Peter Stenson - Fiend

8:54 AM

So Typewriter John and I have spent the last hour lying to each other, faking concern, panic, and desperation, all the while helping the other look for the last hit. The thing is, we each know the other is holding on to an eraser-sized shard. Its like a standoff, both of us wanting to be left the fuck alone for five minutes. Finally Typewriter caves, says hes going to take a shit, which I know isnt true because we havent eaten in close to three days.

I pull out the tiny bit of glass. Burn it. And its barely two hits and Im spun bad, like from our weeklong bender, but this one really does it, because when I peek through the G.I. Joe sheets weve draped over the windows, I see a little girl playing with a dog. Im thinking this is kind of sweetthis blond child crouching on all fours, inching closer to the dog, like maybe shes playing a game of make-believe where shes a dog too. But then I notice the dog is shaking. And its a big dog, a rottweiler, and hes shaking, his head down, his tail covering his nuts.

What the fuck?

Im about to return back to our cave of a world because the sun is ungodly bright, but I see the dog take a snap at the little girl. She dodges him just in time. I think about pounding on the glass. I need to warn this kid. I need to do something.

But I dont.

I stand there. The little girl creeps back to the dog, and once she gets close enough to touch it, she does, only her touch isnt a pat but a lunge for the rottweilers throat. It reminds me of this time I saw an elderly woman crossing the street, she almost made it across when a black Hummer turned right and came straight at her not slowing, and the old woman looked up in time to see her fate as an extravagant flaunting of male testosterone, and she crumpled, lost underneath tons of metal.

The little blond girl rips open the dogs throat.

I rub my eyes.

Blood spouting like Old Faithful. Her white dress now tie-dyed, swatches of brilliant red on cotton.

I close the G.I. Joe sheets. I sit down.

Im telling myself that its gone too far this time, this latest run, smoking half an ounce of scante, that I need to chill the fuck out, like KK said. I tell myself that this is it. That I will leave this house on the outskirts of St. Paul, go find something to eat, take a handful of Advil PMs, and call it a day. Call it a career in smoking speed. Never have I experienced such vivid hallucinations. Sure, tracers and voices and shit like that, but not seeing carnage on this scale. I laugh to myself. I try to analyze my hallucinationthe little girl represents innocence, and its probably significant that shes blond, because KKs blond, and that ties into innocence, because we were close to that, her and I, at least in the beginning. And the dog, maybe thats mans best friend, maybe its the natural world, maybe primal nature. And the subversion of the natural order, the child killing the dog, thats pretty simpleinnocence wins out.

EVERY fucking epiphany and realization and coded message all tell me the same thing: I need to get clean.

Im rubbing my hair. Its greasy like a motherfucker. I smell my breath. Its like abortions. Then I look around Typewriters house and its disgusting, that eerie shade of manufactured darkness, the sun doing its damnedest against the strung-up sheets to tell us the world is still going about its boring-ass business. Im on the one couch left over from his mother, the only thing he hasnt pawned. I hate my life. I think about Typewriter smoking shit in the bathroom. Maybe he has more than a shard? I stand up because I could really go for one last hit, a nightcap.

Something tells me to take one more peek outside. Im nearly positive the blond apparition will be gone, a fire hydrant standing in her place. I peek. Shes still there and her dress isnt a Jackson Pollock anymore, just red. Sos her hair.

Typewriter, I yell.

Innocence has her face buried in the dogs stomach. She pulls at the intestines like saltwater taffy.

Type, I yell again.

Shitting, bro, he calls back.

Im practically chewing on my overworked heart when the girl turns. She stares right at me, her face nothing but canine blood, a piece of matted fur dangling from her jaw.

Need you right fucking now, I say.

I close my eyes, rub them, breathe, just breatheone one thousand, two one thousandand when I look back out, the little girls standing, dripping guts, still staring at me.

Shit, man, I yell at the bathroom door, I found half an eight ball.

This gets his attention. I hear him rushing through the house. He comes jogging into the TV room (minus the TV, sold six months before). I stare at his fat Italian face, his eyebrows a launch ramp over his nose. He says, Fucking A, bro, lets get it.

Ive smoked enough meth in my life to know the power of suggestion among the tweaked is realer than AIDS, so I dont tell him about what may or may not be going on outside. I pull the curtain back.

Bro, the dope, lets see it.

I step to the side. I motion with my head.

Typewriter John stares at me, his chubby body all sorts of impatient.

I nod again at the window.

He looks outside. He screams. He drops to the floor. Hes saying fuck, fuck, fuck. I take one final peek, and Innocence is standing two feet from the window, bloody like the First World War, and before I can scream and close the drapes, I take one solid look, like really study her. Pieces of her flesh peel off her face like thin slices of gyro meat.

Im on the floor.

Typewriter continues his refrain of fucks and I still am not one hundred percent sure of the situation so I say, What did you see?

What the fuck?

Type, I need to know what

Blood. Girl. Monster.

Hes crying. I wonder why Im not. I tell him to follow me, that we need to get the fuck away from the window. I lead on my stomach. We make our way to the staircase, my heart is sixteenth notes, Im still telling myself its a lack of sleep and bowl upon bowl of meth, and I look over my shoulder past the whimpering snot that is Typewriter to the window, and I can see a three-foot silhouette through the thin bedsheet. Then I hear a crash, and the sheet moves, and this isnt fucking happening.

Go, go, go, I yell.

Hes on his feet and running up the stairs and I watch the blond girl climb through the window and sit on the sofa like nothing happened, maybe shes just returning from eating a handful of potato chips off the coffee table. I can see bone underneath the peeling flesh. Its whiter than I would have guessed.

Chase, Chase.

I turn to see Typewriter at the top of the stairs and then look back to the girl sitting there like a used tampon. She smiles at me, starts to giggle. I sprint upstairs.

We get into Typewriters room and lock the door. He bends over a stack of spread vaginas in glossy pages, and I want to be like, What the fuck are you doing, but he starts to vomit. I tell him were fine. That the dope must have been bad. That it was nothing.

We hear footsteps, slow and methodical.

I say that we need some benzos or opiates or barbiturates, something to come the fuck down.

Hes expelling bile with the force of a capped volcano.

And I say that these things happen, audio and visual hallucinations, that the shit from the Albino was always strongest, and weve been at it hard, and were probably dehydrated, and starving, yeah, starving. The footsteps seem to be getting closer, and Im staring at the chrome door handle, and Im telling Type that we just need to think about something else, anything else, something happy. Okay, Type, think about something happy, peaceful, and shit. And its more vomit from him and Im shaking and the door handle starts to jiggle and Im like, Happy thoughts, man. Then for some reason I remember one of KK and my first dates two years before, how wed gone to see