Heroin
The Mistress of Ruin.
She takes your emulsified form and melts you down like butter in a warm pan, and you welcome it.
Of course, in all my infinite wisdom, I thought it would be different for me. I had just passed the Illinois State Bar, and decided it would be harmless to snort some H at the party I threw afterward to celebrate.
Two years, three overdoses, and an eviction later, I was living on the winter streets of Chicago. A track mark-laden junkie, blasting off to Neptune any chance I got. My family tried to reach out and find me any way they could to get me into rehab, but the Mistress of Ruin had sunken her claws deep in me and I saw only her.
That was, until one afternoon, I found a golden ticket, stuffed into the pocket of a dead junkie with haunted eyes in an alleyway.
I’m now free from one mistress, yet tormented by another.
One more even more sinister.
One even more deadly.
Because to know her is to know that we haven’t the slightest clue what goes on in the corners of the world. It’s there, in the dark side of the mind, where she grows like a wild weed.
And she’s not alone. It won’t be long now before everything changes forever.
My name is Angelo Moretti, and this is my story of sobriety. From H, and from everything I thought I knew about the world.
This is how I found the city of Undehael.
I hadn’t been on the streets for more than a couple of days, and yet I was too high to plan for the negative twenty-degree windshield that had begun to blow in from the Northwest, and the shelters had filled their vacancies long before my eyelashes had begun to freeze. I received a tip about an alley that had a little tucked-away corner that was out of the wind. When I got there, some other homeless smackheads had already nestled in (probably from the same tip – our street dealer) and had lit some trash fires inside a few metal barrels. That way, they could warm their hands enough to guide needles into veins without too much of a fuss.
Other than my makeshift recliner (a wadded-up comforter from my bed in the apartment I had just been thrown out of and a trash bag full of recycled paper), I was blasted off, as usual.
The dealer had given us some good shit. These people were professional dope fiends and by looking at them you would’ve thought the shit had melted all of the bones in their bodies from within as they all lay there in the grime. I was no different.
I noticed a man a few feet away from me whose back wedged into the corner where the brick walls met. He held his palm out at me in want of what I had in mine, and I gave a lazy toss of the hypodermic toward him. It bounced on its plunger before toppling short of his feet. I heard the metal of the needle scrape filthy asphalt. He picked it up and rolled his sleeve above the elbow without wiping it clean.
We never exchanged a single word, but his eyes had struck me. Dirt smeared his hard-lined face and a dark, scraggly beard covered much of his gauntness, but those eyes; they held a sharp intelligence in them I hadn’t seen on this low side of the world that was now my own.
The dark eyes looked haunted. I’d guessed at the time that was why he was where he was, to fix that glint of despair; to dull some vague knowing of himself or his life he didn’t want to possess. It didn’t much matter.
Still, something in them reminded me of myself.
The H had hit me hard and pulled the light switch out on me, and when I awoke, the man was dead in his corner. His eyes had fixed their gaze to permanence on me, but the haunt in them had gone. They now looked… placid; peaceful. They looked like calm waters after a tempest had thrashed in them for far too long.
As I regarded the dead man, the sudden, awful odor of ammonia filled the air. My nose and eyes burned like hell. I strained to focus and look around, but I was still too fucked up to have my wits or do much of anything except lie there and look for the acrid odor’s source.
Within the fading light of the alleyway, the silhouette of a tall, thin man in a blue suit grew larger as he walked closer to our little den. His shoes clicked echoes with each step that hung in the air. Some of the others had also begun to rouse from their highs, and groggy heads turned to regard the man.
Once their eyes fixed themselves upon him, they rolled to the backs of their heads and their mouths froze open in silent screams. Their hands gnarled and curled at harsh angles before crumbling over rigid like a bunch of dead wasps.
I tried to collect myself; tried to prop myself up on all fours to stand and run, but I was still too scagged to go anywhere.
The man approached the dead junkie next to me and looked down at his lifeless body. That caustic smell – it was sickening. His suit looked clean and pressed, but outdated like it had maybe been in fashion during the late eighties or early nineties. The deepening shadows of twilight masked much of his face, but the fire’s flickering embers offered me teases of what seemed to be a tight, hard skin of a manilla color.
Helpless to do anything else, I simply watched as he spoke to the dead junkie.
He sighed, knelt to the corpse, and placed a tender hand on his chest. “I’m sorry. I wish you wouldn’t have held onto it for so long, but I’m sorry this is how it ended.”
Another quite different voice spoke that sounded like it also came from the man, although I couldn’t see his mouth moving as the new words filled the alley. Unlike the soft, slight voice that had come from the man’s mouth, this one was much harsher and much less refined. “Jee-Zus.” The voice said. “I mean I get it, but he had to have known the guy would fold like this. Why did he even have us give the ticket to him?”
The man stood to his feet, gave a sullen downward glance, and shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
“Poor guy. Well, what do we do now?”
The man shook his head again, and then turned on his heels to look around for some vague discovery to which he was supposed to find but had been given no direction.
He scanned the paralyzed, silent screamers until he eventually trained his eyes on me. I was still lying there, dazed and doped up to all hell, but the only one conscious.
The disembodied voice croaked: “Holy shit. This one is still awake.”
The man approached me in the dark and knelt. Shadows filled the hollows of his gaunt face. His nose looked prosthetic and was a little off-color in contrast with his manilla skin. Although he didn’t look old, dead maybe but not much more than in his mid-forties, his sheer gauntness carved clear outlines of two sets of dentures around the folds of his lips.
He was horrible – a nightmare in a bad dream.
I blurted an idiot moan of fear and tried to roll away from him.
“Get the fuck away from me!” I muttered as I kicked my feet out, shuffling my body against the trash-laden wall. The man remained knelt there with one knee on the ground and an arm propped on the other knee with his hand dangling casually.
He looked deep into my eyes as the dead junkie had before he had sent himself into the endless night. This man’s eyes, however, did not match the horror that was the rest of his face. I saw a tenderness in them; a deep sadness; a pity-filled knowing I couldn’t quite understand at the time. He reached a comforting hand out to place it on my ankle. I kicked it away and made a vain attempt to scurry further away.
“There’s something in that man’s pocket over there, and I’ve reason to believe it’s for you,” he said. He pointed to the dead junkie. “His name was Michael and he was a lot more than what he became. I don’t know what’s planned for you, but I suspect you’ll look in that pocket of his one way or another, whether you want to or not.” He looked sorry as he spoke the words.
The man’s face darkened and the softness in his eyes turned stern and dire: “For now, I suspect he just wants you to see. Don’t lose heart. And don’t lose the coin. It will be your light in the dark. If you make it, I’ll be seeing you again.”
Terror and confusion had overwhelmed me beyond the point of action. I just lay there, with my back wedged against the wall. The man returned to his feet and the disembodied voice spoke again, “Alright, Billy. Let’s get out of here. I think we’re done.” With the man much closer, I thought I could see the knot of his tie speaking the words I couldn’t place before.
“Alright, Moor. Let’s go home.”
He turned around and walked back down the dark alleyway in the same direction from which he had come.
As he left, the patters of his shoes rang deep into my mind…
I sprung awake again. The nodders had left their rolled eyes and silent screams behind, seemingly unaware. They were back to doing all the degenerate things that got them there in the first place.
I scrambled to my feet, pressed my back against the wall, and looked over at the dead junkie who had calmed his haunted eyes with the needle moments before.
No, not moments before, I thought.
The skin had begun to turn hue to match the sharp coldness of the air, and those dark eyes had lightened and begun to cloud over.
I must’ve been out for at least several hours. He’d lain there and hardened his joints and the circus around us had continued.
My face lit wild and I darted the area for the strange nightmare man with the manilla skin.
Billy, I think it was
But that had surely been a dream.
I’d remembered this Billy had mentioned something to me about something I had needed in his pocket.
A fix? Cute joke. A funny one too, because the punchline would be me – inevitably browsing the pockets of a dead man for theoretical smack – but I don’t think that was what he meant.
“Don’t lose heart. And don’t lose the coin,” he’d said to me. But before that, that other voice; something about hanging on to a ticket of some kind.
Trying to use the few neurons I had left in my poisoned mind for deciphering a drug-fueled dream seemed ridiculous to me, but those clouded dark eyes, once tempests, still fixed their gaze upon me.
I decided I had to get the fuck out of that alley. I would run to find some police so the officials could come to collect the poor bastard and take him to his final home, but first I needed to cover those eyes.
I grabbed a dirty tee shirt from the ground and laid it over his face.
My curiosity had gotten the better of me. I’d known it was absurd, but just maybe there was something in there, maybe even a free score…
I spidered some fingers into his coat’s breast pocket. There was some kind of card after all. I could feel frilled edges on some large, firm card paper.
I pulled it out and sure enough – a five-by-eight ticket, golden and glistening with the strands of light from the barrel fire’s flames.
I looked at the dead man again, and although he was now veiled with some horrid thing a prostitute had likely tossed aside, I could still feel his gaze from beneath the cloth.
Cold lead dropped in my stomach.
I looked more closely at the stamped writing on its front:
**
ADMIT ONE
Subterranean Undehael - Waterworks
Tainted: The Norahdrin Chronicles
Angelo, that fire isn’t going to help you with the impending whiteout. It’s warm down there.
Go on in.
And hang on to the coin
**
Underneath the writing was a round insignia that stuck out from the paper a few millimeters. In its center was what looked to be at once an upturned, splayed man and a tree.
I dropped the card and stammered backward. No words were in my mind. It was too filled with animal panic.
I looked up and saw flurries traveling parallel to the ground with a gale of cold wind that not even the alleyway could break. The other junkies made languid attempts to shield themselves from the blast, and when it came for a second time and didn’t stop, they huddled together.
I looked back at the ground where I had dropped the ticket and then saw that it was in my hand again. I re-read the words that were directly to me: “Angelo, that fire isn’t going to help you with the impending whiteout,”
How is this happening?
Next to the veiled dead man had appeared a copper hatch, tinged green with oxidation and large enough to fit through. I tottered closer. Steamed air billowed from its lid seam. As I drew nearer I could feel its humid warmth.
The frail moan of a man behind me cut through the wind, and I spun on my heels to see if the others noticed the steaming hatch.
“Do you see this here?” I yelled at them as I pointed to it. Winced eyes that looked as though they were in no mood for crazy ramblings paid me only a moment’s attention before the handful of degenerates returned to their huddling.
I was almost certain I’d lost my mind; that H must’ve been a bad batch. Still, confusion and terror gripped me and I ran from the alley. Once I made it to the street, the wind nearly blew me off my feet.
I couldn’t see more than twenty feet in front of me. The few buildings I could get to had been sealed down and locked tight, and if anyone was watching me from within one of them, they gave no indication they would let me inside.
I had nowhere to go. I was done for if I stayed out in the open; probably done for in the alleyway if the blizzard lasted too long. I thought of the warmth that had radiated from the hatch and made my way back.
And when I returned – it was waiting, billowing and beckoning and calling me forth.
My face was numb. My hands were numb. My feet were numb. I walked to it and stood above the lid. Thank God, warmth, but it wasn’t enough.
I turned to them once more – they were still hurdled with cold-blasted pain.
I was going to die out there with them if I didn’t go in. I’m ashamed to say that my main worry wasn’t actually the cold, or the cadaver man Billy and all of the impossible things that came along with him as he entered that alley. It wasn’t the strange hatch that had appeared out of nowhere. It wasn’t the ticket in my hand that refused to leave and seemed to know me and the weather forecast…
It was that I didn’t have any more H and didn’t know how long I’d be down there, hiding away from the cold.
I even had a thought in my mind that I’d come back up later to see if any of them were dead from the winter storm, so I could check their pockets.
That’s how bad I was then.
I held the ticket out, not knowing what to do with it. The hatch sprung open with a slow yawn and when I looked back at my hand, the ticket burnt away to ash and all that was left was a coin bearing that same insignia. I put it in my jacket pocket.
Visible from the opening was the top rung rusted metal ladder, and sweet Jesus – that warmth again, stronger now and filled with life. A battle raged in my mind for a moment, and when I realized I had no choice, I turned one last time to yell for the others to join me. They offered me no more than a moment’s glance before going back to their terror and misery and doom.
They had dismissed me for mad. At the time I had thought they were likely right, but I didn’t much care. The heat I felt on my skin felt real enough, and even if this was my end, it was better than dying in misery.
I crawled into the hatch… and descended.