Today, I made a few ounces of coke by killing some guy for my friend. Not that it’s a big deal, but it is nice to know that when I pick up the odd job, I get a fair trade back. It’s handy. The cops are clueless as to the subject of me but I don’t really care. I’m so high; once again, it’s okay though because no one will ever know. Now that I’m home, I have nothing to do, I just sit and watch the world pass by outside. Watch the young school kids run around like they’ve got a million years to live. Not everyone lives you know. All these little children will grow up one day and see that there’s more to life then toy cars and plastic dolls. Someday.

My new apartment is like a fucking box. It has two rooms, which would be a bathroom and one big other room which triples as my bedroom, kitchen and living room. I don’t live in it much though. My dirty clothes are piling up once again, under the pornos and empty boxes of crackers and oatmeal, which I haven’t bothered to throw out because I don’t have a garbage can. One thing I know for sure is that this shithole is far better then what “home” used to be.

Home was a nice rich house with as many problems as the number of diamonds on my mother’s bony fingers. That’s one helluva lot. Any one of us would have given anything to leave, not be part of this “family”, or so my mother called it. The reason I moved away was one of choice. The problems were building up and eventually they all crashed violently over the line. I couldn’t take it, seeing my mother hanging lifelessly in her noose was the last straw. I moved here, figuring I could start over and lay off the drugs; pretend I have a job and family to love. I could pretend no one’s dead. I could pretend I’m okay.

This is bullshit, my asshole of a father who can’t spell my name, or his own for that matter, is six feet under. There’s no way I’m showing up at his funeral, if he even is having one. I don’t give a shit; they could throw his mangled body into the New York sewer lines for all I care. He has done nothing but wrong to me and my brother, the only “family” I have ever known.

Now I’m left as the guardian of my little murderer of a brother, Thomas. He’s the only thing I have left who doesn’t hate my guts, who still believes in me. I don’t even believe in myself. Thomas is a typical thirteen year old kid; well in this town anyway. I’d give the world to see him live past fifteen; I love him more than anything in the world, and that’s saying a lot.

Last week he pulled a trigger for a third time; this time was when I realized my brother for who he is. A merciless murderer, I know now that he would’ve killed whoever was in his way. The bullet hit a man who deserved it for 13 years, my father. Thomas knows what’s wrong, but believes in his judgment anyway. So do I.

Thomas believes in me but he doesn’t know me at all. All those years I hid my dilated eyes behind sunglasses, hid scars under hoodie sleeves. He thinks I’m clean, he always has. That’s okay. He doesn’t have to know cocaine is my breakfast. Thomas is never home anyway, it’s not like I actually have to take care of him. He takes more care of me than I, him.



I can still hear his feet thundering down the stairs and hear his voice screaming piercingly at me through the crumbling walls of the house. He was devastated that I was doing drugs... He lost most of his friends this way, and now instead of them, it was me. He shattered the windows and punched holes in the walls out of pure anger. My beautiful baby brother was in shock and disbelief, as I was in a state of regret and hate towards the world.

He stabbed his own broken heart last night. Now he lay dead in my bedroom, where he felt safest. Thomas killed himself the night he found my drugs. He wanted so hard for me to be clean, and he thought I was. This was the last straw for him. I killed him. I killed Thomas. Had it not been for my drugs he would be here, standing beside me. It’s okay. Maybe.

Thomas wanted to die since he was born. My father beat him until he was old enough to realize he could do something about it, and then bribed him with knives and guns. This only gave him all the more excuse to hate. Over time, his life had been a torrent of drugs, crime, and violent deaths. He had suffered a lot more then me, and yet he seemed so strong and so invincible.

I knew he was never really happy, despite the smiles and laughs when we’d be together. I can’t think about him anymore now that he’s gone. I only want to forget and move on. He was the last string holding me to my past: My mother, father, and brother are gone, and I don’t even know my relatives, they never really talked to my family that much, so I’m all by my lonesome. That’s the way I like it.

I went up to Thomas’s deathroom, took the bloody knife that my father gave him for his ninth birthday and held it up against my own heart. No feelings came over me once I put it in my pocket, but I was thinking I might need it later on in life.

“I can start anew; fly away to some desolate land where no one has been, where I am all I know, where I am my own motivation, where I am okay.” The process to journey to this new land can start right here on my kitchen table. It’s another seven lines to take me the extra mile. If only I had more money. I hear the call, the luring call of the dove-white cocaine. Once again, it’s telling me to ring up my dealer to get him and his crew over here to deliver me my stuff. The corded phone is beeping obliviously on the floor. Dialing. Hanging up. Waiting. Wanting.

Time and time again I found myself with seven straight white lines staring back at me. Each one was like a candle flame representing elements of my life I had to put out. Pain, Insecurity, Fear, Hate, Regret, Depression, and Myself. It’s like a subconscious railroad track that won’t change. I’m the train, full of gas with no control. No matter how hard I try, I’m stuck in the vicious cycle of “buy, snort, lose myself, snort, buy”

One line done and I feel like shit, feeding the sly monster, myself, that killed my brother. My face, my hands, my ankles, everything is numb already. It’s probably for the better; that way, when I fall I can get back up and I won’t notice the infected blood trickling down into my ears.
Second line done. The dream-like reality is kicking in. I’m okay for once. No more pretending now, this is the real thing, this is feeling alive. I don’t have to feel like shit about myself anymore, now, I am the shit. I can barely breathe but I’m still concentrating on the next straight white powdered line.

Third line done. My throat is burning but it’s all good because I can’t feel it anyways; I can only see the blood dripping from my nose onto the kitchen table, beside the unpaid bills. The police can’t get me. I’m not afraid of them I know I could easily make a phone call and have them dead; every last one of them. Swirls of my life are floating around, mixing with the colors of my skin, the powder and blood. Fourth and Fifth are in. I have lived a life worth living. I did it all right too; I can now say I don’t regret a thing. Scaring my mother into killing herself? Whatever, she would have done it anyways. Killing Thomas? Whatever, he wanted to die. Its better that I suffer then him. I have a lifeline, a safety boat always at my side, the little plastic bag of toxins.

Last one. This is the part where I lose myself within myself. My chair is tipping over and bending in every direction. I feel my head swaying as if I am a cruise ship balancing on a needle. Here goes my soul. The powder invades my nose, spirals its way into my brains, exploding with power. My eyes can’t see, my nose can’t help but bleed. My mouth is gaping open, numbly drooling. Next thing I know I’m on the floor along with my ancient memories of what my life used to be, it has changed from half an hour ago. Now I am a new person, I can do anything. It’s okay. I think. I hope. I want. I believe.

Distant vague memories of a clouded childhood, unhappy family, violent parents… those are not my memories anymore, they are someone else’s. Someone I have forgotten, deprived of my mind.

I go outside, not closing the doors. The sun has just come up and the rays are vibrantly dancing through the blue skies. The green grass on the neighbor’s yard is staring up at me, innocently, and the trees are whispering amongst each other with the wind.
Am I the only person to see these beauties in life? The clouds are racing around like airplanes, swooping and twisting and morphing into inhuman shapes. I’m tripping out so hard that even my mailbox is meowing at me.

That’s what I’ll do, I’ll get kittens. They can be mine… mine alone, something to keep my mind on when I have nothing to do; something to talk to who won’t shout back at me.
There’s a phone ringing off in the distance. I realize it’s mine and there are cop cars in my driveway. I look around and see I'm standing on the neighbor’s yard, a few feet away.
In a sudden state of shock, I see red and blue flashes piercing the back of my eyes so I put on my old ragged sunglasses. My ears are ringing with every incessant siren sounding this way. Two men come outside, shouting directions to an ambulance.

The ambulance guards rush in and back out with Thomas, lifeless in their arms. The cops are taking notes and closing off the area, the ambulance was on its way and the media was crowding around. Cameras and microphones were radiating sounds and weird colored lights. One burly police officer asks me if I live here. “No, I’m from somewhere else; I was watching the sun come up.” I don’t think he can tell I'm ripped from behind my sun glasses. “Oh, its best you run along then lad.”
That’s exactly what I did. I ran until my legs were going to give out, until sweat was blinding me, until I was coughing up blood. I knew in that house there was a dead thirteen year old, I also knew there was cocaine. I knew they would find me sooner or later. Although I had no i.d or photographs in the house for specifically that reason, there were fingerprints on the phone and everywhere and I was Thomas’s legal guardian.

“At least I have my money with me.” I thought to myself. “Okay, it isn’t my money, but it’s in my possession which makes it as mine as it’s ever going to be.” I look around and see the sun right above my head, beaming its golden heat rays upon my already-burned shoulders. My t-shirt is soaked with sweat and blood and my shorts are torn because of running through thorns and other crazy-looking plants.

I don’t know where I am but there is a small pond under my ankles, and some massive trees surrounding me. Again, the trees are talking and the pond is swirling about my feet, like a slow-motion rollercoaster, programmed to go repeatedly over and over my wet sandals. My trip is wearing off because I am starting to feel my face and hands again, the numbness is leaving me once again.

This time, it’s okay because I want it to be gone, to disappear forever. I want to feel again, but not with my drugged mind. I want to feel through my heart, through my soul like I used to when Thomas was beside me. Thomas. What a kid he was. He led me through the tough times, he led me through my house when I couldn’t find my way, and he told me it was okay when he knew it was never going to be. He was part of me, when he died, so did I.

I know he’s up in the heavens somewhere. Not the ones with the pearly gates on top of the clouds, not the one where Jesus or Allah reigns. Not Nirvana. Not the heaven in picture books where angel float like faeries around sparkling water falls. Not those ones, those ones aren’t for people like us.

He’s somewhere unknown to humanity, somewhere the scientists and theologians haven’t discovered yet. I need to go there, be with him, and feel the exact pain he did and feel the sheer pleasure of moving on from our ragged lives. I can hear sirens getting nearer and I know its Thomas calling for me, telling me to hurry up before I change my already-corrupted mind. I take his knife and plunge it deep into my heart, as did he. I cherish the pain and know how strong he was to feel this and still have the power to look beautiful to me when he was lying in a pool of blood on my floor. I am dead. That’s okay, for real this time. We are okay.