Too Dead for Dreaming

—Alright, lads, first practise in weeks. What have you lazy wankers been up to?

Ben’s too authoritative for his own good, too driven, when we’re all clearly stoned out of our minds, two hours into meeting up together to play this new song I wrote lyrics I don’t remember for. Everyone else has their parts down, or so they said, but really, right now, with Sam’s new high-grade weed, we can’t even be bothered to move from our positions, let alone get up and pretend we’re a real deal. Instead we’re lounging around in Ben’s flat, absently plucking chords or softly fingering a cymbal or in my case, nothing at all, save for staring at the ceiling.

I don’t want to fucking sing, make-believe I’m in a band that’s gotten me nowhere in the last year and a half. All I want to do is feel someone’s lips on my throat and then maybe her fingers, clenched so tight her veins make the tattooed-heart bracelet dance with the movements of her wrist. A song would play in the background. Maybe one of ours, but as everything stands right now, with all of us dazed out of our minds, wanting nothing but to imagine anything rather than reality, it ain’t gonna happen.

—You’re talking way too much, Cam says. The perennial quiet one, interrupting to make noise. —Shut up and enjoy the silence. Don’t ruin it. With anything.

Ben quirks his right eyebrow and kicks over a box that’s on the floor, stomps his feet into it. There are breaking noises; he’s obviously crushed whatever was inside the box but none of us bat a lash. It’s his, anyway. —We need to get our shit together or else we’re going to stay stuck here, forever, in this stupid northern town. We’re going nowhere.

—Oi, there’s nothing wrong with northern towns, James remarks. A steely look crosses over his features absurdly slowly, as if his muscles are molasses, and can’t quite get the features right in time. —Fucking nothing.

Sam scoffs, —everything’s wrong with northern towns. Can’t find a decent source of gear without running into someone who’s off his goat and sticks all kinds of poison in it. I’m losing business.

I can’t help but laugh. —Bettley, the whole point of drugs is that they are poison, you twat. That’s it.

—Not the same kind, fucking moron. Another kind. Harsher. Fucks you up in a way you don’t want to get fucked up. It tears up your insides, it eats away at you, and next thing you know you’re not breathing anymore. I mean, come on. Remember a few weeks ago? Didn’t take you for the type to be ranting about Jesus, mate, but there you were, acting like he was your best friend.

—Neither here nor there, I respond with a languid shake of my head. —Let it eat away!

Ben watches the conversation with the nastiest look on his face, so clearly exasperated. Can’t expect a bunch of no-ones to play your little game, Brucey, my love. I don’t say anything though; we’re working a double-shift together the day after next and I don’t need him mad at me, else I’ll be the one who does all of the work around the shop, rather than the usual way of me faffing about.

He glances around the room again, giving everyone a once-over. —The lot of you can piss off, then. Ben kicks over a few more things on his way out, mumbling under his breath. No one can be arsed to follow him, because we don’t care. It’s his flat, he should be kicking us out instead, but I don’t think he has the energy. The band has always been a front, sometimes more realistic, other times it just falls apart. Like now. Like ever.

—Noise, Cam says, a beat too late.

xxx

I find myself staggering home a while later, taking swigs from a nearly-empty bottle of Jack, my old comrade. I imagine there’s poison pumping through my veins, like Sam’s gear, like whatever was in that little baby bindle in the bog. I keep imagining Ada’s hands - pushing me up against a brick wall, maybe in the darkest shadows of an empty alley. Pulling me towards her, fisting my shirt, trying to latch on to me. I’ve nothing to get a grip on, I’m elusive. So she grabs my throat instead, my pulse quickening underneath the softness of her hands. Clenching tight, tighter.

I want to feel her skin against mine, the rough brusqueness of her lips, the surprise of her teeth biting down. I want to feel vulnerable and weak underneath her.

When Sam went to call on her, though, her flatmates told him she was out of the country for a while. Said she’d gotten into a spot of trouble with the law, that little rebel, or some bloke, they weren’t too clear. Either way, she was gone. Perhaps for a while, perhaps forever. Too good to be true, anyway, a woman like that. Legs for miles, a bust that could knock out an eye, and hair so wild she could only ever be Medusa in hiding.

I didn’t want to act disappointed, but fuck it. The memory of her alone leaves me breathless on my best days.

My vision’s blurry and it takes me a few tries to get the door open. Joe and Ryan are sat in front of the telly, looking like they’re about to pass out. A needle’s hanging off of Joe’s arms, half of it blood, half of it something else. He grins up at us, —hiya Danny boy. I’m scared he’s going to start singing at me, so I retreat into my room as fast as I can and plop down into my bed, sinking in, in, in, until I’m gone and all I see is nothing at all.

xxx

I wake up feeling like something is grinning at me from somewhere in the darkness of my room. I can’t move my body, can’t open my mouth to scream, although I don’t much feel the need to. Whatever’s lurking in the corner can have me. I’m done. But when my eyes adjust to the darkness, it’s her, smiling so wide it may break her face in two, on top of me, pinning me down with the weight of her.

I wake up again, this time for real, a few minutes later. No sign of her, nothing in the darkness but my overactive imagination. I sigh heavily. I almost wanted her to tear me apart, to be the darkness that consumes me. I’ll have whatever has me.

I’m already vulnerable.