The Life of a Junkie, the Eyes of A Martyr

Title: The Life of a Junkie, the Eyes of A Martyr
Author: Suyuki Tai
Date: 03 Sep 2005





Have you ever gone to the city on a cold summers night? The lights are dim, and everything around you is clouded with fog, and steam from the storm drains. It\'s beautiful, in that poisoned, distant way; it\'s breathtaking, while at the same time it makes you want to gag. You can continue to follow the patches of flourescent beauty in the thick gray that hangs over you, or you can round a slimey cobblestone corner and see the motherless child, the greatest kind of pickpocket youth the city knows. This is Auborne, brother city to it\'s sister Vatine Garden- much like a pale reflection of VG in a time of modern war. Naturally, it doesn\'t hold a candle to the original- but there\'s no doubt that it is beautiful in it\'s own sordid way. Twisted as the backdrops are, and commonly sluggish, this town\'s got it\'s own creeps and thugs taking the place of beauty queens and celebrities. The Mayor runs a brothel, and the cops are as bent as a wire hanger in a garbage compactor.

And THAT is when JD moved in.
I remember it like it was yesterday. Or maybe it *was* only yesterday, that those motorcars and speedcycles rolled in...

They went straight to the department headquarters, for permission maybe, and left just as quickly. None of us saw them go in, and none of us saw them go out. They were good, maybe too good we decided, and they were out to bust us. Being the street\'s most faithful, we came to the decision to wipe them out; to squash them like the roaches they were, here in our rusted metal and grease garden.
If you\'ve ever been on the streets, living the life of the lowest, then you know that word spreads fast on the curbs. There in your tight knit sit the boys who have your back, and the girls who keep you sane; suddenly, you learn that any one of them could be a spy- a traitor to all you are, and all you live for. Paranoia sinks deep, and spreads like wildfire. All around you is the redundant question, \"Is it you?\", and all around you is the same answer, \"Man, \'course not.\"
But what would you do if you were picked out of a crowd, pointed at and fingered out, and identified as the rata- the rat? The one who keeps leaking information? What would you do if you found out that your confidante, the girl you love, was really a cop in disguise? That you, speaking quietly to her after a long wind down in her bed, had really been giving things away to the new big fears, JD? I\'ll tell you exactly what I did: I denied it, then took the girl to the headquarters and hung my head. That\'s right; I actually turned myself in, because there was nothing else as an option. I could have run, but I knew the chances of real escape were slim to none. And I could have fought it out, and denied it, only to be picked apart and finally, murdered by the boys who were supposed to always have my back. The boys who were supposed to vouch for me, and never turn their backs. The boys who I grew up with, fought alongside with, got high with, ran with, and killed with. *My* boys.
I was in the slammer, two years behind the bars, before they let me out on bail. Someone had come to pay my way out, and I didn\'t know who it was. All I knew, was that if I took one step out of my jail cell, I\'d be signing my life over to whoever this person was, and that there would be no going back. They owned me, as soon as I left the bleak cell I\'d seen for the past twenty-four months. Did I want out? Yes. But did I want to be someone\'s responsibility? No. That was one thought I just couldn\'t stand: someone to worry over me, or own me. Someone like another parent.
I\'d run away from home when I was thirteen, taken to the streets over five cities away; I left Balanba to Auborne, and had stayed with the roughnecks there until the day I went behind the bars, and inside the restraints of a prisoner. I wasn\'t a free man anymore, not that I was any more of a man that I had been four years before. But I\'ll tell you, two years on the street- they aren\'t a walk in the park. Then follow those with two years in a cell with a child-molester slash serial murderer who went by the name of Mitchello, and you\'d be a broken man. A broken kid, actually. I was still a brat, no matter how much I would often deny it when it was said.
And now, being the stubborn ass I was, I used my street smarts and took a step back into the cell. I had learned, many times, not to trust anything you couldn\'t see. If it didn\'t have eyes that yours could fearlessly meet, then you weren\'t to follow it, or listen to one word spoken. Shadows didn\'t have a conscience. My cellmate did. I\'d take my chances with Mitchello any day, over the unknown he or she in charge of me, once I left.
\"Come on, boy, and git out here.\" the guard- Lee Shelley- says, eyes narrowed in a way that read, \'Don\'t you disappoint me, boy. Don\'t you *dare* disobey, or I\'ll break you like the twig you are.\' I knew this, because he\'d said these words to me before while making that same face, every time I had to go out for kitchen or orbitual duty. Now he said it with his eyes, swinging the keys to my two-piece cuffs in front of me like he would a treat for his dog.
I shake my head, raising my hands to mid-chest and balling them into readied fists, still loose but hard all the same. Daring him to try anything. Daring him to pull me from this mettalic ring of bars and locks, and concrete tiles rising up with rebars and latches. Like a kennel, really, painted white and splotched with blood stains, and other things my mind refused to conjure- things that would break me, if nothing else had. Or would.
\"An\' why the \'ell not?\" he asks, obviously amused, as I can tell by the way his eyebrows have raised, by the way his retarded, laid-back grin has replaced his scowl. His hands are flat on their backs, right on his hips as he leans more of his weight on his left heel; he\'s relaxed, not willing to scruff himself up by forcing me out. He knows, from past experience, that I put up a good fight. \"You scared, boy?\"
\"No sir.\" My response comes sharp, cut crisp and on the verge of becoming threatening. I can tell that my eyes are showing a dangerous edge, because Shelley\'s shoulders have squared, because his back has straightened, and he was working on tightening himself up in preparation for a fight. He was careful not to stand too tall, for risk of putting too much strain and weight on his right leg- the leg I had injured, only weeks before. \"How\'s your knee holding out, pops?\"
His eyes flash, but he bites back a reply as the cheif and what looked like a \'refined\' sort of gent came to stand beside him, at the door to the cell. I heard a slight rustling sound behind me, and I knew that Mitchello was awake, and sitting up in his bunk.
\"Knee?\" the strange man asks, golden eyebrow raised in question. Shelley\'s face actually flushes, but I\'m sure if with embarassment or anger.
\"Jes\' last month, he stabbed me in ther leg.\" Shelley responds with a clear to his throat. The man looks at me, directly into my eyes without flinching, and he smiles.
\"I see I didn\'t make a mistake, Cheif Hilcox.\" The cheif spoke up, looking not one bit happy about any of this.
\"Shelley, bring him out, if the good man wants him so bad.\" He turned to whom he\'d referred to as \'the good man\', and the corner of his mouth twitched. \"You\'re making the biggest mistake, taking a ruffian like him in. You\'ll see, Hansom. You\'ll see.\"
Hansom, as he\'d been named, simply watched me as I edged from Shelley\'s grasp, trying not to trip over the uniform pants as I straifed to the right, making our large guard teeter forward, near-falling and ever-conscious of his right knee, which to my knowledge, was still in the healing process.
\"Quit playing around and bring him out.\" the Cheif snaps, as Shelley regains his composure. \"We\'re wasting our Mr. Hansom\'s *precious* time.\" He practically spit that last part out, and it caught me by surprise- probably the only reason Shelley managed to knock me down onto my back.
I hit my head on the concrete with a smart rap- a smacking sound that made everything burst in a fresh wave of pain, followed by a soft squish beneath my head. I felt a warm thickness seeping through my hair, and I heard a sharp yell from the Cheif; I knew that not only had Shelley probably cracked my skull, but that the warm liquid I felt pooling around my head was most likely my blood, and or thicker things.
Everything kind of drifted away then, and the last thing I was aware of was a warm hand touching over the big pulse at my throat, pressing gently to keep track of my heartbeat as I slipped away- followed by a soft shushing whispered into my ear in a wave of warm breath tickling me. A nice calm, followed by a nice silence. And then- then, I fell away into the darkness that grabbed hold of me, refusing to let go.


I woke up to beeping sounds, accompanied with the smell of new plastics, and iodine. I knew right away, before I even attempted opening my eyes, that I was in a hospital. And upon opening them, that thought was confirmed in a bright outbreak of eggshell bordered with an obnoxious flowered pattern lining the edge where the walls met the tiled ceiling.
I was annoyed, understand, that I\'d been moved from one imprisonment to another: from jail cell to ICU- so it wasn\'t out of the ordinary for me to be cranky. Which, you know, made me feel a little sorry for the nurses who occasionally came in to check up on me. I couldn\'t quite remember things right, or at all, so it was hard to tell if I\'d bitten off any heads at all upon the first few hours of my waking. I do know, however, that more people came in while I slept, that they stood over my bed and talked in hushed voices. Talked quietly, like they didn\'t want to disturb the dead; you know- the kind of hushed talk used most commonly at funerals. It made me shiver, and I couldn\'t sleep- or maybe that last part was a side effect from the drugs they had me on. Maybe I should have told someone not to use penicillin, which I\'m allergic to. Could they be using that?
It was dark when I woke up, though I wasn\'t sure how I knew that because when I finally got around to looking about the room, I noticed there wasn\'t a single window. But it felt like night to me, so I decided that\'s what time it was: night. Everything was quiet, in that eerie murder-movie way that makes you want to hide under the covers, but at the same time urges you to tip-toe down the halls in search of a door that led to the outside.
I hated silence. It made me jumpy. Did you know that? No? Well, now you do. I hate silence, and I\'ll do anything to keep that dead-calm away from me, even if it means waking up the entire wing of a hospital, if that\'s what it took. But as it were, that wasn\'t necessary, because in the corner of this drab, depressing eggshell painted room, there was a small corner desk with a radio on it. Thank whoever for small miracles, I could steal the quiet away.
It began to feel like late night slash early bird morning when I finally got to feeling heavy. I knew that if I went to sleep soon, almost nothing could wake me up. So I slipped from the small stool in front of the radio, leaving it playing Sabbath\'s song \'War Pigs\', and crawled into the twin-sized bed face-down on the pillow. And I stayed in that position until the very moment I woke up.

\"...Do you think he\'ll wake up soon?\" I squeezed my eyes shut against the sound, forcing myself away from the light flushing in between my eyelashes and back towards sleep. But it pushed off from me and drifted away until I was left lying under the noses of strangers who spoke of me like they would an injured wild animal.
\"The dose we gave him would usually last through two days, but it has been known to last up to a week if the patient has a slow metabollic rate.\"
\"So he could wake up now, or he could stay like this another day and a half?\"
\"Yes. With him, from what I can tell, he should have woken up two days ago. But, as it is, he may not for at least another night.\"
I resisted the urge to move, to relieve some of the weight from my chest, arm, and crotch- but I wanted to hear what they were saying, and names if possible. And lucky me, I got to hear exactly that.
\"Doctor Tei,\" one sighed. \"Lucas. As a friend, now. Be reasonable. I was told I could have him a month ago, only to find he wasn\'t even at the previous location.\"
...What? What was I, a trade like fur, or a car? Geez, people, last I checked I was human and still deserved to be at least recognized as such. I mean, f*ck, man.
The doctor sighed, his accent cutting a little cleaner as he cleared his throat. Maybe he was tired, like I was- wanting to go to sleep, but unable to as we find it just out of our reach. Personally, I felt like dead weight, and doubted I\'d be able to stand.
\"I know how you must be frustrated, Riki. But think of the sedatives, and the i-\" He was cut off by the second man who had the smooth voice, the man who sounded almost like a boy in comparison to the doctor.
\"I know, because he\'s allergic to penicillin.\" How did he know that? Only my parents and I knew that. Did they find my parents? New horror rushed through me, and I bit on my tongue to stop myself from thrashing about and running for an escape. The doctor- Tei was it?- continued.
\"Think of that mix, plus the morphine. It would be like a heavy tranquilizer dart, straight to the blood stream. It\'s lucky that the three can even mix, though barely. It\'d be dangerous as it is, especially with us knowing what his body is like after the years he\'s been out in the slums. For all we know, he could have a disease that could react violently to these medicines at any moment, that in a spontaneous, unexpected burst, could kill him instantly. If not, put him in a coma!\" He scoffed, then added this nasally chuckle. \"No, no, our boy here has to be a fighter. Professionally, and personally, I am in the dark as much as you are, Isaak.\"
Riki/Isaak spoke. \"You switch names so casually that at times, it makes me wonder who you prefer me to be, Lucas: your friend, or your partner. Tell me, today are we casual aquaintances, or flaky businessmen?\" He sounded on the edge of sarcastic and teasing, as if leaning none too heavily on either but stressing the emphasis of both.
It was getting boring, in that cheesy movie way, so I thought it time to make my grand awakening. Not to mention my dick was starting to go numb from the weight of my body- excuse my bluntness.
I groaned softly, stiffling a yawn with the back of a numb and tingling hand, turning to switch onto my back. I squeezed my eyes further shut, finding a light directly above my head; my eyelids protested and ached, and I moved the same hand from my lips to my eyes, draping it gently over as I gave myself a mental pat on the back for my superb acting skills.
\"Ah, Sleeping Beauty awakens.\" Riki/Isaak said sweetly, and I dropped my arm quickly, glaring up at the men above me. I found one was in a white doctors coat, and the other was-
\"Hansom?!\" Mentally kicking myself, I closed my eyes and inwardly groaned. I guess I knew who bailed me out, then.
\"You remembered me.\" He sounded pleased.