Peter Stenson - Fiend

We drive down Summit Avenue. The houses are nice and then they’re not. I tell Typewriter to go five under the whole way. He tells me there aren’t any cars anyway. I haven’t noticed. But then I do. I look around Summit. It’s just Victorian mansions with rows of evergreens like please stay the fuck away, cars parked in driveways, empty streets.

I’m so spun.

I look at the dashboard clock. It’s a quarter past ten. Maybe everyone’s already at work? We’re down Summit Hill and onto West Seventh. This is my stomping ground. Has been for a year. Strip malls with laundromats and apartments above Chinese takeouts and narrow barrooms filled with smoke and televisions, none of them flat screens. I know what this area’s supposed to look like. Busy with people standing at bus stops and girls standing on corners and brothers spitting balloons of dope out of their mouths. But it’s not. It’s empty.

I ask Typewriter if it’s a holiday or something. He doesn’t know. I check my shirt to see if it’s still covered in blood. It is. I flick off a nugget of skull. It sticks to the dash. Nothing makes sense. I keep telling myself I’ve spent the last hundred and sixty-eight hours smoking meth, that I’m beyond delusional, beyond sane, one more awake hour away from completely breaking the fuck down.

We turn onto Marshall. I see my boy Tibbs walking down Seventh. This makes me feel better. Like things are normal, okay. Type says, Bet Tibbs is holding, could hook it up with a teener for the road.

Not trying to flee yet, I say.

Huh?

Get to my apartment. Got a few Klonopin. I need to sleep, man, like my head is bad.

Feel you, Typewriter says.

We pull over at my sublet. I get out. Stretch. I wonder where the hell everyone is. Nobody’s waiting for the bus, nobody’s driving or honking, there’s no foot traffic over at the Groveland Tap. Typewriter scans the streets too. He looks at me. I shrug.

We go around back of the split-level and it’s nothing but red chipped paint and cracked sidewalks but Rebecca gave me the tiny-ass apartment for three fifty a month, so whatever. I open the door. The house splits inside the tiny foyer, one door to the two upstairs units, one door to my dungeon of an efficiency basement. The mildew stench from the walls is at an all-time bad. I think about complaining to Rebecca but decide against it, having smoked July’s rent.

It’s a strange feeling inside my apartment—part relief, part dread—and I wonder if that’s what everyone feels coming home. Like, yeah, I see the one piece of furniture I own, my mattress covered in unwashed navy blue sheets, and I’m like, motherfucker, I missed you. But I see nothing but dust bunnies on the scratched wooden floors—and I’m like, motherfucker, this is it. This is my life.

What’s up with those benzos? Typewriter asks.

I walk to the bathroom next to the efficiency kitchen. It doesn’t have a door. I open the tiny medicine cabinet. A toothbrush that has gone unused for weeks sits next to an Advil bottle. I pour out its contents—four beautiful Klonopin. I think about swallowing them all, the four of them spreading through me like the warmest of quilts on a January night. I run the faucet. I want to sleep and forget what happened with the umbrella-socked demon. I glance up. Something is staring back at me. I nearly scream. It’s me. My eyes are the deepest of oceanic trenches.

Give it here, Type says.

I hand him two pills and swallow mine.

I think about how much time I spend trying to find a balance between artificial moods, the equilibrium of acceleration and deceleration.

I plug my cell phone into the charger. Typewriter lies on my bed.

Get the fuck out, I say.

Bro, where am I—

Not on my bed.

But there’s no other furniture.

Sorry, not all of us have a house from our mom.

Typewriter looks at me like I’ve spit in his mouth. I feel like a dick. I say, Listen, man, I’m sorry. We need to sleep and figure out what the fuck happened, you know, like what’s real, what isn’t.

He starts to get off the mattress. I tell him it’s fine, just don’t try any faggy shit. He calls me a faggot. I tell him that was a good comeback. I lie there and my heart still thunders and I’m willing the soluble shell of the Klonopin to break open and spill its contents into my bloodstream, for my eyes to become heavy. Typewriter curls at the foot of the bed like a wary dog. This reminds me of the rottweiler. The little girl. The giggles. The little fist coming through the door. The typewriter. The flames. I picture the police there, the fire department too, Typewriter’s childhood house alive in its death, flames reaching toward the telephone poles, the electric wires connecting everything. I should call KK. Tell her I might be going away for a while. How long until they come looking for Typewriter here? I strain my ears to hear Rebecca’s TV through the floorboards. I can’t hear anything. This is odd. That fat bitch has that thing blaring at all hours of the day. I yawn, and this makes me smile. They’re working, the Klonopin. I know that when I wake up, I’ll be terrified, either because of what we’ve done, or because of what drugs are turning me into.

7:51 PM

I wake up, not ready to. Typewriter slaps at my feet.

What?

It was real, he says.

Huh?

He points to his shirt. It’s still covered in blood. I look down at myself and see the same thing and I’m thinking, fuck my ass, what did we do? I rip off my T-shirt and throw it on the floor. I look at my pants. Smears of the little girl stain the denim.

Bro, Type says.

We need to get out of the bloody clothes. Burn ’em or some shit, I say.

He understands then, stripping down.

There’s a pile of clothes in the corner, all dirty. I pull out a white T-shirt and a pair of green sweatpants and toss them to Typewriter. I dress in jeans and a navy blue shirt, musty with cooled sweat.

Then I’m packing what little I have in a trash bag. I stuff in some clothes, my phone charger, a jacket. I’m thinking about passports, about money, about Mexico or Canada, my parents, KK, about not using the one credit card I still have because they can track those things, about maybe ditching Typewriter because one person disappearing is easier than two. I pack my toothbrush, my unopened mail. Typewriter stands at the one excuse for a window, looking up through the basement metal grate. I feel a slight craving, just a hit to get my head straight. I wonder if Typewriter still has a shard. I ask. He doesn’t respond.

Yes or no?

He shakes his head.

What the fuck does that mean?

Still nothing and I want to bash his head in because he can be such an idiot. So helpless. So desperate. Playing the whole poor-fucking-me-my-mom-died-of-cancer junkie thing. And he’s shady as hell. Always stealing people’s scraps, shorting bags. And here he is, facing murder, staring out my piss slit of a window like he can’t get enough of the sunset.

You gonna help? I ask.

Something’s not right.

I laugh. You kidding me right now?

Look, he says.

I decide right then and there to leave him. I’ll be better off without his constant bitching, his tendency to destroy everything he touches.

Help me pack up the bloody clothes.

Chase, look.

I’ll humor him until we get out of the city, until we stop for gas. I’ll leave him while he’s paying.

I walk over to the window and look up to the street level. There’s nothing. I ask him what he’s talking about. He points. I say, Yeah, so?

Nothing, he says.

That’s a good thing.

Not one person. Nobody. When’s the last time you saw Seventh empty?

We don’t have time for this, I say.

Serious. When? Never, bro.