Patrick

The boy walking down the sidewalk was seventeen and six foot one, rail thin with lank black hair and blank grey eyes. He’d be handsome if he wasn’t covered in scars. Nothing was beautiful anymore, not even the sun and especially not him when he looked in a mirror.
He’d let her turn him into this, he thought dully as he moved with little purpose. He’d been good once so many months ago. It had been warm then, a bright early summer bursting at the seams with promise and life. Then he’d met a girl, and he’d let her crave out his insides with needles and kisses and hot spoons full of drugs. He’d thought he loved her at the time, her with her delicate features and kind way of speaking, but soon all they had in common was the bed and needles they shared with each other. They’d taken care of each other and loved each other through the fog until suddenly it was over.
She was dead now, killed by the need for a bigger fix, and he was left with the consequences and the itching that lived under his skin. He raised his hands to his face and pushed his hair back slowly. Every inch of his hands was covered in Sharpie. The sharp, stinging scent had tickled his nostrils before but now he barely noticed it anymore.
Writing was the only way he could remember, and under his clothes he was a walking journal of days and nights. He wrote about daily experiences and when he returned home he’d copy them down into a thick leather bound journal he had sitting on his desk. He wrote about people he saw, who saw him and spoke rudely or whispered about his appearance. He wrote about hours upon hours spent in crack houses around the city; smoking and rolling and injecting with people he didn’t know and would never remember unless he wrote about them on his skin. He wrote about how his parents had lost all hope in their son, and how they had once hoped he would go to Berkley but now only prayed that he would make it through high school alive.
He was an intelligent boy, and before all of this several colleges had offered him free rides. He’d planned to go to school for his art and Berkley was far enough away from his Minnesota home that he’d be able to start over. He was still planning on going in the fall, when he was ready. Assuming he was still alive.
He didn’t know if he’d be sober, but he knew that he had to go. Hopefully they wouldn’t take one look at him and laugh him back home. Some dim part of his mind knew that he had to get off the drugs and get back on track with the rest of his life. It was far easier said than done, as was obvious by his appearance. The boy was a walking scarecrow, clothes that had once fit perfectly now sagging off his bones. Legs like sticks carried him closer to his destination and he vaguely wondered if he’d even make it that far on the little bit of strength he usually had now.
He was walking back from the dilapidated house where he spent most of his free time; his body run down after the cocktail of drugs he’d injected had finished their song inside of him. It was midafternoon, the three o’clock sun covered by stark winter clouds. This had been a slushy winter; not particularly cold, but with a lot of rain and sticky snow.
He trudged through a puddle on the sidewalk and winced as water soaked through the ratty soles of his converse. His mother would probably throw a fit when he got in, telling him to shower and change and give her his clothes to be washed while she prayed he didn’t get pneumonia. His parents would be worrying like they always did until he was safely home, then they’d flutter over him like concerned honeybees buzzing with words he barely paid attention to. He always wanted to just to up to his room and write when he got home instead of being mauled with care.
His father would make sure he showered until the Sharpie was gone-memories lost- and listened to his mother, who would sit him down once he was clean to bandage his cracking fingertips and force down her tears the best she could. She’d coax him with food until the guilt made him accept a plate heaping with dinner, of which he could usually only handle a few mouthfuls before he escaped upstairs. He said he just wanted to sleep, and always hid his markers when his parents asked where they were so he wouldn’t have to stop writing on himself.
The boy’s newest Sharpie was between the fingers of his left hand, twirling with a mind of its own over and between his slender appendages with their cracked and bleeding tips. Turning like his thoughts, which were random and he could barely ever keep track of anymore. He’d once played with a paintbrush in the same manner when he was thinking.
He turned down a side street that led to the nearest residential neighborhood. At least he could still remember how to get home. It was a nice part of the city, the houses trimmed with neat yards and fences kept the demons out. He wished that there was a fence around the confines of his head to keep the monsters out of there as well.
His house was halfway down the block amidst houses almost identical to it save the cars in the driveway. His pants were soaked almost up to the knees from walking home instead of catching a cab, but he barely felt it now. Inside, his muscles were aching and his bones felt like glass with the effort of going instead of finding a spot to lay down and let the wind freeze him into something resembling death. He’d come down from his latest fix at his dealer’s house, and had surprised himself by denying another hit before leaving.
He had the money and he knew he’d be regretting it by the time he made it a block away, but some tiny little reserve of strength had allowed him to turn away from the needles and choose to walk home in the head clearing air.
He looked up as he stepped onto the pathway leading up to his house. Painted pale blue and trimmed in a darker shade, it had been home for seventeen years. The front door was unlocked, as always, and he slipped inside like a ghost. The television was on in the living room and he could hear his parents talking to one another. This gave him the chance to run upstairs to his bedroom and close the door before they realized he was home. It’d be a never ending barrage of questions and probing for answers and lamenting the water on the carpet and in his shoes, and all he wanted was sleep.
Hands going to his belt, he shucked off his pants and threw them into a corner so they could soak the carpet. His shirt and jacket joined them before he laid down on his bed and curled up. Shivers wracked his body like punches; it would be ironic if he froze from the icicles forming on his bones instead of the needles from outside. Some of the Sharpe on his arms and hands was beginning to smudge, but he just wanted to lay there and look around his room for a little while; he could write everything down later.
It was a sloppy bedroom, only one thing kept clean and well-polished. It was a frosted glass picture frame on his nightstand, which he picked up and looked at. The girl in the photograph was beautiful-curly black hair setting off startling green eyes set into a lovely heart shaped face. Rochelle, he thought with a bitter sort of happiness. She was the only girl to make him feel something, and his girlfriend of nearly a year before she’d died and left him all alone. Thoughts and memories dragged him back down into his mind.
She’d been his first real kiss, the first girl he’d been with, the reason he’d broken all of his parents’ rules for the first time. She’d been so beautiful; he’d been willing to do anything and everything for her. Including snorting the cocaine she’d brought over and begged him to take with her so she wouldn’t have to get high alone. It had been a game for her, until suddenly they were both addicted and things stopped being fun.
At the beginning he’d felt and experienced things that had set his blood racing. They’d drink a little, smoke or snort of inject a little, and make love like their bodies were burning. Seven chaotic months of loving a girl who burned brightly as a dying star, with just as tragic an end result.
By the end he’d been too brittle to hold on and she had given up love for a needle. A few tears leaked out of his eyes and onto his pillow. Rochelle had died from overdosing on heroin, a monster he’d told her never to play with. She always wanted a new rush, a new friend. It had left him unable to cry at her funeral while he tried to find a way to pick up the pieces of himself she’d scattered and lost in a whirlwind of drugs.
Her death had sent him into rehab and then back into the arms of the monster when emotions battered him. This chills, shaking, bone chilling spasms, and vomiting of withdrawals only made his decisions easier.
He looked away from her picture, placing it face down on the nightstand as he looked around his ever messy room. Trophies and awards for sports and spelling bees in middle school, commendations and plaques for art shows won, posters of bands and models and typical male things. A guitar sitting on a stand in the corner coated with an inch of dust.
He hadn’t wanted any of it anymore until his parents had finally given up on him. Then he’d wanted to live. To pain and play guitar and do all the things he had given up for a girl. Maybe even love a new girl. And everything came back around in a full circle, because he could already feel his mind clearing and his body aching. Exhaustion tugged at him like a rope tying him down to the bed and his head fell back with a gentle ‘thwump’, nestling into a pillow that smelled of fresh detergent instead of garbage and rot.
&&&&&&&
It was hours later that he woke to the sound of his bedroom door opening and soft footsteps stopping just inside. He could smell the scent of perfume, and in his daze thought it was Rochelle before realizing she had never worn gardenias. His mother stood outlined by a thin halo of light from the hallway lamp-the new one. He’d broken the other one stumbling in high one night a few weeks before.
He sat up in bed slowly before looking up and meeting his mother’s eyes. Pale grey like his, but her eyes were full of life and worry while his were still dead. There were several moments of silently regarding each other before he spoke wearily. “Can I have some water?” he asked her hoarsely, trying to clear his throat. “And maybe something to eat?” Disbelief shone on his mother’s face, quickly replaced with joy. “Oh, sweetie.” She practically cooed. “Of course! What do you want?” he looked down briefly, then back up at her. “Macaroni.” He stated. It would most likely come back up later when his withdrawals got bad, but he wanted some.
They very idea of food was usually repulsive, but he felt his stomach churning with hunger. He stood from his bed and walked over to her, leaning back against the edge of the doorway. He noticed her wince and glistening eyes as she looked over his jagged ribcage, arm bones and hips showing painfully. “I’ll eat downstairs.” He said. Brief sentences, but his mother had tears of happiness shimmering in her eyes. She nodded ecstatically, reaching out to touch his hand very gently. He gave her a weak smile and held his mother’s hand for the first time since he was a child.
Letting go of his hand she turned to hurry downstairs to prepare his first meal in days. The young man stood in the doorway and listened to the sound of thunder outside the house. It growled low, resonating in his chest. It felt like a resurgence of hope, of oncoming life. His lips twitched in a faint smile.