s place had been the proverbial candy store. Dirty spoons and bottles of water were everywhere among the human detritus. He must have just opened the place up as a smorgasbord for whoever popped in looking to buy from Billy. Well, that heroin in Jackson’s pocket was looking pretty superfluous now. There were dime bags stacked up on the kitchen counter, overflowing, just ready for the taking.
With any luck, Jackson would remember to throw that thing in his pocket away before he got stopped and searched.
Dumbest idea he’d ever had.
But first he had to look like he was too stoned to move, which wasn’t hard. He was barely clear enough to know why he should move in the first place.
It had something to do with Owens’s jizz on his face and why he shouldn’t throw up.
But Owens was up, footsteps thudding across the filthy carpet, and Jackson waited. Waited. The door closed, and he waited. Some more.
In the distance, he thought he heard his car revving, and that was his cue.
He lurched forward, almost into the dead guy, and fell back on his ass. No, no, no, no—out. Out of here.
He had to push himself up on the wall. He stumbled into the coffee table, piled high with paraphernalia and drugs and, oh God, three buckets of what had once been fried chicken, a thing Jackson would never again eat in his life. One of them tilted over and littered the carpet with moldy bones as Jackson
gave up on subtlety and just concentrated on barreling out of there.
He fumbled with the lock on the sliding glass door, leaving it open as he stumbled out.
And almost wept when the cold night air washed over him.
He wanted to fall to his knees and get sick and cry—but he couldn’t. Because Owens was out there, and he’d take Jackson back inside that house. He’d drug him and violate him, and eventually Jackson would be a gibbering skeleton, stuffed in a hole, waiting for a knife in his throat.
He’d be lying in his own refuse on a squelching carpet, black tongue extended, and Ellery would see him that way, and that would be the last memory he’d have of Jackson.
Jackson had to fucking move.
He didn’t go left, even though he knew that way. Left was too close to the fence, and Owens had to pass the fence when he was done doing whatever with the car. And Jackson’s phone.
God!
Okay, down the darkened corridor next to the house, and his eyes blurred at the gate latch at the end. Was there a lock? Was it short? Could Jackson scale it?
There was a reason Jackson couldn’t scale another fence, right?
He’d have to remember the reason.
But first… oh God… past the shadows, the shadows that held hands and matted hair and dying scarecrows, and to the fence, and oh, sweet God, into the light!
The light!
Owens could find him in the light.
The fence opened, so easy it was magic, and Jackson crossed the street, feeling like a duck in a target shoot, staggering but keeping to his feet. On the other side of this next house, around the sidewalk, the streetlight was broken.
Ah, shadows.
Jackson hugged the shadows.
He meandered, lurched, lollygagged, and staggered from one block to the next, to the next, to the next. He heard shots and screams, crashes and fights, but he avoided every open garage, every approaching car, until he saw it, under a streetlamp, with a vacant lot behind it.
Glowing like a jewel.
A bus stop.
He was so grateful he sank to his knees and vomited stomach acid on some stranger’s lawn.
THE BUS driver almost didn’t let him on. Jackson managed to produce a tattered five from his wallet—which Owens had left alone, thank God—and to trade it in for a ticket and a transfer. He’d made it to Franklin Boulevard, which was, by his estimation, about a three-mile meander from Owens’s little slice of hell, and he would have been impressed with himself if he’d had anything left.
Even if this bus didn’t get him where he needed, there was bound to be a liquor store that would give Jackson some cash and some change so he could get across town.
And right now he was dizzy and still nauseated from the comedown, and he would have sold his soul for a bottle of water.
He had to settle for sinking onto the bus cushion and resting his aching head against the pole.
And comfort himself with the fact that he was still swimming from his first drug high, and he didn’t have the slightest fucking urge to do that shit again.
HE MANAGED to stay awake on that bus, but after the transfer, on the next bus, the one that went from Florin Mall to Stockton Boulevard, he fell asleep, dozing uneasily, dreams filled with being stuck in that room forever and ever while the whole world rocked like the bus. People came and went, looking at him without looking. He could feel their disgust as soon as his smell hit them.
He heard someone say “Fucking junkie.”
Everybody chanting “Fucking junkie!”
His mother laughing at him, cackling, because he was a fucking junkie, just like her.
He woke up with a start, blinking from the toxic running lights around the hostile and indifferent faces, peering into the darkness for a landmark, anything to tell him where in the fuck he was.
Oh, great. K Street—somewhere past the transfer that would have taken him to Power Inn, to Ellery.
Shit.
He blinked against the strobing greenish light of the inside of the bus, trying desperately to orient himself. A bus… he hadn’t ridden on a bus since… since… he and Jade, Kaden, and Rhonda, getting to Natomas to watch a movie. They went once a month, taking a bus down Grand, across to Northgate, up to the Regal.
But he couldn’t do that anymore—Ellery wouldn’t be caught dead on a bus.
He pulled himself abruptly to reality, got off the bus at J Street, and took the one going north. He got off near Elvas, sick of the smell of his own vomit.
He was a mile from his duplex.
Funny, how in the empty honesty left by hunger and high, he couldn’t make himself call it home. Not anymore.
It would have been so easy to alert the police watching Jade and Mike, to tell them he’d been abducted and assaulted and needed help.
But he didn’t want to talk to any of those people. He didn’t want to deal with the police. He didn’t even want to deal with Jade. He wanted to go ho—go get his cat and check in to a hotel and get the fuck out of Ellery Cramer’s life.
But first he needed… needed to get out of these fucking clothes.
He couldn’t walk into Ellery’s house like this, covered in vomit and a serial killer’s semen. He couldn’t talk to Jade or Mike like this. His entire life felt like a violation right now. He’d been violated and soiled, and he soiled the people he loved just by breathing near them.
He walked two blocks out of his way so he could come around the duplex on the dark side and sneak into his garage window, left open by the crime scene cleanup company on Mike’s request.
Neither of them liked the chemical smell that lingered.
His shoulder gave a throb as he clambered over the windowsill, and he figured the last of the heroin was wearing out of his bloodstream. He hoped he could let himself out of the side door, or he was gonna be stuck here. He stumbled on his own feet and caught himself on the couch, which was pushed into the back by the tool shelves.
Forever.
He needed to move, do what he came for, and get to Ellery’s house or he’d die in his own garage, too tired and disoriented to move.
People would miss him.
God, they’d find him like this—he couldn’t let anyone see him like this.
Shit.
Jade and Mike had packed his clothes in boxes, Jade’s bold, looping writing declaring the boxes “Decent Jeans,” “Holey Sweatshirts,” “Future Dust Rags,” “Clothes I might let him wear in my house.”
Picky woman.
She was cleaning out your house while you were in surgery.
Good woman. Good woman who finally had a good man in her life and didn’t deserve to be saddled with Jackson in the name of childhood friendship.
All that bullshit about helping people. Serving the greater good. You’re the spawn of a drug-addicted whore. Your father figure just died in a pool of his own filth.
Your mother was ripped open and gutted like a deer.
A sound—an ugly one—echoed in the little garage, and he ruthlessly focused his mind on business.
He stripped off his clothes, grunting softly to himself when his shirt stuck to his shoulder, cemented with layers of dried blood. The gauze came off, and the shunt pulled out with it, and he moaned a little.
It didn’t hurt enough.
That morning, when he’d been afraid of something on the blade, the pain had been excruciating.
Now that he knew what real drugs felt like coursing through his system, he recognized the lingering aftereffects of an opiate, muffling the sound of the pain in his neurons, and he welcomed it.
He was shivering with cold as he unpacked some old clean clothes—cold-weather gear, thank God. New underwear, new jeans, a new T-shirt with a goldfish cracker on the front, on its back with little x’s for eyes, and a zippered hoodie—it all abraded pleasantly against his skin. New socks and an old, worn pair of sneakers felt even better.
A quick drink—stale and tasting of rubber—from the garage sink helped too. Enough to
have a second and a third before his stomach rebelled and threatened to cramp. He rinsed his face in the shockingly cold water, then took a step or two back and made himself finish.
Conscious of evidence, he grabbed a trash bag from the shelf and shoved the sweatshirt/T-shirt combo into it before he rooted around his washer for a laundry marker.
On the back of an old box, he wrote, Jade—get these to the lab. Owens’s DNA is on the sweatshirt near the neck.
His washer and dryer still worked. He shoved the rest of the clothes into the washer and started the load, so grateful to know his stench was being washed from the fabric that he almost cried.
Then—as quietly as he could—he let himself out of the garage door, making sure it was locked from the inside as he left.
The sun wasn’t quite up, but it was maybe thinking about its last ten minutes before it had to yawn, stretch, and scratch its pits. Jackson took advantage of the imperfect light to leave the garbage bag and his little sign on Mike’s porch.
The policemen, yawning in their squad car as they tried to stay awake, didn’t see him. On the one hand, that should have been scary as fuck, because they were supposed to be looking out for Jade and Mike.
On the other, the damned dog started barking inside the house as he was walking away.
He didn’t know he had it in him to sprint.
He made it all the way back to J Street and was closing in on the bridge when the shaking in his limbs forced him to slow down.
And walking slowly, every step an agony of shaking limbs and regret, he asked himself why he didn’t just knock on her door.
Not clean.
The drugs were completely gone now, sweated out by that final sprint, and he tried to fight this idea with logic.
None of this was your fault.
Well, except the part where he’d gone to a drug dealer’s house at dark, alone, without backup, and gotten caught.
But really, wasn’t that part and parcel of the whole Jackson package? Had to be a hero, right? Had to wear a wire—for way too goddamned long. Had to be the one to save Kaden, right? Had to save Ellery and go back in the damned hospital all over again, right?