Hey! I tried something new of my own accord! I wrote this in Microsoft Word and monitored the lines. The first set is one line, the second has two lines, the third has three, the fourth has four, and the fifth has five. It has three parts. This is why each of the parts sounds about the same in rhythm and length. Done in a he-she-I-you-we format.

Side note: Adderall is a prescription given to people with Attention Deficit Disorder and Attention Hyperactive Deficit Disorder. In some circles, it’s a kind of black market drug used in lieu of amphetamines like meth and cocaine.

WARNING: This deals highly in substance abuse (as in drugs and addiction) and slightly in sexual abuse. If this bothers you, please click the back button.

Most of all, I want to know what you guys think of this, if anyone reads my stuff anymore. I want to improve. So tell me what you think!

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19. Offensive

He’s tall and swarthy and all clacking bones and halitosis.

She’s chubby with long blonde hair and unhealthy lungs.

I’m short with my head held down and a slow, grating step.

You’re emaciated, dark under the eyes and eternally shivery.

We are the ones that are labelled losers and have been forever.

He bounces under the influence, pupils heavily dilated, possessor of a pulse that never goes below one hundred BPM if he can help it.

She coughs into a napkin and stares around with red-rimmed eyes, pulling together poetry from ordinary words in a slurred, husky voice.

I tap my fingers on my knee and try to judge the time by the position of the sun, something I’ve never been able to do but always pretend I can.

You giggle and hiccup and speak of the colours of the squirrels dancing around your feet, offering you tokens from Mushroom Land and chattering happily at you.

We are the kids who are hopeless and lost. We are the ones who wander just beyond the realm of vision. We are the kids everyone gave up on, and we take care of each other.

He pops Adderall like candy, grinds the sweet blue tablets between his molars during class, swallows it with chocolate milk at lunch, crushes it up and snorts it through his left nostril when he gets home, before his parents have dinner, and chews up some more after they go to bed.

She tokes up in the bathroom between classes, wanders the hallways with a pot brownie in hand and ducks into locker-made alcoves for a binge during passing periods, fails half of her classes because she skips to go smoke, walks around in a smoky daze.

I demolish cigarettes by the pack, sneak out to the parking lot after second and sixth periods, suck on half-smoked butts in class, chew on nicotine-and-tar-soaked cotton, lash out at anything that irritates me in my nicotine-deprived state.

You trip balls in class, full of heroin that makes you forget your track marks are showing, dip paper into your acid in study hall and fan it dry before tucking it beneath your tongue to suck and feed your craving for a lack of reality.

We are the youth of yesterday. We are the ones forgotten, forsaken. We are uncared for by the population of humanity. We are the animals created by these days, these mentalities, these people who have spit on us from the time we could walk.

He doesn’t eat anyway, so he spends his lunch money every week bribing a boy with a prescription and a rampant case of Attention Deficit Disorder. He gets seven tablets a day; they’re gone the next, and he hasn’t slept since last Tuesday. He has trouble concentrating, and his memory banks have deteriorated so much from drugs that he seems an Alzheimer’s patient.

She has an overactive libido that’s never satisfied due do the dope, so she fucks her boyfriend’s buddies to get her hands on some primo kindbud. Her boyfriend hits her if she doesn’t share it with him, and sometimes he buddies up with his friends and help the gang-bang along. His friends like to take turns; she’s been pregnant six times. She likes the attention.

I get twenty-five dollars allowance every week, so I smoke five packs a week, six or seven if I get cheap smokes. I share a pack with those that buy them for me, but I don’t mind, as long as they don’t stop. When they threaten to call the pigs in and tell them I smoke, despite the fact they could also get in trouble for buying them for me, I get pissed and leave.

You hang around downtown in a bubble, so you let your druggie radar alert you to a smack dealer. You’d knock him out and steal it if you had to, but you don’t have to, because you give excellent head. Besides, you’re so weak you can’t even pick up a baseball bat anymore, much less knock out a guy with it.

We can be seen waiting at the bus stop, him hanging from the bars, she curled in on herself and shaking with laughter, me smoking like a chimney, you dead-eyed and crashing with blood on your elbows. We are the blank minds of the world, crushed beneath the oppressive weight of life. We had personalities once, but they’ve been replaced by addiction.

He goes home at midnight or later, and his parents don’t mind. They tell him that they don’t want to stifle his spirit, and humming from their lotus positions with the smell of incense heavy in the air, they tell him to sit down. He fidgets, twiddles his thumbs in his lap, taps his feet on the ground. He snorts loudly, like bad allergies are to blame. His whole face twitches as Adderall shoots into his brain, and they don’t notice.

She wanders into her home at ten or so, and her mom’s already in bed, but her dad’s still up, waiting. He’s visibly angry, and it makes her whimper. He takes his turn with her, a silent nod to her boyfriend’s friends, almost like he’s one of their comrades and knows what they do to her, what they expect him to do as well; when he’s done, she shuts her bedroom door and locks it. The comforting smell of cannabis hangs heavy in her room.

I fumble with my lighter on the roof of my house and listen to my parents, two whole stories underneath me. I can hear them fine, despite the closed doors and windows, and the house shudders with their anger. They’re going to get a divorce soon, I think detachedly, and I almost choke as I take a deep breath of deadly cigarette smoke. The coughing almost sends me careening off of the roof; on my back, I realize they haven’t shut up yet.

You don’t even remember what your parents look like. Their faces are always blurred when you see them, and unbeknownst to you they exchange worried glances as you giggle your way down the hall. They pound on your locked door, your mother crying out, wanting to help, your father threatening you. You don’t hear, and in your haze, you miscalculate. You lie down; you don’t know how you did it – it’s not like you. Under three blankets, shivering, you die.

We all get a similar call – a woman wailing in the background, police radios crackling on and off, and an uncomfortable man’s voice on the other end. We hear, Did we know? We knew; hell yes, we knew. We hear, Why didn’t you stop it? We wouldn’t have been able to, but the fact remained that we were the only ones the deceased knew, the only ones who could have been bothered to stop it, and we didn’t. We could have, but we didn’t.

And the world fell apart.

He rubs the toes of his shoes together and gnashes his teeth.

She sniffles and clutches a bag of chips to her bruised breasts.

I stare at the ground and rip up leaves mechanically.

We feel very lost right now, and for a good reason.

He mutters, “We should have done something,” and tongues two Adderall, clenching his teeth on them; a blue froth comes to his lips.

She whispers, “We should have done something a long time ago,” and a fat tear rolls down her face to mix with the snot above her lip.

I say, “We should have, but we didn’t,” and light up a cigarette, blowing the smoke out of my nose into a translucent cloud above us.

We sit in our favourite clearing, where you would trip and she would toke, he would climb trees and I would watch through smoky air.

He jumps up and down in place, whips out his arms to either side in a way that should dislocate them but doesn’t. He is a blurry bundle of sparking synapses and nervous energy. He looks away, to the sky.

She shifts in her seat, sliding sandaled feet over the dead foliage and eliciting a hiss from it. Shaking fingers feed chip after chip to her lips, an unconscious reaction to munchies and grief; if she’s not careful, she’ll become a comfort eater.

I feel the burn of the cigarette on my fingers and realize that the wind has been smoking it in my stead, and I throw it down, stomping on the ember. I run my hands through my hair and cover my face, willing tears to leak out more easily.

We are trapped in our own little bubble of sorrow, the one the people of the world have forgotten and the one in which they have left us. We were once a solitary quartet; now we are a solitary trio, due to negligence. We thought we took care of each other, and we had failed at that.

He jumps and screams, “Shit!” and points at the ground. There’s nothing there, but he babbles on and on about a huge spider, oh god, it’s huge, please kill it, it’s going to eat us if you don’t. Just as suddenly, he’s calm, and he sits down on the ground with a swish of too-big denims. He says, dumbfounded, “It wasn’t there. I’m fuckin’ hallucinating.”

She lets out a bawl and covers her face in her jacket, wanting to toke so badly right now that it’s hurting her bones, “My bones,” she blubbers, spittle clinging to either lip as she speaks. She throws down the chips and stands, stomping on them until only crumbs are left. Then she falls down on top of them and begins to weep violently, crying out about unfairness.

I shake violently in my seat, almost as though it’s cold out, and light another cigarette. On the first hit, the shaking is gone, and I can think again. I look around, like I’m gauging the reactions of the trees as they stand sentry and watch this display. “We can’t keep going like this,” I mumble, the weight of the trees’ gazes on my back. I shift uncomfortably and drag again.

We know there’s only one thing to do. We look at each other, six eyes that should have been eight, full of tears and sadness at what has come to pass. We have always been taught the evils of such things, and like we’re just now realizing it, we say in unison, “We have to quit.” We didn’t know just what we were doing until Death interfered, but we were committing suicide.

He laughs, a little nervously, as if he can’t believe that this is what it has come to, this tragedy of youth. “I guess I’ll go first.” Out of his pocket comes a Tic-Tac box with five blue pills in it. He shakes them into his hand and stares at them. Only a moment’s hesitation later, twenty or thirty slivers of blue fall to the ground. He wipes his hands together and, as an afterthought, spits the blue froth out of his mouth.

She bites her lip, saying, still tearful, “I’m next.” Out of a pocket on her miniskirt that’s more for ornamentation than utilization, she pulls out roughly forty dollars’ worth of pot. Her fingers tremble as she shreds it all finely and drops it on the ground, standing and stomping on it as she had the chips only moments before. She chokes back another sob, biting down so hard that her lip seems ready to split and bleed at any moment.

I sigh quietly and stand, drawing two packs of smokes from my jeans pockets. I rip off the cellophane wrapping of the second back and scrutinize both boxes in my hands, which are quivering. One by one, I tear the paper of thirty-eight cigarettes apart and let the tobacco fall to the ground. I don’t go so far as to stomp or spit on them, only look at them mournfully like they were the last dredges of my sanity, abandoned on the forest floor.

We gather together, hands on each other’s shoulders. We put our heads together in the centre and whisper comforting words: “We will quit. We will fight this. We’re here for each other. We’re in this together. We won’t let this beat us. We are stronger than that.” We pull away from each other with determination in our eyes, though we’re all still under the influence. We leave the vow silent: This won’t happen again.

This is the beginning.

He’s been very distant and absent-minded.

She’s a constant puddle of tears and anger.

I’m listless and jittery and irritated.

We’re going through withdrawal, but we’re doing it together.

His grades are steadily rising, and he says in the clearing that he can concentrate better now, though his memory is lacking.

She reports that she called the pigs on her dad two days ago; he was locked up, she says, and when she laughs her whole face lights up.

I grit my teeth together and try to count how many days it’s been since I’ve had a cigarette; I can’t think, and I have nothing to say.

We have gathered here tonight in the light of the full moon with a stone so heavy all three of us are needed to move it.

He wheezes with the effort of moving the stone, no strength in his string-bean muscles because he hasn’t eaten well for over a year. When he drops it, he raises his arms to the moon with a primal scream.

She stays silent, though she’s crying again. It’s a balmy almost-summer night, and a breeze ripples her clothes, less revealing than anyone can remember seeing on her. Tears run down her face and meld seamlessly with the collar of her shirt.

I wipe my forehead with the back of my hand and squint up at the moon, though it’s not bright enough to warrant squinting. I blame it on my bad eyes, which have glasses that I don’t wear. “Well,” I say quietly, so as not to break the spell. “Shall we?”

We gather around the stone, six hands on six different shoulders, and we’re all shaking, though from the physical effects of withdrawal or from the intensity of the moment, we don’t know. We lean on each other, gathering strength for what is to come.

He leans over, half-bent, eyes fixed on the stone. Silver spray-paint from his garage gleams on the surface, and he grins wolfishly. “Yeah,” he murmurs, and his back twitches. He’s the first to bend beside the stone, sitting on his heels. His knees creak as they bend, snap from lack of sufficient calcium, and his eyes never leave their quarry.

She quickly follows his example, not even bothering to keep her hose from ripping. She bows her head and closes her eyes, clasping her hands and resting them on the stone in front of her. She looks like a skanky angel, begging of God forgiveness for her lewdness.

I sit then, cross-legged, and place my shaking hands flat on the stone. I toss my neck from side to side, issuing several mild pops from the displaced vertebrae. “We ought to start,” I whisper. I don’t think any of us know what we’re doing, but I know what I want to do, and that’s give my sincerest apologies and beg for some kind of recompense for my actions.

We all nod and close our eyes. We contemplate our lost friend, the drugs discarded beneath the stone, set up in Your honour. We thank You for waking us to the fact that we were so, so stupid. We apologize that it took this drastic measure to make us realize our mistakes. We swear with spittle and love upon this stone that we will never be so stupid again.

He is the first again, this time the first to stand and begin his retreat. Even though he’s off the Adderall, it’s still in his system and always will be; the vestiges of the drug will never completely erode. He spits once, a fine mist that showers the area like dew because his mouth is still dry. He makes his noisy way out of the clearing, cursing randomly where he is stuck by thorns or tripped by treacherous trees’ roots.

She rises then, with a sigh and a moan of discomfort, and whispers something to the wind, hoping that mournful syllables will reach whoever she’s talking to. Then she is the one leaving the clearing, more slowly than he would ever be, no sign of inebriation in her step. Her sandals send the muffled groans of leaves underneath them until she’s probably stepped onto the road, out of the woods.

I open my eyes then and stare at the stone upon which my bony hands rest. I murmur something to the skies as though they are the ones who need to forgive me, and I feel the first tear roll down my cheek. It’s followed soon by a second, then a third, until my eyes are streaming; I feel like all the water in my body is leaking from my tear ducts. Before I realize it, I’m up and running blindly through the forest, away, away, away.

We are the misfits of society who have overcome societal bounds by being extraordinarily idiotic; we are the ones who thought we were so wronged that we had to prove it in so extreme a way that we returned from the edge of deadly addiction with one of our number missing. The only evidence of our maculate pasts remains on the stone in the clearing, three names surrounding one large, elaborate one in silver spray-paint.