Rob Zombie - Lords of Salem

Inside, Heidi’s apartment was anything but historic. The wall behind her bed was covered with a mural of a wasted-looking Keith Richards, with Richards leaning against a sign proclaiming “Patience Please. A Drug Free America Comes First!” The bed was overwhelmed with pillows, with the blankets disarranged and curled up around her.

She was lying facedown in it. Her hair was bleached white and dreadlocked and hid her face. Her slender bare body was covered with vibrant tattoos, a swirling water scene complete with fish and octopi crawling in a sleeve up one arm. The other arm was all skulls, outlined in black and rendered gold, chewing on one another and deliberately smearing into one another. An image of leathery, tattered bat wings ran along her shoulders and hung folded down her back.

Her dad would probably roll over in his grave if he had a chance to see her tattoos. Her mother told her this sometimes—not to be mean, really; she just couldn’t help herself. And perhaps because she thought that it might keep Heidi from getting more tattoos. The first one she’d gotten she’d kept hidden from her mother for weeks, only wearing long-sleeved shirts when around her, but then her mother and she had accidentally crossed paths downtown and that was it. And her mother had been more upset that Heidi had hidden it than about the tattoo itself, so Heidi stopped hiding it. Though there were things she still hid from her mother.

But I wasn’t a bad kid , Heidi thought. No, she’d been pretty much normal, maybe slightly geeky at first, but that all had changed as she got older and grew into her looks. Over the course of her freshman year, she went from being the kind of girl who didn’t get noticed to the kind of girl who got almost too much attention. Yet the way it happened made her mistrust it, made her always think that it was just a fluke and that from one day to the next people could stop paying attention to her again.

When the clock radio clicked on, blasting metal, Heidi roused herself and rolled over long enough to turn down the volume. Her body was svelte yet shapely. She hadn’t bothered to wash off her dark eye makeup from the night before and it had run a little.

She reached over and turned the alarm off and then pulled herself up to a sitting position. On the bedside table was a pair of cat’s-eye glasses, which for a second her hand groped for and then found and put on.

She sighed. Another long night. She’d planned to have just one drink and then come home, go to bed early so she’d be up and rested by the time she had to go to her shift at the radio station late in the day. And now it was already midafternoon. She remembered the one drink, but then there had been another, and another after that. Then things got a little hazy. Luckily, she’d managed to set her alarm before going out; otherwise she probably wouldn’t have woken up in time for her shift.

Near the foot of the bed, wagging his tail, was Steve, Heidi’s large Lab mix. When he saw her looking at him, he started wagging his whole body and came around near the side of the bed where he could get closer. Heidi yawned.

“Steve…,” she said, and made a halfhearted attempt to pat his head. At the sound of his name, Steve’s ears pricked up. “How’s about you making me breakfast for a change?” she asked.

Steve wagged on.

“Nothing fancy,” said Heidi, beginning to wake up a little more. She yawned. “Eggs Benedict, a little freshly squeezed OJ, and above all some coffee.”

For a moment Steve stared at her attentively, waiting, but when nothing more happened he turned once in a circle and lay down beside the bed. Heidi just watched him.

“I’ll take that as a polite fuck you,” she finally said.

She untangled herself the rest of the way from the blankets, stepped out of bed, and stumbled toward the bathroom. Halfway there, she stopped and steadied herself against the wall.

God, she was hungover. She really shouldn’t be drinking like that—not a smart idea in any case, considering that this time last year she’d been far from clean. And if it hadn’t been for Whitey she probably would have lost her job, and then where would she be? She’d hated him when he’d placed the call and forced her to check in to the clinic. She had said some pretty unforgivable things, but she was grateful now. No, she had to be careful—one drink too many and then who knew what she’d do?

She waited for a minute for the throbbing to relax a little before continuing along.

The bathroom was less distinctive than the bedroom, though a WXKB bumper sticker had been stuck to the top of the toilet tank. The sink was littered with brushes and parts of several makeup kits, a hair dryer balanced precariously on a towel bar. Heidi approached the mirror reluctantly, apprehensively. Her dark eye makeup was smudged and smeared.

“Jesus, Steve,” she said. “I’m a fucking raccoon.”

Hearing his name the dog slowly padded into the bathroom. He stared expectantly at her.

“Why didn’t you tell me I forgot to take off my makeup?” she asked him.

When Steve tilted his head in confusion, she shooed him out and shut the door. She sat on the toilet, leaned her head against the cool porcelain of the sink next to her, and gave a little groan. Her head really hurt. No, she had to stop telling herself she’d just have one little drink. One drink was never one drink anymore. Peeing, she stared at the side of the tub, her eyes slowly losing focus, and a moment later, she found herself beginning to slip off. No sleeping on the toilet , she told herself. Sleeping on the toilet bad. How late had it been when she’d gotten in? Three? Four? Too late in any case, especially when she had to work the next day.

She was already starting to lose herself in her thoughts again, her eyes beginning to blur and sleep threatening to come. She lifted her head away from the sink and then reached over and turned on the water, splashed some in her face. It was cold enough to make her catch her breath. There, that ought to do it , she thought. But a minute later, her eyes were blurring again. She needed more sleep. But there wasn’t time. She needed coffee, then, something to perk her up, something to make her feel better.

And when she thought that, something to make her feel better , she had a brief flash of the needle pushing in her arm again. The way it had felt back when she used to use, when she’d draw back just a little and watch her blood drift into the cylinder and then depress the plunger and tear the tourniquet off. The way it would hit her all in a rush, all at once, and how much better that made her feel. The way it felt to nod off and float into it. Until the moment it wore off and she felt not good but anxious, unable to wait for the next time, the next rush.

And that was enough to wake her up. No, she was out of that, wasn’t even in touch with any of the people she’d known in that world. Not all of them were still around, in any case. Some had moved away, some had quit just like her, and at least one was dead. Her friend Griff, dead, heart just stopped. No warning, just didn’t wake up. Just lay there for a day and a half until someone stumbled across him. She’d known him since junior high, back when they’d both been just normal kids. He’d always looked out for her. How he’d started using, how she had, it was a little hard to say now, and didn’t make much sense. She’d had okay parents, good friends, had grown up going to church. Sure, she’d rebelled a little, but didn’t everybody? And she didn’t understand the steps that had led her from that to using. Griff’s death should have been a wake-up call for her, but even with that, it had taken Whitey checking her in to get her to stop.

She thought about using every day, couldn’t help it most of the time—the ex-addicts who had helped her break the habit had told her that those thoughts were natural, that they would go on for a while, maybe forever. But thinking about it wasn’t the same as doing it. She could feel a craving for it but still not do it, and as long as she stayed clean, the craving would diminish little by little. Or at least that’s what they said. She still felt it quite often and quite strongly. And when she did, she tried to remember Griff. She didn’t want to end up like that. And now, thinking back, she remembered feeling it most strongly just after her first drink. Which is maybe why she’d had her second drink, as a way of not thinking about it. And her third. And her fourth. Maybe this is why that same group said that alcohol was also a drug and would lead her right back to where she was before. They claimed she must abstain from all drugs in order to recover. And yet most nights she found herself back at the bar.