One Foot In The Grave - Part Eight

I sat down on my bed, leaning back against the wall, feeling the cool, unforgiving plaster press against my clothed back. My hair was still damp from the bucket shower I’d been given a few hours ago, my stomach felt tight and bloated from the disgusting, processed breakfast they’d shoved down our throats that morning and I was just plain uncomfortable. Conor sat on his bed, an equally discomfited expression on his face. My feet hung limply over the side of my mattress; head tilted back, eyes fixated on the ceiling. 1

Boring.2

“They given you any privileges back yet?” I asked him after a long while.3

I heard his shirt ruffle in a shrug and a loud sigh, “No, not really. They haven’t given Tegan any of hers back either, so they’re either lying to us or just waiting to see if we can get through this whole thing without trying to kill each other.”4

A small snort rose out of my throat and I lifted a hand, thumb up in his direction, “Well… keep up the good work, I guess.”5

He let out a bark of laughter and I looked over at him. He raked a hand through his hair and shrugged, “That’s easier said than done.”6

I shook my head, “I don’t really get it… what’s your problem with her? I mean, she… she doesn’t seem all that bad.”7

His focus snapped back onto mine, dark hair falling into his face. “I don’t trust her.”8

And that was the end of it. I didn’t feel like seeing how far I could push him. We had a fairly good thing going, and I didn’t want to be the one to fuck it up by just pressing and pressing until he snapped. Not because I’m worried he’ll get in trouble and hate me. Because I know that if he were to snap… I mean, really snap and - I don’t know – kill me or something.9

My fingers twitched, brain running around, engine smoking trying to think of something to say. Something to fill the silence between us. This was all too reminiscent of days spent in Taylor’s basement, passing the light-bulb-turned-meth-pipe and lighter. Reminiscent of nerve endings firing off all over the place, of meth mites burrowing underneath my skin, of loud arguments, fights, heads and bodies locked together, burning off the brilliant, God-like feeling trapped within my body.10

I first started smoking meth when I was about fourteen, after my mom died. I know, I know, it’s really young and cliché and stupid. but when you get desperate enough to just forget about something, you take what you’re offered. For anyone who doesn’t know, meth is a binge drug. You can’t just do it once. You have to do it for days at a time. Everything else just falls away in a haze of chemicals and white smoke. It collapses into the background and all that matters is the fact that you feel like a God and you’re hammered with it the second the pipe touches your lips.11

I would spend days, sometimes weeks in Taylor’s basement, tweaking out. Every once in a while, we’d break out into a fight and just throw ourselves at each other like we were possessed. Other times, the whole gang of us, Taylor, Shiloh, Jazz, Joey, Tiergan and me, we’d just sit around in a circle, alternating between smoking and drinking to keep the buzz down to a minimum, talking so much that our jaws would ache once we came down from it. Shiloh always went on and on about how she was going to write a book someday and call it the “Meth Diaries”, like Nikki Sixx did with heroin. 12

“Except it would be better because of the… the rush, you know?” She would ramble, her lips moving about twenty times fast than her brain. “Meth is SO much better than heroin, I mean, GOD, it’s… you know? The book would just be full of… of… tin foil and pipes and light bulbs and how you just become this God and you can just… fight and… fuck and there’s nothing wrong with you.”13

We would all just nod and let her ramble. You just… never tried to shut her up. At one point, the two of us had wound up having sex in the corner of Taylor’s basement. I don’t really remember it. I think I was too fucked up, but I remember waking up naked, with her next to me, also naked, her face pressed into my side.14

It was nothing personal, just some geeked out tumble in the sheets. 15

The room slowly began to shift, the tension easing as both of us just tried to quiet ourselves down. I closed my eyes and involuntarily went straight back into the past, when my fist first connected to this side of his face. I almost flinched at the memory, wanting to bring my hand to my chest and cradle it there protectively.16

I had been high, geeked out on Annie and one of Taylor’s friends, also geeked out, had decided that, since I was smaller and his God Complex had been gradually getting larger and larger the more meth he smoked, he would try to work out some aggression on me. Everyone else was too messed up to stop him, so I went along with it. I’d been smoking for a good three days, the drugs just building up in my system over that time, boiling inside me, waiting for something like this to happen. It had been waiting for a shove, a trip, a derogatory remark. And right when the drug had peaked, this poor motherfucker had made his move…17

He’d shoved me, and as fast as a blink, my body had reacted. Anger erupted inside me and I leapt at him, crashing my fist into the side of his face, putting as much force behind it as I could. We had wound up rolling around on the floor, throwing punches, kicks, biting, swearing… whatever we could possibly do. My knuckles split open on his body, just as his did on mine. At one point, I wound up sitting on his chest, my hands curled into his hair, lifting his head up and slamming it down onto the floor of the basement. He had gone limp sometime after the fifth hit, but I just kept going, consumed with rage and meth sweat pouring from my body in torrents. When you’re so consumed with wrath that the amount of damage you’re doing doesn’t matter, you need to take a break and go through detox. I didn’t know that until the morning after; after Taylor had pounced on me and pinned me to the floor, after the ambulance and police arrived, after Taylor’s friend was carted away. 18

I went even crazier when the police tried to take me away. My body bucked violently, trying to throw them off, or make them go away. One cop finally got me in a chokehold until I only had enough oxygen to stay conscious. My body went limp, panic rose up my spine, closing its fingers tightly around the base and squeezing. Every single one of my vertebrae popped, my body going completely straight, legs locking up as my mind worked desperately to invent some plan to get myself out of the officer’s arms. I never did get away, obviously. I was cuffed, the officer read me my rights and I was shipped off to jail, where I stayed for three days, waiting for my mom to bail me out and then pending trial.19

The door opened and then closed. At first, I thought it was just Deanna coming in to schedule the next one on one between Conor and Tegan so I didn’t look up. But then I heard someone settling in the chair beside the door and clear his or her throat. I glanced up, eyes widening upon the deep brown hair framing a pair of almond shaped violet eyes. It was Tegan. One brief glance over at Conor told me that she had crossed a serious boundary and was intruding on his territory. It had occurred to me fairly quickly that most of the inmates here were incredibly territorial creatures… Tegan and Conor especially. The fact that she had crossed a boundary this large and had walked into the room uninvited sent out a message very clear: I’m not afraid of you. You have no influence on me.20

Her gaze switched over to me and she broke into a quick, broad grin, “Hey Jake.”21

“Hi,” I muttered nervously, eyes moving back and forth between the two. “How’s it going?”22

She shrugged, her small shoulders giving the slightest of jerks. Her legs crossed themselves swiftly at the knee and arms crossed. Her head jerked over to Conor and she smiled sweetly, “And how about you Conor? How’s everything going?”23

Conor looked like he was trying to stay calm, but the tight way he’d set his jaw and the way his eyes shone in the light proved that he wasn’t having a very successful go at it. “Get out.”24

Tegan sat back, intentionally getting cozy just to mess with him. That’s when I realized that this was her saving face. This was her getting him back for the stitches, broken hand, and pacing during one on one. This was Tegan getting revenge. And from what I could tell, she was very refined in this area. I couldn’t help but wonder how long she’d been planning this before she actually executed it. “No, see, I’m just doing what we’re supposed to be doing, you know? Talking, trying to get to know you, all of that good shit. So I was wondering-“25

“Get out.”26

“Hang on, let me finish.” She said, lifting up a hand. 27

I squirmed. My gut told me to get up and get a guard, tell someone about what was going on. But I couldn’t move. I was glued to my seat. 28

This was going to get very ugly, very fast.29

“See, I was wondering… you seem to be pretty aware of that… line of decency-” She held her hand up again, using it to slice a straight line through the air – “that we all have to stay behind in order to fit in with the rest of the cookie cutter society. I mean, you’ve pointed it out a decent chunk of times during group and one on one. So what I’m curious about is… how someone, who knows exactly where that line ends, can completely juggernaut themselves to the other end of that line?” When Conor didn’t move or say anything, Tegan took this as an opportunity to go on. “I mean, it’s not that hard to figure that rape is sort of crossing that line, isn’t it? I mean, that’s why you tried to kill yourself after you fucked that chick over, right?”30

I saw Conor’s jaw going pale, his neck reddening, and felt the blood drain from my own face.31

I wanted to tell her to shut up, to just stand up and leave before Conor did something. But I couldn’t…32

Her eyes started getting brighter and brighter, voice staying just as sweet and innocent as it had been when she’d first addressed him, facial expression never shifting from that perfectly relaxed one that she’d glued on the moment she sat her ass on the chair. “But you didn’t just fuck her over did you?” She said quietly. “You fucked her.” Her head tilted to the side innocently. “Why?”33

“Fuck off.” It was a growl, something imposing every single threat he couldn’t quite vocalize upon her. She either didn’t get it or didn’t care.34

The air started growing thick again and I couldn’t breathe. My stomach was tightening up into several small, unbearable knots.35

She opened her mouth to say something else, but the room seemed to turn upside down. Conor leapt from the bed, seizing her around the biceps and slamming her into the wall. Her head pitched forward on impact, chin bouncing off of her chest, it ricocheted off and the back of her head smacked against the wall. A loud, wheezing gasp erupted from her throat, eyes narrowing in pain and focused on Conor. His hand flew up, smacking her across the face before gripping onto her arm again. 36

“You little bitch,” He snarled, his voice shook as he spoke. I couldn’t see his face, only the back of his head and the white of his knuckles. “You don’t know anything about me, so don’t even try to fucking pretend that you do, you got that?! You’re just some stupid little girl hopped up on some fucking ego trip, thinking you’re a badass because you tried to kill your dad.” His face ducked down, getting closer to her, his voice now just a hiss. “I’m gonna let you in on a little secret, you’re nothing…”37

I finally stood up, trying to swallow the dry wad of cotton in my throat, “Conor… just let her go, okay?”38

He didn’t seem to hear me. He just yanked her away from the wall and slammed her back into it, this time with more force. Neither of them was making enough noise to attract attention, and I would have screamed if my balls hadn’t crawled up so high inside my body that I could feel them tickling my tonsils. 39

To my surprise, Tegan let out a soft laugh. “You’re just a fucking coward… is this what happened with that girl that you raped? Huh? She got in your face and so you decided to hold her down, take off her clothes and-“40

His hand collided with the side of her face again, this time with such force that her head jerked to the side, a small grunt of pain escaping her lips. “Shut up!”41

My mouth opened and closed, trying to say something, but nothing would come out. I couldn’t breathe. Everything was happening in slow motion and all that I knew was that this could get bloody and I was helpless to stop it…42