Tweaked
Jimmy’d been gone four days now. He should be back anytime. My head knew that, but my heart wasn't as
easily pacified. At the moment it
slammed in my chest like a fucking wild animal, trying to break free of its
cage. My chest tightened like it knew it
needed to hold something in.
I paced through the trailer, glancing into my room
with each pass. I caught the college
algebra book in my peripheral vision, where it sat on the top shelf of the
closet. I stopped mid stride in front of
the door, staring at the shoe rack in the floor. My chin lifted slightly as the addict inside
me made herself known. She wanted me to
climb on the shoe rack, pull the book down, and attack my emergency-only
stash.
Fuck Jimmy for making me feel like this. My arms and legs felt heavy, almost too much
to carry. If he didn't get back soon, I’d
be worthless. I shook my head free of
the temptation that the book held, and started trudging through the house
again.
The front door swung open, slamming against the living
room wall. Jimmy walked in empty handed. I threw my arms around him, tempted to slip
my hands in his pockets to look for my little slice of heaven. He hugged me back, his hand slipping down
into my pajama bottoms and taking a handful of ass.
His dick pushed into my hip. He must have used on the way over. My belly quivered, knowing what was
coming. “Bring me a present?”
“Come on, baby.”
He pulled me along, stopping in the kitchen to make a drink before
leading me back to the bedroom.
Jimmy sat at the edge of the bare bed. The little packet had been hiding in his
front pocket. He pulled it free, tapping
some of the powder into my drink. I
shifted, needing to feel something, anything besides anxiousness and want.
Jimmy pushed around a little pile of white on my old
desk with his pinky. Satisfied that
there were no inconsistencies, he pulled out a pen, snapped the ink out, and
used the shaft to snort a little up his nose.
I hadn't seen him use like that in a year. Jimmy used to be gorgeous, tall and athletic. His skin had a golden glow when we’d met at
sixteen. He kept his hair long before he
started using—beautiful, auburn hair.
The further he went into the tunnel of abuse, the more effect it had on
his looks. His hair got stringy and
gross, mainly from lack of washing. He
got thin and pasty white, barely eating enough to keep his body living. His cheeks hollowed. He fed off the high, not any actual
nutrition.
What stopped his downward descent was developing a
business plan, back then when he’d been high as a kite. Somewhere in his addled brain he realized he
was giving away and using more speed than he could make. He’d use his own supply, and then go out
looking for more. He determined that
spending less time high gave him more time to work on cooking, and using less
of his product meant making more cash.
With that blessed business plan, came his
reformation. He put himself back
together. The day he asked me for help,
I thought I’d imagined it. I’d been
straight, struggling with a using boyfriend, trying to go to school, and
getting more depressed every day. So
many times I’d begged him to quit, change for me, want me again instead of the drugs.
For weeks we struggled together, trying to get the poison out of his
system.
It didn't take long for his body to recover. His appetite went crazy, and with it he
bulked back up. His skin cleared and his
hygiene became a priority again. The old
Jimmy came back.
He stayed clean for two months before I caught him
dumping a bag of crushed up crystal into his coffee. To say that I freaked would be an
understatement. I finally had Jimmy back
and I lost him again in a sliver of a moment, standing in our shitty kitchen. The year of using hard changed his brain,
made him emotionless. It was just
another thing meth had destroyed. He
begged me to understand, “I just want to feel something, anything.” He cried, and then I cried. I swore that if he started getting bad again
I would leave. Deep down, I knew that it
wouldn't matter to him if I did.
I stayed anyway.
I couldn't shake the memory of the driven guy he used to be, and that
guy came back. Only, now he was driven
toward unlawful ambitions. Over the last
six months he’d grown his business, selling to some of the guys that used to sell
to him.
Somewhere along the way, I lost my own zest for
life. Dealing with a junkie was
maddening. I lived on the edge of
waiting for him to use to the point of being dysfunctional again, and hoping
for full sobriety. The two months he’d
been clean were like an awakening, only to be destroyed the day I realized he’d
never be free from this shit. I stressed
so much about his recovery that I dropped out of school; losing the last piece
of myself I had left.
The first time I used had been an accident, on my part
anyway. Jimmy had been feeling frisky,
not long after I’d caught him spiking his coffee. I realize now that he’d just used, and was
looking for something to dispel the energy.
He attacked me like I was the only thing in the world that would satisfy
him. It was the best sex we’d had in
months, some of the only sex we’d had
in months. He was aggressive and wanton,
turning me on so much that I couldn't focus on anything but him slamming into
me as I knelt in front of him.
Beside me, he dumped out a tiny package of his
precious, crushed crystal, sucked his pinky wet, dipped it into the drug, and
sank it into my asshole. I was beside
myself with rage that lasted for about ten minutes, melding into the first sense
of contentment that I’d had in a year. I
forgave him shortly after, still high, and we fucked the rest of the day
away.
A week passed before I considered asking him for
another try. I couldn't get the feeling
back on my own. After getting a taste of
it, remembering what it felt like to be happy, I needed it. Jimmy made me promise to only take little
bumps in a drink, or booty bumps like the first. I agreed immediately, willing to promise
anything to feel good with him again.
That promise made it all the more heart wrenching as I
watched him sniff the powder up his nose.
Not just because I feared he’d taken the plunge into old habits, but
because I wanted to jump with him. I
broke out in a sweat as he thumbed his nose, wiping the remaining powder off
and licking it away.
I watched, weighing the costs. Jimmy sat up, shaking his head no.
“What?” I asked,
looking back at the pile on the desk.
“No fucking way, Aggie.” Before I could protest, he was on me. His mouth attacked mine, pushing me back on
the bed. He ripped my spaghetti string
top over my head, while my mind stayed on the white in my peripheral
vision. He sucked and bit along my
collarbone, one arm tucked under my ass, pulling me into his cock. “Stop it,” he warned.
“Give me something, Jimmy. I can’t focus.” I covered my eyes, trying to shut out the
little person inside me screaming for the easy ride to emotions. He pulled my arm from my eyes, a wicked smile
on his face.
“You want it bad, don’t you,” he teased, sinking a
finger into my cunt. “Is it me making
you wet, or the speed?”
“Both,” I smirked, hoping he’d get on with it before I
lost it.
Jimmy pulled his cock out over his grey sweat
pants. He teased me over my thin pajamas
with it, effectively bringing my attention back to him. I pushed my hips up, refusing to believe I
couldn't fuck him without a hit. I wasn't
a tweaker, I didn't have to have it, but fuck I wanted it.
My arm fell above my head when he released it. He left me to yank my pants off. Bare underneath, he dove in, running his
tongue over my slit before sucking on my clit.
I felt a flutter of some emotion, only a hint of what I could be feeling
if he’d let me get a bump. I shook the
thought from my head, fighting the addict inside me.
“Just fuck me, please.” I wanted to get this over with so I could
address this need that I couldn't get past.
Jimmy’s head fell in exasperation. His forehead landed on my thigh and he shook
his head back and forth, wiping my wetness from his mouth onto my skin. Sliding back up, our faces met. His cock sat at my entrance, not so patiently
waiting. He throbbed against my opening,
begging to sink in.
“Do you want me or that?” He asked, glancing over to the desk beside
the bed.
I closed my eyes, sorting through the truths inside my
head. I wanted the meth badly, but I
hated that part of myself. I wasn't real
thrilled that I wanted Jimmy either.
After all, he’d made me this person.
I chose the greater of the two evils, “I want it, Jimmy, so bad it hurts. I just want to feel something,
anything.”
He flinched at the sound of his own words coming from
my mouth. He pulled away at the same
moment the front door slammed against the living room wall. We both scissor kicked up, yanking at clothes
to cover ourselves. Jimmy’s hand swiped
through the remaining powder on the desk, scattering it into nothingness on the
floor at my feet. I winced, that little
addict inside me yelling to lean down to lick at the carpet.
If Jimmy’s high affected him, I couldn't tell. He snapped the pen back together, sliding it
into place beside an old notebook of mine.
I expected to see uniforms coming around the corner,
cops coming to take Jimmy from me.
Instinct made me gasp when Justin Magee entered, gun in hand. His wife-beater was dirty, smeared with rust
and dirt. His face had fresh sores on
it, where he’d been picking at himself.
He smelled like death.
“Whoa! Justin,
what’s up man?” Jimmy asked. I wanted to
look at him, see if his eyes held as much fear as his voice, but I couldn't
look away from the shiny, black metal in Justin’s hand. I glanced into his eyes. Dilated pupils, so big they made him look
inhuman, stared straight at Jimmy. The
sobs coming from my mouth distracted him, and the gun shifted its focus to
me.
“I fucking killed her man. You did this to me, Jimmy. You made me this way,” Justin cried. “You took everything from me.”
“Please don’t,” I begged. The adrenaline brought with it a flood of
emotions that I’d forgotten existed—fear, love, empathy. I felt what he felt, the anxiety, loss, and
hopelessness. Suddenly, the manufactured
feelings paled in comparison to the real thing.
I didn't want to die.
It felt like an hour passed, but it was half a
second. Justin’s look changed to
determination, his eyes narrowed on me.
I saw hate and something evil in him, probably the meth. Jimmy tried to step in front of me as the
sound of the gun echoed in my ears. My
chest felt hot like fire. The image of
someone burning me with a torch sunk in as I fell backward onto the
carpet. Jimmy’s body fell backward into
mine as a second shot rang out. The
weight of his body took me down faster. A
third shot rang through the air.
I couldn't move.
The only sounds were of someone screaming and the gurgling coming from
above me. I realized the screams were
coming from me. The feeling of Jimmy’s
body heaving sent me into action, fighting and shifting to get out from under
him. My chest burned and my breaths were
getting harder to take. Risking a glance
at Justin I realized the third shot had been for himself.
Blood covered everything to the left of the door,
shining across the surface of the desk, where that precious white powder once
sat, the same powder that caused this.
Jimmy coughed, followed by more gurgling sounds. I tried to hold him, but every time I touched
his once white t-shirt, I came back with a new smear of blood, the exhaustion
from before pulled me down further.
“Jimmy! Please,
Jimmy,” I barely recognized my voice, a shrill version of itself. “It’s you!
I want you. I don’t want the
speed. Please believe me. Please don’t leave me, Jimmy. I’m scared,” I sobbed, falling beside him, no
longer able to hold myself up. His head rolled to the side toward me. Half-lidded eyes that couldn't see me stared
back.
Like they waited around the corner, the siren pierced
the sounds of dying in the room. The
door smashed open again, “Please help me,” I cried out. My hands stroked Jimmy’s hair, the only piece
of him that I could reach without traces of blood. His chest still quivered with life, my own
gasping for the breaths getting shallower by the second.
“Please, he’s
dying,” I sobbed out. “They’re here,
Jimmy.” His hand found my own, still
stroking through his hair. He squeezed,
his eyes closing.
One Year Later
I trudged through the door, exhausted from
statistics. I’d never been good at math,
but statistics was especially draining.
The thought of my college algebra book was never far from my mind,
especially on days like today. The cut
out pages were now empty, so the threat was a minor one.
When I woke up in the hospital, I had to give a
statement to the police who’d found us.
They’d chased Justin to our house after finding his girlfriend’s body
an hour before, riddled with bullets. No
one ever told us why he shot her, just the speed I guess. I thanked God every day for sparing Jimmy and
I the same fate.
They fixed me up "easily", repairing a small tear in my
left lung. It didn't feel small and easy at the
time. Jimmy wasn't as lucky. The speed gave one
last attempt at killing him. The last hit he’d done hyped up his heart, making
him pump the blood into his lung faster.
He almost bled out by the time they got to the hospital. I still don’t understand a lot of the medical
jargon, but it doesn't matter.
After the shooting, I couldn't go back to that
trailer. I asked a neighbor to gather
mine and Jimmy’s stuff. Harper proved to
be a great friend. She was harsh when it
came to my addiction, exactly what I needed.
She didn't talk about it much, except to say that it wouldn't happen
again. I loved her positive outlook.
“How was your day?”
Jimmy asked, shifting his own homework over on the couch so I could
settle in beside him.
“I’m gonna need a math tutor,” I whined, throwing my
book bag down on the floor at our feet.
“Do you feel frustrated?”
“So frustrated,” I answered, his arm sneaking behind
me and pulling me closer. His other hand
pushed into my tight jeans where he grasped a handful of my ass. The memory of that devastating morning flooded
in.
“How about now?”
The whisper in my ear made the tiny hairs stand up on my neck, sending a
wave of goose bumps over my skin.
“Still frustrated, just in a different way.” A deep laugh echoed in his chest, the same
chest that took a bullet for me.
“Marry me.” He
said.
I pulled away, eyes wide and searching. “What?”
“I love you, Aggie.
I could be three days into a binge and still love you more than anything
else. I would have given my life for you
if you would have let me.”
“How generous of you,” I laughed, trying to lighten
his mood.
His eyes stayed serious, “Marry me.”
It had been proven that we had the potential to feed
off of one another’s addictions. Our
therapists hated our continued relationship, especially since we’d shared such
a traumatic event together. The relapse
cards were stacked against us. I loved him
though, and couldn't imagine myself going through life without him.
“I want you,
Jimmy. So bad it hurts.” I smiled.
He snatched me off the couch, carrying me to the
bedroom of our little apartment. We made
slow, unhurried love, miles away from the meth driven sex we used to share. The happiness slowly filled in the old
hollowness. We were healthy, and
learning to be happy, together.
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