Chapter 1
Was it Tuesday? Was it Thursday?’
It didn’t matter; I was working in the pits regardless. A few days ago I knew it was Sunday, it was supposed to be my day off. That’s not how it worked.
If the girl goes to work she gets ethereal, without ethereal, the withdrawals are likely to kill her.
Was I thinking or speaking?
Her mind is blurry.
The hit I took was a lot.
But was it too much?
I needed to stick to the plan.
What was it again?
I had said something funny; they were laughing.
“Fox, you say the weirdest shit,” Trigger, the one resembling an ogre, was saying. ”Oh look at her eyes, she is on a fresh one, that’s why.”
The other one, Darryl, laughs like trapped weasels screaming for help. “That’s what I was telling you, this girl takes an indigo hit and it’s hilarious. Don’t worry Fox, the laughing is with you, not at you.”
Was my name, Fox? I had another name, it wasn’t here at the moment, but it would come to me. I don’t like these men, especially being alone with them and working in a leaky cockroach infested basement. It was a hot and stuffy make-shift laboratory cooking up the highs to the low residents in the shitty part of town. I spent my days living in the blur created by the purple ethereal dust that I filled in little packets and labeled with a shiny fairy sticker.
I held on to the handle of a broom that I stood upright and tip-toed around it in a circle like it was a dance partner. Somewhere in a memory I recalled dancing and laughing and waiting for the next good thing. That was before ethereal and now there were no more good things. My life became ethereal and existing detached from everyone including myself. There was a veil that was lifting and now I wanted out. I remember why I took such a big hit.
‘Ah, yes. There’s the plan.’
“My name was Ezri. My name was Ezri. My name IS Ezri,” I spoke aloud while the clouds broke giving me brief clarity. For quite a while, I had forgotten who I was, but I would die remembering and without another thought, I lunged forward with a knife from my pocket and stuck the blade into the side of Trigger’s throat. Droplets of the spurting red fountain hit my face as Trigger fell to his knees clutching his neck with wide eyes and gurgled gasps.
Darryl stood and his expression contorted trying to process what happened while I ran to the lab table and turned up the burners under the simmering liquid. I picked up a bottle of dust, and held it over the pot. It needed to be over 205 degrees and I only had one chance.
I turned to look back at Darryl and was instead met with what felt like a brick to the face. In slow motion I was falling to the ground and saw the vile of dust escape from my fingertips, then Darryl's scream rang out.
I knew I hit the mark when purple fog expelled from the rusty pot. I smiled for the first time in years and closed my eyes waiting for an explosion of freedom.
I was going to die as Ezri and with a big fuck you message to Sol. I wasn't meant to be alive and for a brief blissful moment I thought I wasn’t. Reality was playing with the ethereal coursing my veins as the blur returned. I was rolling down a patch of the greenest grass under the bluest sky feeling the embrace of sunbeams. I stayed here for an infinite amount of time, then struggled to breathe.
I woke in survival mode and pushed myself up off a bed of broken glass. The wind was knocked out of me and panic began to set in. I forced my lungs to fill with debris, smoke, and a small bit of oxygen. Stumbling towards the bottom of the staircase I passed small fires and what looked to be bits of innards.
It was out of habit that I grabbed my backpack off the hook before climbing the stairs. My body felt weak and needed to rely heavily on the rail, creeping up each step as fast as my body would take me. I acknowledged the lack of pain knowing it would show up when the ethereal wore off. Stopping at the door, I took a moment to take in the scene below me and the two still bodies I was leaving behind in the pit of fire and ash.
‘Damn them,’ I thought, with malice stemming from every part of me. I closed the door tightly behind me not knowing if they were somehow still alive. If they were the fumes would finish them off .
Being on the wrong side of town has its advantages; everyone minds their business and no one sees a thing. I stepped into the polluted brown air, leaned against the brick building, and caught my breath. If I were to guess it was about 3am by how empty the streets were. I needed to leave. Larkin Square would be covered in cronies soon if Sol was alerted to an explosion.
Sol had yet to lose track of any drug traitors and I blew out his main lab and chemists. He was out more than a half mil in mere minutes. The last few months he looked at me like I was pathetic, and he underestimated me. I couldn't blame him, I hadn't considered for a moment that I might have survived the basement, but now I had escaped, I decided I wanted to live. No matter how disappointing my life is, l need to fight for it.
I dont know how I will manage that, I am to fucked out of my mind to focus longer than a few minutes. I would have to push through and hopefully keep my adrenaline up. Trying to dismiss thoughts of how running is only prolonging my inevitable death, my feet pounded the pavement. I made my way out of the Market Streets of Larkin Square passing empty vendor stands, parked delivery shuttles, shelters, and illegal gambling pits. This city is caked with dirt and not part of any state tax budget to clean up for the last fifteen years. It's the year 2052 and any technology past 2030 hasn’t entered the boundaries of the city. No one living here cared; we couldn’t afford it anyway.
I forgot why I was running several times while the ethereal weighed me down and my legs struggled to move in the molasses, or was that a hallucination? My adrenaline was trying to combat the drug and the paranoia started to itch my brain. My eyes would dart in the direction of a scurrying rat or a drunkard shifting in their sleep on the concrete. Something I would normally not pay attention to, now made me flinch and I wondered when I would feel safe.
The only plan I came up with was to make it to the corral of pay scooters and ride the rest of the way out of town. Lifting my sleeve I saw the cut marks on my wrist from when I tried to cut the chip out, I ended up passing out before I was successful. I'm still not sure if the rumors around the chip are true, but I didn't need it here anyway, you don't need much on the self-destructive path.
Through the fog in my thoughts I couldn't fathom how I made it to the corral but here I am. I looked up to wish on a star but only saw the smog blanket reflecting the dim streetlights. Instead, I saw a silver star on a billboard advertising Sparks Energy and pleaded for luck.
There were a few scooters that had been hacked to accept chips without credits, but finding them was the hard part. Knowing damn well I didn’t have available credits, I willed any of them to accept my chip. After the sixth one, I finally got a green flash and began riding the rest of the ten miles out of the city.
The wind in my hair was the feeling of power. It fueled me to keep going and not second guess myself. For the moment, the fear of survival seemed to dissolve around me with every block I passed. I am sure Sol will look for me, but I wasn’t sure if he would know where to find me.
He nicknamed me Fox from the first day and that’s what I went by. I don’t think he ever knew my real name or background. I was told not to offer information and during the time I spent in Larkin Square, I hadn't spoken my name to anyone. There was the possibility he found out on his own and if he didnt, he will be trying now.
Leaving Sol‘s grasp resulted in death. My brain kept reminding me for no good reason. Why must this thought be at the forefront? When I made the decision to blow up the lab, I was leaving on my terms, letting Sol know that it was personal. I was done with that life and I never wanted what it became.
There was another thought lurking in the corner of my mind that I was trying not to acknowledge, but it was a more dire threat than Sol at the moment. I would need to detox. I know I could go to a hospital for sedation, but Sol would be waiting for me to walk out as he had done with others. There were a few people I knew who lived in Midtown and maybe I could ask for help. The problem with that was I knew them through Sol. I would chat with clients while getting their order for ethereal and had seen addresses on their invoices enough times to memorize it, but could I trust anyone?
I had been exposed to “compliance drills” and “loyalty checks” as Sol called them while he paraded me around on his arm. He told me he needed to trim the fat, but I came to realize he was trying to maintain a handle on his control over the city. He recruited people to follow him blindly and worried they would rise together to overthrow him. He planted fake coups and escape trails to see who would betray him.
I lost my first and only friend in the Market Streets that way. Layla thought she was escaping the brothels to a safe house in Midtown; she begged me to come with her. Brainwashed, I begged her to stay and told her it would be getting better, then I never saw her again. Layla’s missing persons flier was later moved to a wall of traitors. It was to remind everyone of the consequences of trying to escape. That was when I began waking up.
The first few months in Larkin Square, I was dumb. Not only for trusting that someone had my best interest, or deciding ethereal was a good idea, but I was dumb for adopting the beliefs that were fed to me. Sol made it sound simple, the people working for him could leave at any time if they were unhappy, but they didn’t have to stab him in the back.
He played the victim while threatening violence and paying people in drugs they couldn’t stop taking. It was a cage without bars and shackles without chains. He wasn’t the victim, he was the abuser. He built his shit castle, in a dumpster kingdom of hurt vulnerable people. What would it take to stop him?
It was several hours before I came to Midtown where the trash wasn’t littering the walkways. It was a lot more dilapidated in some parts than I remembered a few years ago. Larkin Square’s illness must be infecting more of the city. I pulled the scooter in another corral and walked into a public bathroom on the side of a gas station. It wasn't clean and smelled of vomit but it would do.
I took my backpack off and removed my hoodie and shirt to inspect my injuries. There was blood smeared down my hands and arms, I knew it wasn’t only mine. For a brief moment, I locked eyes with the stranger in the mirror and quickly looked away from her. Continuing on, I palpated the large lump on my left jaw and a half dried stream of blood coming from my hairline.
My hand explored my black curls and found a small gash hiding under them. Nothing that needed stitches at least. Moving my fingertips down to a large bruise with swelling across my rib cage I knew that would be hurting later. Turning side to side I did my best to inspect my back and found nothing else, but I needed to be thorough. In my current state, I could be unaware of internal bleeding or broken bones.
The ethereal would wear off soon and I would feel it all. My breath hitched thinking about what I was about to go through and fear brought tears to my eyes as I continued the inspection. I removed my pants and examined a few scrapes and small glass shards stuck in my shins. I didn’t bother cleaning up the blood and debris; not before detoxing. I folded my pants and set them on the sink.
I took a deep look in my eyes. The evidence of ethereal was reflected as a pale purple in the whites of my eyes. The tell tale signs of a fresh ethereal hit was a bright purple sclera. As the drug fades to the pale purple it is known as a halo, because many people do not survive the withdrawals. If I thought I would have made it out of the lab, I would have packed another hit to ween off safer. It would be a long few hours.
One last time, I went through my options, a hospital or anyone I could go to. Calling for help wasn't an option, in the Market streets it was rare to find someone like me with a cell, or any communications device. All electronics eventually get sold or traded for drugs, sex, or fulfilling gambling debts. I did have one, at first, but I wasn't sad to see it go after the rumors spread on social media that I had died. I decided it was better than the truth.
The first rule of fucking with ethereal, is to carry a rope. It was made to be a death trap of psychotic episodes if you tried to detox. My body aches were beginning to peek through the drug, I knew I didn’t have a lot of time. Securing the flimsy lock on the door, I try not to think about anyone stumbling upon me, tied up and incoherent. It was my experience that people take advantage where they can.
I cursed myself aloud but refused to allow the tears to flood or emotions to take over, at least not yet. I looked around the bathroom one last time and told myself I wasn't going to die here. I put my hoodie on the floor touching the base to the toilet for a pillow, then wrapped the rope around the pipes before laying down and tying my hands with as little slack as possible. I struggled roughly to test the strength but the knot managed to tighten more, digging further into my flesh. Perfect.
My skin began to tickle and itch as I laid on my back, eyes closed while tears and a sigh of fear escaped me. Within twenty minutes the pain was white and impossible to pinpoint. Every muscle was contracting in angry spasms and I was imagining death for the second time today.
Images blurred together. I felt the bliss from my last ethereal hit spin with the laughter between Darryl and Trigger. I saw in slow motion the blow to my jaw from Darryl’s fist smash my face as I dropped the vial of dust. The dust intermingled with shimmering acid and exploding across the room.
I saw the scene in my mind play like a movie over and over, rewinding and playing back from different angles outside my body. I knew why I was still alive. Daryl's punch had knocked me to the ground while he stood in front of the pot taking the majority of the explosion to his guts. They sprayed like fireworks. Was my mind making that up? I saw again, their bodies lying still from the top of the stairs dead. Dead. Dead.
Sol’s face came into focus, the scenery shifted around him and I watched the first time we met. It's been over four years as of today’s grand departure. He took me in and accepted everything about me. I loved him and he loved me, at first. Until I was hooked on ethereal.
Sol claimed he was being generous when he offered for me to work either in the brothels or the lab. “Few bitches get the choice, kid.” It must be true, I hadn’t seen any women working the basements. Wanting his approval I worked hard, when I wasn’t working, I wondered what I did wrong. Young, naive, Ezri, a silver spooned pallet lost in the trenches. Go back home.
My mind was insane. I felt like cake batter in a mixer and wanted to pick out the bones. Somewhere I heard banging. It was an annoying ruckus distracting me from trying to grow claws to pull out a rib one by one. Noises filled my head, further maddening my mind.
Was that footprints?
Now wasn't the time for questions, I was busy with more important things. I was aching to break out of my skin; It felt uncomfortable and tight. Wouldn't it feel better laying across the room? That would take away the pain, if I could just find my hands…
Someone was touching my hair, the same way I did sliding my fingers in my curls.
‘What are they looking for?’
A thumb planted itself against my lips while the other fingers grabbed the back of my neck tilting my jaw up. Immediately Trigger's face flashed, this time it was full of lust and edging towards mine. I remembered this, he told me not to scream; I didn’t. I wish I had, and I was screaming now.
“I saw you come in here, girlie. You’re a pretty, laced up, lonely trick, aren’t you?”
A hot breath stuck to my cheek and I recoiled, refusing my eyes to open. The familiar voice floated on clouds in my mind and I tried to blow them away. The hands started traveling down my body like vines and growing thorns in my skin. My underwear was pulled down as I imagined being cut in half so my lower pieces could escape. Trigger had hurt me that day.
“Show me the explosion again,” I was begging for hysteria, for the frenzy from earlier and the race for freedom. The adrenaline was coursing, but every part of my mind was too weak to pull free. I lay there like a buffet, reliving every thrust and hearing rigid grunts on top of me. A stream of endless tears slipped down my temples catching in my hoodie. Drug addict, rape victim, murderer, traitor. Over and over these words repeated in my head. These four years I managed to disintegrate, until I destroyed as many parts of myself as I could.
“There you go,” the words followed his climax. “Now, sober up, you dusty whore.”
All at once, everything was quiet. My body refused to move and I waited for sleep, and hoped for a beautiful dream. Alas, I laid there like a used dish towel, my mind refusing to rest and wanting to discuss my poor life choices instead. This wasn’t the life I expected. A new wave of tears threatened. How do I pick myself up from here? I willed my mind quiet.
Was it minutes? Hours? I was in a puddle, was it blood? My eyelids broke through a thick crust gluing them together. Blinking, looking around I realized the wetness wasn’t red, it was tears, sweat, and urine.
I survived again, today. How long would that last? One thing about ethereal, you don’t have shakes or other symptoms if you survive the intense hours of withdrawals. It dawned on me that I was sober for the first time in four years. I felt like shit, but there was something beautiful in that. This drug was created by Sol and bred to kill detoxers.
‘I beat you Sol, twice in one day.’ There was still a remnant of a coal with a soft flickering heart somewhere under the soot of burnt rage.
My hands were purple and numb now. I fumbled with the knots and before the feeling returned to them, I vomited in the toilet. Wiping slime from my lips I looked toward the door, the lock was still secured, I cried against the toilet with relief and anguish. I had relived the first time my body was stolen, and out of habit I made a quick promise it would be the last. I was passed between Darryl and Trigger often, each one worried the other would find out. I tried to bury my shame but it always dug itself back out.
Using my shirt as a rag I washed the grime from my face and dried blood from where I could find it. I used the whole soap dispenser trying to clean all the smells that clung to me: smoke, body odor, piss, drugs, rapists. There would never be enough soap. I did what I could to rinse my clothes then hung them to dry while I sat pulling the glass from my shins.
When I was as good as I was going to get, I grabbed a cleaner shirt from my backpack. I assessed myself in the mirror one last time. My eyes were no longer purple, the halo was gone. I peaked out of the door and was blinded by a sunshine day. A few people peddled the trail that curved around a small lake fifty yards away. I stepped on the sidewalk feeling like I lived a whole broken-hearted life inside the dingy bathroom.
In a way I did die today, but only the part of me that wanted too. It was well past noon and I could only think of one place to go, the only thought from detoxing I wanted to cling to: Go home.
