Scum

Speak To Me

The smell overpowers me, even though I’m barely conscious and my whole body is aching. I can’t breathe, but then again there’s nothing really new about that. What brings me back is a sharp, painful dig to my side. I try to ignore it at first, but it gets worse and worse until I have no choice but to wake up and face whatever fresh horrors the new day has for me.

“Wake up, Jack! Speak to me!” A voice, as shrill and intrusive as a fire alarm, shrieks. It hurts, like glass in my brain. The drama queen is at it again. I look up to see her standing over me, the pointed toes of her stolen shoes primed to jab me again. Looking up at her, her pale, expressionless face and lank, greasy black hair, her cold, soulless dead blue eyes, I can feel nothing but hatred, coupled with an almost overwhelming desire to grab hold of her thin throat and throttle the life out of her small, emaciated body. But I know that’s just the lack of junk talking and I can’t muster the energy to do it anyway.

“Wake up! Wake up, you useless fuck!” She screams, kicking me again. The pain leaps up my side, coming in waves. I feel like I’m go to break par, like the thin layer of cellophane holding my bones and organs together is going to split. I manage to keep it together, but just barely. Only the prospect of scoring some dope and putting and end to this agony keeps me going.

“I’m awake! I’m awake! Goddamn it, Maya, I’m awake already!” I shout defensively, my voice distorted by the wad of noxious phlegm that fills my throat and coats my sinuses. I sit up, feeble hands held in front of me to block any more blows she may decide to launch at me. I clear my throat and spit out a load of thick, yellowish-green bile. It hits the cold concrete with a satisfying splat. The sound of it brings my surroundings into harsh, bitter focus. The pedestrian tunnel off 6th and Grand, populated off and on by buskers, dealers, beggars, and of course, junkies like me.

Maya jabs me again. She looks like the living dead, but then again, I probably don’t look so shit-hot either so I’m in no position to judge.

“We need to go,” She says, stretching out the “o” in “go”. “The cops’ll show up and roust us any second if we don’t get out of here.” She slaps her left arm, hard, as though swatting at an insect...or tapping up a vein.

I stand up, discarding the mess of crumpled, yellowing newspapers I’ve been using as a makeshift blanket and picking up my overcoat, which I’ve been using as a pillow. I pull it on quickly. It’s an old thing, tattered and black, although time and the weather have faded it to more of an ugly, dull gray.

“I’m jonesing,” She says in a strangled voice and collapses against the far wall. “I’m really jonesing over here.”

She coughs loudly, and even though I know she’s exaggerating I want to get moving. I know that sooner or later (most likely sooner) I’ll start feeling the aches and pains myself. I find myself wishing that I had a wake-up shot and it dawns on me (and not for the first time either) that I’d have enough from last night’s score if I hadn’t had to split it with her. I know that we’ll go our separate ways someday. I’ll get tired of having to feed her habit as well as my own and leave her to die in a ditch somewhere. Sure, I love her, but love can never compensate for a good narcotic addiction.

“Let’s hit the clinic,” I say. We’d need to get there early if we wanted to beat the other hopheads.

That seems like a satisfactory suggestion, so we bundle up all the gear we can salvage and take off before the cleaning crews show up.