John Shirley - Wetbones

And now, once more, the stuff wasn't working. It was just making him antsy for the next hit. He was almost assed out: busted, wasted, unable to buy more. How much money did he have left? Twenty bucks maybe? Maybe if he could get away from these two parasite – this babbling, yellow-eyed, middle-aged man who sometimes sputtered into a non sequitur of cursing like a victim of Tourette's Syndrome, and sallow, shrivelling Gretchen with her darting fingers. He hadn't been able to go ten feet without them following him. That motherfucker Hardwick had his van… was either stripping it or ferrying people around for money and selling everything in it piece by piece…

The last of the high seeped away from him, leaving him only tweaky rigidity in his nerves, lust for the pipe no matter how empty its reward, and the aching pit of depression that made him feel cold and hollow as a brass statue.

Why wasn't he dead yet? Constance was dead…

"You hear dat?" the guy said. What was his name? Charlie? "That de rollers?"

Gretchen shook her head. "They no cops here. You tweakin."

Charlie forgot about it, hunched down to pick at flecks of ceiling plaster that had fallen into the cracks between the floorboards. Tweaking them up between thumb and forefinger. Tasting them. Spitting them out. Garner had to fight the urge to do the same.

Thing to do was find a dealer, Garner thought; find a dealer maybe on his way to the set, smash his head with a bottle or something, take his dope and take his gun. That way he'd either get killed or he'd get some cash. Get some dope. Another hit. And then another hit.

He felt like he was dying the way Constance had died. He was being slowly crushed and cut up, too. By dope and the projects.

Maybe it was working out.

"We assed out," Gretchen said, scraping the last of the resin from the pipe with a coat hanger wire.

It struck Garner again how easily he'd slipped back into the street mix. Years of being away, being clean, teaching others to stay clean. But who could blame him, after what had happened to Constance?

Oh yes. The addict in Garner had seen its opportunity. And Garner was back out on the street and all the years working in the ministry might not have existed at all. He knew with a calloused certainty now that he had become a drug counsellor to keep himself clean; he had preached at himself by preaching at other people. Now he had come full circle, dumped from the butt-end of the night. A familiar feeling: being a human ashtray; burnt out and choked. Soon, inexorably, he'd be broke. Shot to the curb. This was the way it always happened, of course, for everyone. He could think: I knew it would end this way. It always does. Sure he'd known, and he could say he'd come in with his eyes open…

But it just didn't help much.

The crack was gone – except, doubtless, for the little bumps of rock that both Gretchen and Charlie had craftily pocketed at some point. No use trying to pry that out of them. There was simply no more crack. There was just the pipe and the room and the two parasites calling themselves Gretchen and Charlie and the four children on the floor.

He saw them now. The kids. He seemed to feel the sight of them lying there in the same room with strangers smoking crack in the middle of the night. None of them asleep but knowing from experience it was best to fake sleep or the crazy motherfucker Charlie with his spluttering curses would kick the shit out of them…

It smacked into Gamer then like a baseball bat: The realization. He was doing this to the kids. He, Reverend Garner. He was contributing. He had paid for the cloud of secondary crack smoke that descended now over that three year old.

"I wonder can you get you C.A. check now?" Charlie was saying. He was talking to Gretchen. "I mean in the fuckin mo'ning, can you get one, if you show you pregnant."

Garner looked at her. She didn't look…

He looked at her harder. She was pregnant. The 2nd trimester, maybe. Of course he'd known it. She was emaciated but… in the bathroom when she'd tugged those pants down…

She was pregnant. He was giving crack to the baby in her womb. He. Garner. Was helping funnel crack to the baby in Gretchen's womb; was merchandizing the misery of the kids on the mattress.

Gretchen was watching him. Saw the panic on his face.

"Let's go get a hit," she said, trying to head him off. "I'm fi'in to find this girl you going to like, she do somethin' for you fo' a ten rock -"

But he lumbered for the door. Pausing long enough to babble, "I'm sorry – I'm – I'm sorry – " at the children. Before fumbling the lock open, bolting out into the hall.

Gretchen and Charlie came trotting up behind him as he plunged down the stairwell. Into darkness.

Oh shit. He was in a dark stairway in the Projects. A fucking maze the cops wouldn't come into unless they were forced to.

Feet and heart clattering, he descended into the stink of urine; of rotten chicken from a garbage bag someone had left on the stairs. He nearly lost his footing, stumbling over the bag, but found the cold iron of the railing as he fell, caught himself. A light came wobbling behind: Gretchen and Charlie – who was muttering "Motherfucking motherfucker tryin gaff me off, owes me some shit I done let him use my place, I fittin to kick his mo'fuckin ass," – coming down after him, using a Bic to light the way.

Then Garner found a doorway, was out in the open air. But in the midst of the Projects. He stood there gasping, pulse hammering in his ears, thinking he might have a heart attack. Trying to look for the street, but the concrete walls seem to melt into dead ends of graffiti and trash, wherever he looked.

Four men were standing together ten feet away, staring at him. They were all wearing baseball caps turned backwards on their heads and identical gold coloured suit jackets and fake gold chains and red laces in their sneakers. Project gangsters. "Who he wid?" one of them said.

"He ain't wid shit."

They started moving toward him.

Gretchen stepped out of the door behind him, and Charlie. "He wid me."

''Bullshit. He ain nobody. Fuck him."

One of them moved around behind Garner, as he was trying to decide which way to run, and grabbed his hair. That was first. Garner shouted in pain, and yelled, "Gretchen!" The gangster dragged him by the hair back into the stairway. Garner struggled, but it only made the pain worse.

The others had vise-grips on his arms, were all dragging him along now, though Gretchen was yelling in the background somewhere. Something about how he was hers, she'd found him, they had to give her some of this…

In the ephemeral flare of a Bic he glimpsed the place they dragged him to. It was a basement of the Projects. A furnace room, strewn with trash. Something moved sinuously in one corner. All thoughts of self destruction vanished in the prospect opening before him: He wanted to get away before they did what this room and this time and these people promised they could do.

It would go on and on…

He screamed and tried to wrench free but someone smashed an elbow into his nose; he felt it pop like a smashed grape. Someone kicked his feet out from under him. He could hear Gretchen yelling something; felt hands pawing his wallet from his pocket. Other. hands skinning off his pants. A low pitched grinding as someone kicked him in the ribs; a squealing sound as someone kicked him in the head. The flicker of a lighter.

"What he got? He got rock? Lemme see that fuckin' wallet, bitch. He got -"

"He think he goin somewhere." They started again. Starbursts, flashes of light that were the kicks to his head. Tasting the floor through blood and smelling hot piss splashing around him and hearing Gretchen laugh…

And it did: He'd been right. It went on and on.