Peter Stenson - Fiend

But for a brief moment, I’m not thinking about all that. I’m feeling the closest thing I can think of to God and he’s playing the samba inside of my body, his fingers gentle as they press on the backs of my retinas, my spine, the tendons along my hip flexors. I’m thinking that I love drugs more than anything. That they are the one and only constant in my life. Yeah, they demand a lot of attention and effort, but their love is legendary, their compassion endless. I hold each hit for hours, exhale for decades. The determination that comes with the onset of a high rushes back and I’m all about conquering the world and making money and finding happiness in the form of a loving woman who knows when it’s time to spread her legs and when it’s time to brush the backs of her nails across my cheek and then I’m thinking about this being the same thing as what God is doing to me now.

I love it when my heart rattles against my uvula.

I love it when my vision is a camera shutter.

I love it when I know that someday, I will do great things.

I love it when methamphetamines make things okay.

But I don’t love it when I start to hallucinate because the line between knowing it’s only the drugs and knowing your psyche is about to snap the fuck apart like a high wire is oh so delicate. The giggles. I hear them. I close my eyes and try to remember how I felt half a second before—glorious, about to take over the world—but it’s too late, I’ve switched. I’ve gone from high to completely fucked. I hear more giggles.

The guy, Travis, spins around, shotgun raised. Maybe he’s fucked too. But then Typewriter drops the pipe and I know the giggles must be real because he’s not the kind of guy to ever drop the pipe.

Travis says, We got to go, and Typewriter keeps repeating fuck . I point my shotgun in the direction of the giggles, the dumpster, the tire rack, but there’s just darkness and I realize we’re under the lights with open space on all sides. I have no idea how to hold the gun. Then demonic laughs come from behind us and we all spin in that direction and then to our right and I see these things coming out of the shadows, a hand here, a face there, giggles all around us. They’re closing in. There must be ten of them, kids and women and men, most of them naked or in pajamas and it’s not God inside my body anymore, but their giggles, loud like sick little kids burning ants, amazed at their power over another living thing.

They don’t shuffle like the ones in the movies. They walk in careful steps, spines straight, arms at their sides. Some laugh with their mouths closed, some open. I don’t know how long I’m supposed to wait, how far my short barrel can fire, if the sound will attract more, and I’m thinking of these things, along with visceral images of their fingers and nails—ones that a week ago were braiding their daughter’s hair and ringing up packs of cigarettes at SuperAmerica—tearing into me, gouging out my eyes.

I want Travis to tell me what to do. Even Typewriter. Somebody to give me direction, tell me where to aim, when to fire, but my voice’s gone dry with fear.

We can see these walking dead motherfuckers clearly now under the overhead lights. I’ve locked onto one guy and it’s like his upper lip has disintegrated, the space between his nose and mouth gone, just flashes of white bone and tooth. He’s staring right at me and for a second it seems like there’s a person inside there, maybe still able to think and feel. Maybe he can’t help the giggles and missing flesh, maybe it’s something beyond his control, some outside force. But then he laughs really fucking loud and I don’t think I mean to, but I press a touch harder on the trigger.

The kick is worse than I would have thought. I take a step back and look at the guy. I’ve blown my load into his left shoulder. I have a clear view of his ball joint. He laughs. I fire again.

And then it’s nothing but the drumming of shotgun shells and I’m Rambo—fire, pump, fire, pump—I’m shooting more by feel than sight, more by instinct than logic. I can hear Travis and Type doing the same and I might be screaming or maybe that’s one of them but we just keep shooting and they keep coming, their laughs taunting us like our efforts are futile and we’ll never live to see the sun and they will prevail because they don’t give a fuck if they live or die.

My shotgun runs out of ammo. I panic for a second, then remember the pistol tucked in my waistband. I pull it out and fire. I don’t come close to hitting anything. These motherfuckers are less than ten feet away and I glance at Travis, who swings the butt of his shotgun like a baseball bat. I steady my aim on a woman of about thirty, completely naked, pale like moonlit lakes. She’s a few feet away and I tell her I’m sorry. She swipes at me. I pull the trigger. The edge of her forehead explodes. She drops.

I do this again.

And again.

I hear a different kind of scream and turn around. One of these things is locked up with Travis and he’s writhing and crying for help and I take two steps over and know my shot could easily miss the Chuck and kill Travis but he can’t stop yelling and I figure he’ll be dead either way. I fire and the reanimate stumbles for a second. I fire again and it drops to the ground.

Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go, Typewriter yells.

I spin around and can’t see anything but I still hear the laughs. All the noise must have attracted more and I picture them coming, throngs of the motherfuckers. All around us are the bodies we shot, some twitching, some crawling, and blood, thick, so fucking thick.

Typewriter grabs me and shoves me toward the car. I climb in and Type slides in the driver’s side. Just outside my window, I see Travis sitting on his ass, knees up, his head between them. Then he glances up. Blood runs down his face. It’s beautiful in a way, the bite of flesh missing above his eye like an Amazonian waterfall.

We need to get—

Fuck him, Typewriter says.

He turns the ignition. The piece of shit Civic sputters, doesn’t catch.

Travis seems to understand he’s being left. He reaches out. He mouths something. The engine turns again and I look ahead and see more coming, a steady stream of people who went to bed one night, probably annoyed at the thought of getting up and having to go to work or feed the kids or deal with a complaining wife, only to never wake up again, at least not as a human. Typewriter bashes the steering wheel. I hear something bump the side of the car. Travis has one bloodied hand pressed against the back window. He’s yelling for help. His eyes are so fucking sunken. More sputtering from the engine. I’m thinking I should unlock the door and get Travis in here. But could he already be one of them from that bite? How do I know if a bite really changes somebody? I see more of them coming now, close enough to be fully lit. I reach for the door handle to get out and grab Travis. But then I notice that the gash above his eye isn’t bleeding anymore. It’s already coagulated, crusty and purple. He’s yelling, Help, open, but now I know he’s going to turn, that his wound is not normal and whatever the fuck has caused this is already changing him into one of them.

The engine finally catches.

Type guns it. We hit a hillbilly Chuck and then he’s nothing but two bumps under our tires. In the side mirror, I watch Travis try to stand. He’s circled. He’s dead. And at that moment, I understand that certain people are meant to make it, others aren’t. I’m not sure why. But I’ve spent my entire adult life walking that thin line between suicide and preservation, everything I do is to get more dope, to keep going, to survive. I’ve done bad things in my life, things I’m not proud of and things that won’t let me sleep sober. I remember the first time I saw somebody overdose, Frank, my best friend I’d gotten sober with, my roommate at the halfway house. We’d gone out together, relapsed, and we sat in a restroom at Starbucks and I smoked my speed and he shot his heroin. I knew he was going to die, the way his body went both rigid and limp. I stared at his freckles, ones that made him seem years younger than he was. I knew that in order to survive, to keep my habit, I had to leave him, pretend I was never there. I did. I left him propped up on the toilet, the sleeve of his puffy down coat still rolled up.