H: Chapter Twelve

The farm-house kitchen is silent as Joe DeMarcy begins to plate the food. He had just spent the day harvesting his crops and slaughtering cows. Now, it’s potatoes and steak for dinner.

The kitchen light, flickers and hums, creating this weird vibration that echoes throughout the house. The walls and floorboards are made out of that usual seventies wood, making everything seem really dark. The cabinets are white with stains on them. It’s an old house, so each time Joe steps, the floor lets out this high-pitched sound as if it’s alive.

Joe finishes plating the food and sets the plates down in front of his children. Jack’s little sister, Dana, grabs her fork and begins to dig into the meal. “We haven’t said grace yet!” Joe DeMarcy barks. Dana drops her fork and looks up at her father with sullen eyes. Joe grabs the hands of Dana and Sarah, and so does Jack. They finish saying the usual thanks to the imaginary sky-fairy and it’s finally time to eat.

As Joe begins to cut into his steak, his eyes gloss over to Jack and then back to his plate. “Your thirteen now, it’s time to decide which military branch to join.”

Jack silently looks up at his father with a grimace. He chooses not to say anything, out of fear of being slapped, and his eyes gloss down to his plate. Jack secretly wishes he was invisible.

“I know!” Dana belts out. “Maybe Jack can draw da’ banners! He showed me his new drawings!”

Joe slams his fist on the table, causing the plates to rock and vibrate against the wood. “That’s a faggot’s job! I didn’t raise no faggots!” He clears his throat and takes the bite of the steak.

Joe DeMarcy is your less-than-average military father. He served two tours in Vietnam. When it was time to leave Vietnam, he got stuck behind enemy lines. He then had to paddle back to the U.S on a raft with nothing but a single canteen of water and a loaf of moldy bread. At least that’s the story he tells constantly.

Back home he was seen by his neighbors crawling in the street, army-style, and telling people to get down. He soon became a farmer and fell into alcoholism. Now he can’t even got twelve-hours without a drink or else he’ll have a seizure. His hands shake constantly, and he gets hot flashes. It’s like he’s just waiting for his lover to kill him.

Jack finishes his steak and pushes the plate away from him. He looks his dad straight in the eye. “I’m not joining the military. I’m going to art school.”

Fire rises in Joe’s eyes. His muscles tense up. His heart beats. And then a plate goes flying against the wall. “YOU’RE JOINING THE FUCKING MILITARY. ART SCHOOL’LL TURN YOU INTO A FAGGOT. YOU LIKE GETTING RAILED IN THE ASS? DO YOU?”

Jack quivers. “No…”

“YOU FUCKING BETTER NOT!” Joe clears his throat and says, “I know I’m hard on you, but I’m molding you into a man. A good man. I’ve raised you right, and I know you’ll carry on my legacy. Do you understand?”

“Yes…”

“Atta-boy.”

* * *

Jack sits in the barn, resting his back against the wooden wall. The horses are all shuffling and huffing and puffing in their little gates. They stomp their hooves into the dirt and send dust up into the air. Jack sniffs a little bit and coughs the dust out.

In Jack’s hands lay a little brass pipe filled with weed. He flicks his thumb against the Bic lighter and a flame pops out. He brings the pipe to his mouth and the flame to the little bowl of weed, inhaling.

Jack exhales the smoke, and it flies up in the air, past the wooden support beams, the hay-bales, and out the window. He drops the pipe and it kind of rolls in the dirt. Jack sighs and slouches down on the ground. A feeling of warmth passes through his body, and his thoughts are finally quiet.

Whenever Jack smokes weed he remembers things. Sometimes they’re good, sometimes they’re bad. It’s really just a fucking coin toss. But what it does do, is numb his response to the thoughts.

Jack has the idea to put on some music. He reaches into his pocket and takes out his iPod and earbuds. He places them in his ears, and presses play. Progressive-metal with wicked guitar solos play through his ears. Everything sounds and feels better when your stoned.

The sudden memory of Jack taking a rather high-dose of edibles passes through his mind. One night he put on the movie 2001: Space Odyssey and the edibles ended up hitting around twenty or thirty minutes into the movie. He became couch-locked, barely able to keep his eyes open. He yawns and stretches his arms out. Jack manages to break through the couch-lock and press the stop button on the remote. He closes his eyes and gets into a comfortable position.

“Hey!” A voice suddenly calls out. It’s Joe.

Jack is jolted away from the memory. He scrambles for the pipe and slides it into his pocket. “Yeah? What is it, Dad?”

“What the fuck are you doing sitting there?”

Jack looks around, making sure he picked everything back up. Joe takes a couple steps forward. “Don’t look at the ground! Look me in the fucking eye! What did I tell you to do?”

Jack half-heartedly looks Joe in his blue eyes as he quivers. “Y-you told me to… to rake the leaves.”

“Exactly! Why aren’t you doing it?”

Jack freezes. “Um…”

“Whatever.” Joe says. “I’ve had enough of you, just rake the fucking leaves.” Joe turns around and walks out of the barn. But before he gets out of sight, he belts out, “And stop staring at that fucking iPod of yours! Your eyes are bloodshot from it!”

Jack sighs, thankful the shouts are finally over. With a great sigh, he turns around and picks up the rake from inside the barn. He exits the barn and walks over to the cow-pen. Jack has told me about this “one cow,” that he had a special connection with. Basically it would always follow him around and lick his hands. Jack had to beg his father not to slaughter it, and via an act of God, his father actually listened. Jack had named her Samantha. So as Jack is raking the leaves, Samantha is staring at him. Jack drops the rake and walks over to Samantha. He pets her ears and she licks his hand. Jack smiles and goes back over to the leaves.

As Jack rakes the leaves, the memory of taking those edibles passes through his mind. He’s back in the living room, couch-locked, and all that shit. The movie is paused on that one frame of the monolith floating in space. Jack closes his eyes and tilts his head back. Suddenly he’s on a canoe, floating down a cerulean blue river. There’s steam floating up from the river. On the sides of the water there’s clouds which hooded figures stand on, watching Jack. Jack dips his hands in the water and it’s hot. He looks up and sees a silver gate opening, it’s like the stereotypical one you’d see when you enter heaven.

Jack opens his eyes and he’s back in his living room. After that, he decided to go to rehab.

* * *

I sat in the driver’s seat with a cigarette clenched between my teeth. I pressed my foot down on the gas pedal and watched as we accelerated. Sixty-five miles-per-hour to seventy, to eighty, to ninety, and when we reached a hundred I slowly pressed on the brake, going down to a mild speed of seventy-five.

“Hey, Payte…” Travis said shyly. The kid was obviously nervous. His fear made me kind of annoyed, though I don’t know why.

I turned to Travis and took the cigarette from my mouth. “Yeah? What is it?”

Travis absentmindedly scratched at his forehead, trying to gather his words together. He turned to me and said, “When you see people hurting, do you like…”

“What? Spit it the fuck out.”
“Do you feel bad for them?”

I shook my head, “No, not really.”

“Well, do you, like, know why they’re sad.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I just don’t care.”

“Mhmm…” Travis mumbled. He brought his feet up on the dashboard and asked, “Would you help them?”

I shook my head, “I don’t really want too, but you gotta appear like you actually do care, because then they’re on your side and then they’re, like, helpful to you. Y’know?”

Travis squinted. “Yeah…”

* * *

There was one problem plaguing us. And that was the fact that our entire supply of mind-altering substances had run low. We searched pretty much every crack and crevice in the van, we must’ve sifted through the trunk ten times, but there was still no sign of anything.

“You find anything?” I asked Travis while I sifted under the seats.

Travis turned to me, “I found a piece of chewing gum. Think we could smoke that?”

Thomas shook his head, “Nope.”

Jack yawned and fell onto the seats, “Well, we’re boned.”

“Yeah.” I said. “We need to get money, and fast.”

Jack showed a mischievous smile, “We could always dress Thomas up in skimpy clothing and put him on the curb.”

Thomas’s face contorted into disgust, “What are you saying?”

Jack yawned again, “Well, what do you think?”

“I don’t appreciate that, you know.” Thomas muttered.

Jack grabbed a random piece of torn paper and crumbled it up into a ball, just before throwing it. “Come on! It was a joke!” Jack stretched his arms out and then launched up out of his seat. He began to climb through the van door. “I’m gonna go make a fire.”

The minutes passed, and we still didn’t find anything. We were bone-dry of any illicit substance. How the fuck were we supposed to survive sobriety? What if we had a bad day?

So there we sat by the fire, each of us anxiously wondering what was gonna happen next. Cicadas buzzed around in the cornfields next to us, the wind made the stalks waver, and the night sky shone like a pool of dark water.

When your high you don’t think about all the shit in your life that annoys you, that eats away at you everyday. The demon that stands on your shoulder yelling in your ear about all the shit around you is gone. It’s no longer attached to you.

After you’ve finally experienced such a euphoric break, sobriety tends to be fucking terrifying. You suddenly have to learn how to swat away that demon, how to make it obey. You gotta worry about your bills, your job, your fake-ass friends, your girlfriends. Everything just tends to slowly wear you down, and that’s why drugs are so fucking amazing.

Back at the campfire, I noticed something off with Jack. But to be honest, there was always something off with Jack. I always noticed the way he’d disappear from the group for hours, or the way he’d be half-asleep and slurring his words. The kid was never alright.

“Hey Jack.” I said, drawing out the Y.

Jack lifted his head out of his lap and looked at me. “What is it?”

“You’re still using, aren’t you?”
Jack’s eyes froze. He bit his lip and looked around. “Uh, no I’m not. What gave you that idea?”

Travis suddenly perked up and looked at Jack as well. “You got H, don’tcha?”

“N-no I don’t.”

I stood up out of my chair and walked over to Jack. “Where is it?” I said sternly. “Where’s your fuckin’ stash?”

Jack shook his head. “I ain’t telling you shit. You don’t wanna do this shit man, it’ll ruin your life. It makes people die.”
I laughed. “You really give a fuck if I live or die? Where’s your stash?”
Jack shook his head furiously. “Not tellin’ you.”
I grabbed Jack by the shoulders and lifted him out of his chair. I bent his arms to his back so he couldn’t get away. “Where is it?” I shouted. “WHERE THE FUCK IS IT?”

Jack kicked and squirmed. “I’m. Not. Telling. You.”

I began to bend Jack’s arm backwards. “Tell me! Where’s your stash?”

Jack’s face became red with pain. “Okay, okay! It’s in my pocket!”

I dropped Jack and he fell on the ground. He rolled over on his back and panted. “Are you happy now, you fucking sociopath?”

I dug my hand in Jack’s pocket and pulled out two grams of H. In his other pocket was a needle. I held the two objects in my hands and smiled. “Oh, yeah. I’m happy now.”

Okay, normally I wouldn’t recommend sharing a needle. Alright? Don’t do what we did, we could’ve easily lost our arms. I’m pretty sure God was watching over our wretched souls that night and decided to give us a free pass.

I’m not proud of it, but yeah, all four of us ended up doing H that night. We decided that we would split the remainder of the heroin into fourths, and each of us would inject our quarter. It’s kind of tricky trying to find a vein at first, especially since none of us are a licensed phlebotomist. But, once you do find the vein, and inject the H into your blood, it feels like nothing else.

The absolute euphoria spreads through your body slowly, and I even forgot where I was for a moment. The old cliche of, “Take the best orgasm you’ve ever felt, and multiply it by a thousand, and you still wouldn’t match it,” turned out to be true. Or, I think, I’ve never had sex.

There’s truly nothing like H. All the food, the sex, the great movies, nothing compares. And that’s the worst part. Because you’ll never feel anything like it, you’ll keep using more and more until you’re just an empty shell of the person you used to be. You’ll steal for it, you’ll fuck for it, and you might even kill for it. You’re a slave to the master. And that, is the saddest possible state to be in.

* * *

We sat in a little McDonalds in the middle of Pennsylvania. It had literally taken us two days to get there. Driving on the back-roads are a bitch. You constantly have to check the map just to know if you’re going in the right direction. That, and there was probably some serial killer redneck living in a farm-house. The guys wanted to explore the vast expanse of land. But me? I wasn’t taking the chance of being kidnapped by hill-billy’s. I’ve watched enough Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

There was nothing around for miles. The McDonalds was surrounded by nothing but hills and cornfields. Outside, there was two little gas pumps, but that was it. The only reason is existed was to prey off of travelers like ourselves.

I leaned back and placed my legs on the table. Dirt was shaken off the soles of my boots and landed on the less-than-pristine dining booth. “We need more H.”

Jack lifted his head up. For the past five-or-so minutes he had been laying there with his head down. “I think the withdrawals are starting already.”

Travis snickered, “What, is your mouth salivating or something?”

“That’s not how it works—“ Thomas started.

Jack interrupted with a laugh. “Yeah, almost.” He took a deep breath and leaned his head backwards. The guy could never sit still. “I know a guy in Kansas City.”
I shook my head, “That’s not gonna work. We need to find some in Pennsylvania.”

“Jack,” Thomas said. “How do you even find these guys?”
“It’s pretty simple.” Jack started. “When I was a kid I’d run away from home for months at a time. I got to know a lot of people.”

“Okay,” I said. “Do you know anyone nearby? Someone we don’t have to drive a thousand miles to get too?”

“Let me think.” Said Jack. He combed his hands through his hair. It was originally shaved, but when you live on the road you don’t get basic necessities such as razors. “There’s this guy in Pittsburgh. He’d probably want us to get something for him though.”

“Like, do what for him?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” Jack groaned. “The guy’s a fuckin’ whackjob; he’s always methed out. It could be a whole number of things.”

I nodded my head. There was no clue what was waiting for us in Pittsburgh, but it was an adventure that promised a great adrenaline rush. We had to do it.

“Fuck it.” I said. “Let’s go to Pittsburgh.”