Methadone and Time
(Jan 03/06)
His eyes are boiled corn yellow, crimson yolks bisecting a skillet-flat face. The pain will stop, never, he thinks, not until the pharmacist’s helper pushes the Dixie cup across the top of the dispensary counter, her lips trembling with the fear of contagion’s, unhealed scabs and a wet cough. The orange juice, probably Tang, never quite cuts the shit, never just quite. A million little pieces, he thinks, I’ll show you a million fucking little pieces, you rich little shit. Meth-sick, not jaundice, but death masked. Counterfeit junkie on a first-class ticket with a laptop and Blue Chips coming out his asshole. A million fucking dollars, is more like it, and fucking Orphan hawking the shit out of it, how fucking sad, just fucking how sad. Skip traces all fucked on his arms, divots and last hits gone wrong. Like fucking chicken scratch, scrimshaw and puss and blood tracks where veins are suppose to be; troubled over with boil scars and blood that can’t be scrapped clean. And you and your million fucking little pieces drinking Brut and Applejack. Fucking pathetic, man, just too fucking pathetic.
Come junk round with me for a while, he thinks, the pharmacist’s helper measuring his Dixie-dose, and I’ll show you what a million fucking piece is. A shake and bake with puddle water, too fucking junk-sick to give a fuck. Popping elbow skin and tendons, trying not to muscle it or hit bone, tip jams right through into the base of your skull, a fucking million little pieces. The pharmacist’s helper slides his dose across the dispensary counter, latex hands and a shit for brains suburban smile. He lifts it slowly to his lips, purpled and bitten through lips, not the kind you’d bring home to dear mom, and shoots it back in one swallow. Gums like tripe, maybe worse. The Tang never does cut it quite proper, he thinks, always some of the shit still grainy and half-mixed with the meth. But then again, he thinks, who gives a good fuck about a meth-junkie who can’t write a fucking rich kid’s travelogue?
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