by L. J. Stock
Dad lost himself in the same shit he had when Mum was alive, only now there was no one to hold him back when it got superfluous. I had to buy a new telly when I came home one night to find ours gone. The old one had met its end with bailiffs, or had been hawked by Dad to feed his addiction.
Then there was me, the kid who'd once been told by his mum he had the potential to do or be anything he wanted. If you’d asked me what I wanted to be a year earlier, I would have said something ridiculous like a pilot or advertising executive. Funny how my choices had me being a drug addict with no hope of a future and a propensity for inflating or burying his feelings. Mum would have been so proud.
The problem was, it wasn't just the ecstasy I was into anymore. I found that sometimes feelings weren't what I wanted at all. They would end up building and escalating into something that ultimately tore me down. Or it would all become desperate, and I would feel everything at once and lean towards a bad trip.
Sometimes, when the edges of the black hole around my soul receded, I sought the numbness that occasionally abandoned me. So I would take pills, normally Benzodiazepine or something similar. When I needed a pick-me-up for work, I would smoke some speed and get things done in half the time, then bounce all over the place to stop from tweaking too hard and being discovered.
My drug of choice, however, was cocaine. The high was incredible, much better than that of the ecstasy. I was confident and happy, more in control of my reactions when I used it, and I wasn't so inclined to rub up against my neighbour’s cat, Hairball, because she was so soft. It was easier to hide, more convenient, and I felt like myself without that void that hung around.
One of the more cut and dry reasons I changed my choice of drug was the negative side effects of the ecstasy, which only happened once, but was enough to leave it behind, except on the rare occasion I was in the mood to have sex for a long time. Coke was good for that, too, but it wasn't as psychedelic as the ecstasy. Sometimes you just needed to really feel it, feel everything.
Needless to say, I had become quite the drug connoisseur. I had tried everything except heroin and acid, mainly because I'd heard bad things about them both, but curiosity was a powerful thing. Curiosity was what turned the tables, and my world, upside down.
Did I regret it? Well in hindsight I do, but at the time, it was hard to answer.
The night in question, I ended up with two acid tabs and a lot of time on my hands. It wasn't a decision I took lightly. I'd had the damn things for a week and they'd been burning a hole in my pocket ever since. I considered all of the pros and cons and came to the conclusion that once wouldn’t hurt. Then the dealer, Joey, said that everyone had to try them once. It was the nudge I didn't I need. In my abuse of narcotics, I became a dab hand at convincing myself to do things I normally wouldn’t. It was how I got there to begin with.
The boredom of being stuck at home slid under my skin that night. Dean was out, Dad was out, and I found myself alone with nothing to do. The thought of being sober had no appeal, and at the thought of socializing, I felt like someone had spread itching powder over my skin. I was in that rare place where I wouldn’t have been pleased with anything, so after much silent deliberation, I took a tab. What would it hurt? No one would find out, right?
Wrong.
Sitting in the middle of the bed with my legs folded under me, my knee bounced up and down impatiently, waiting for something, anything, to happen after the tabs had dissolved on my tongue. It was like waiting for a pot to boil. The more I paid attention, the less that seemed to happen. For a while, I truthfully thought the stupid things were defective, and the gnawing ache of loss became almost stifling as I let my mind wander. I'd become an expert at avoiding sobriety, and when I absolutely had to be sober, I made sure I had something, or someone, there to distract me. That night I had nothing but my room and my thoughts, and it was torture.
I'm not exactly sure when everything changed and the acid started to work its magic, but sat in the middle of the room, I noticed my walls start to gently wave in and out around me like they were secretly breathing.
It wasn't obvious at first, just little shimmers that would disappear when I turned my head. It turned into a game, my head twisting to find the source, my own smile growing the more I believed it to be hiding itself. I probably sat there for an hour as I tried to catch them doing it. Then I twisted at a weird angle, and I found they stopped hiding and started matching my own breaths. I gulped down oxygen, and the walls did the same. My natural reaction was to raise my arms and spread them out before laughing, the walls heaving in and out triumphantly with my lungs as I did.
The longer I sat there, the more it became evident that everything in the world was more vibrant. Colours popped, making me chuckle and reach out for them. The simplest of things grabbed and held my attention with their magnificence. I started to look for the beauty in the objects around me. How had I never noticed the gloriousness of the United team colours before? It hit me that I didn't even know the real name for it, but it spoke to me, the red swallowing the yellow hungrily and spitting out the lion shaped devil and the little boat from the badge.
I watched them in amazement as they playfully danced around the room, my arms in the air trying to catch them as they teased me. I don’t know how long I sat there in amazement as they twisted and twirled. The devil laughed gleefully as the boat dashed past, sending it billowing into the ceiling. I was so close to catching the devil as it sank slowly, but I wasn’t fast enough, and it eluded me, slipping through the door and into the hall beyond it.
I must have got to my feet somehow, not that I remembered much. My legs felt detached, like I’d never experienced the ligaments and muscles it took to actually defy gravity and stand upright. I would have spent more time pondering this conundrum, but the boat dashed after the devil, forcing me to throw the door open to follow them into the hall, where they danced around Dean's head.
With a small chuckle of glee, I stepped forward and plastered both my hands over his face to make sure he was real. When my hands didn't pass through him, I was almost sure he was corporeal, but the aura of light dancing around him was disconcerting. I studied him closely, my face only inches from his before I rocked back on my heels and smiled at the kid.
"E?"
"Shhh," I slurred, moving one hand to my face and sliding a finger over my lips briefly. Then I was distracted again, my hand reaching over his head to touch the lion-shaped devil. It danced out of reach like a kitten would while playing with a mouse, its back paws stomping around, its little red arse swaying from side to side as it prepared to pounce. "Don't move, Deano."
"E, you high?"
Putting my forefinger and thumb together, I laughed before the ship caught my attention as it floated toward the fish peeking from the shower curtain. I think somewhere in my mind I found it logical. It had water where the ship could sail on the tides I created in the bath. That was until the fish moved again, their beady eyes on me as their tails started to flick. They looked almost three-dimensional as they raised their heads to stare at me like some cartoon. I pushed past Dean and into the bathroom, stumbling through the half opened door and picking up the shower curtain, shaking it with both hands.
"It's all alive. All of it, Deano. The fish. They're stuck in there."
"The fuck you take, man?"
"I don't know what you said, but it sounded really important," I mocked, pointing at him with my index finger and bringing my brow down to make a frown before the hysterics finally burst free. If I’d been sober, I’m convinced I’d have seen the horror in the way he was looking at me, but there was no part of my being that came close to touching sobriety.
Stumbling out of the bathroom and past one of the pictures on the wall, I stopped and reversed over my shaky legs to stare into it as the clouds started moving, and the little Border Collie started herding the sheep as they flocked to the right side of the picture. I must have stared at that picture for an hour straight before I'd started mov
ing again, and it was as though I'd never paused. My body moved back into motion without thought, and I continued to talk about the fish, the devil, and the boat that had all stayed with me in the hall, or so I said.
The upstairs was a playground to me. I bounced from room to room, my laugh hysterical and maniacal. The deeper I got into my imaginings, the less I remembered. The world and my new view on it swallowed me until I was consumed.
Whatever Dean had planned that night, he didn't end up making it. He endured my mental trip, following me around as I climbed on the furniture and got lost in art and the television. He turned on music at one point and I disappeared for another hour.
Those were all the things I remembered with some level of clarity. Maybe not how long I was lost, but I remembered the artifacts, the interactive parts of my home. Unfortunately, the trip turned into a negative one when I stumbled across the pictures of Mum. I guess I should have expected it to happen. You hear things about the negative trips people have been through, the hallucinations and the horror of it, but I don't think I expected that, not when the evening had been going so well to begin with.
Dean never talks about that night, and I don't remember much of it myself. What I do know, however, is that Dad came home in the middle of me freaking the hell out, and I saw Mum stood at my bedroom door, crying. After that, she was everywhere on everything, a look of disappointment on her face as she shook her head and climbed into her casket, leaving me screaming for her to come back.
I must have passed out or been so lost in my own nightmare, that I shut down completely, because the next thing I remembered was waking up feeling like absolute hell. The residue of the visions flitted through my head over and over, crashing against my skull like waves before breaking apart and starting again until I couldn't breathe. I couldn’t get a grip on what was real and what was a hallucination. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
I eventually had to force myself to open my eyes. I was so scared that it wasn't over, and I would see Mum looking disappointed or climbing into her casket again, that it took all of my willpower to do it. The breath rushed from my lungs when I saw nothing but my room surrounding me. The devil and ship were back in my United kit, the walls weren't breathing, and as the light filtered through the gap in the curtains, my heart stopped pounding to the point where it hurt.
I thought I'd dreamed Dean's involvement. My memories were skewed to the point where he looked deformed in my recollections. Not disfigured - more cartoonish. The only thing I remembered with any real clarity was Mum, but as I turned my head and saw him slouched against my bedroom door, things became a little clearer step by step. He was on the floor, his head against the wall, legs stretched out and pushed against my chest of drawers as though he were trying to keep something out as he slept. That's about the time I remembered Dad had come home. Dean had been keeping someone out. He'd been protecting me from our father.
My blood ran cold in my veins, my eyes remaining locked on my kid brother. I didn’t dare move. I was so afraid of disturbing him and facing his disappointment, that I stayed where I was long beyond my bladder’s tolerance, just staring at him. I was the older brother here. Wasn't I supposed to be the one looking out for him? Wasn’t there some divine, unspoken law that said I should protect him from things like drugs, not rub his face in them and become a living, breathing warning for him? I wasn't all that certain about when the tables turned, when he became the one to look out for me, but I had a good idea about where to start looking.
"E?" Dean asked, the sound of sleep making his voice hoarse. He sounded so young and lost that a tremble of disgust at myself ran down my spine and settled in my stomach, making me feel sick.
"I'm so fucking sorry, Dean," I whispered, not moving a muscle. Unable to face him, I stared up at my ceiling, knowing that sorry just wasn't enough for this, but at the same time, utterly clueless as to how to make it right between us.
"The fuck were you thinkin'?"
It was a good question - one I had, admittedly, been asking myself since I'd woken up. The trouble was, I didn't have an answer, not for myself or for him. Then again, maybe that in and of itself was the answer.
I hadn't been thinking at all.
I'd sworn to myself I would never let Dean see me fucked up. When I finally admitted to myself that I couldn’t get by without the drugs, I made sure that I kept it as far away from him as humanly possible. Shit, I’d promised I would never do drugs in that house again, mainly in fear that he would catch me and I would be in this predicament, but that had lasted all of a week before it got too complicated and my selfishness had taken over. In one night, I'd broken both these simple yet cardinal rules that I'd made for myself, and not just in a little way. It had been devastating, and more to the point, I'd hurt Dean.
As I rolled my head on my pillow to look at him, I could see the pain radiating from him. The questions were framed in the scowl he wore, his eyes were bloodshot with dark circles cut deep underneath them, and his jaw was set and locked.
If I hadn't felt bad before, I did when I realized that Dean had lived every one of those nightmares and hallucinations with me. He'd seen the horror vicariously through me, and I knew I would never forgive myself for that. His memory of Mum had been that of her leaving the house that day, alive and filled with smiles and love as she teased him. Now there was this fucked up version of her. I’d forced him to think about her in death. There was no forgiveness for that and I couldn’t bring myself to ask him for it.
"How long, E? How long you bin doin' drugs?”
Wasn’t that a bitch? I refused to lie to him, but how did I answer that question without him despising me? I loathed myself for my weakness, for God's sake. I had taken every value and moral Mum had given us and thrown them out the window without thinking twice about it. I certainly hadn’t been thinking about the consequences. I knew Dean would see it like I did right now. I'd made a mockery of our lives up to that point. I'd turned away from everything I knew and abandoned the one person in the world who needed me.
Who the fuck was I?
Wasn't that the question of the hour?
This left me with only one option. Honesty. Looking at it, I would rather have him hating me for the truth than resenting me for lying to him. It was a fine line, but one of the few I was unwilling to cross. I had to be honest with him and deal with the consequences.
"Pretty much since Mum died."
"Fuckin' hell!" Halfway through his exclamation, the door banged against his back, pushing him forward. If his legs hadn't still been braced against my chest of drawers, he would have gone flying. In a moment of sheer panic, his eyes went wide and met mine as his back pressed against the door.
"Dean." Dad's voice was rough and full of uncut anger. Whatever he'd been feeling the night before hadn't faded but grown. It had been left to stew and twist into something bigger and darker. There was no escaping it. He was going to tear a strip from me and chew on the leftovers, and he’d enjoy every last second of it, too.
"Yeah, Dad?”
"You're late for work."
"I'll meet you there," Dean responded, a silently mouthed "What the fuck" aimed at me.
It was a valiant effort on Dean's part, but we both knew it was hopeless. Putting this off was only going to delay the inevitable and eventually make matters worse. When Dad was like this, he had a single-mindedness that put a dog with a bone to shame.
"You're opening. I want you out of this house in twenty minutes.”
Dean looked at me in question. After everything I'd put him through the night before, he was still trying to protect me. Selfishly, I wanted him to stay, to offer me a reprieve from the wrath of our father, but I couldn't and wouldn't do that to him. So I gave him a tip of my head to say he should go, doing my best to give him a confident look that said I would be fine.
"Yeah, alright, I'll do it," he said with exaggerated exasperation. His eyes almost rolled into the back of his head as he tried to catch a look at the door.
The sound of heavy feet moved down the hall in a shuffle and eventually started on a descent down the stairs, which was the cue for Dean and I to finally take a breath.
"You're in for it, mate.”
"I know. I fucked up. Best I face the music.”
Dean got to his feet and stretched out, his back popping and cracking in protest at his sleeping position. He plucked his shoes and coat from the floor beside him and took a lingering look at the room before settling his eyes on me.
“Why, E?”
I rubbed my face with both hands, unsure whether to look at him or the ceiling. It was a fair question, and there were a million more entangled with it. I would have loved to have been able to answer him and tell him exactly why I’d done what I had, how I’d managed to get where I was, but I just didn’t know. It all started that night with Jessica, but I was the one that had continued to go back. I was just too much of a coward to admit why.
“You know, I wish I knew, mate. I wish it would just roll off the tongue so I had answers, but I just come up blank.”
He nodded quickly like he understood, as though the conversation had taken a turn and got too deep for him. I was about to talk more when he pushed his free hand into his pocket and shrugged his shoulders. When you live with someone long enough, you’re able to read them. I’d known this kid since he was born, and that move said, conversation over.
Looking up at me and rubbing his ear against his shoulder, he pulled his hand from his pocket and rubbed the back of his neck.
"You owe me a couple of bevvies."
"I do. Anytime, anywhere. Your call,” I said, hoping he’d let me make good on the offer.
Pulling the door open behind him, he gave me a smirk as he turned to leave. Everything in me demanded that I call out to him, though, that I couldn't leave things the way they were.