Ed Drew has wasted the last of his money on narcotics. He got paid he spent up and that’s it. He is currently out of his home and sleeping in the park, just beyond the shadow of the maples and spruce. The odd dog walker disturbs him, asks him if he is alright. No, he replies honestly. They take no further interest. If he were stripped to his shorts they’d maybe understand him, sunbathing as if on a beach, but the dude is fully dressed, catching tan lines on his wrists.
He’s surprised he’s survived snorting that amount of Class A. It’s practically still falling out of his conk in brittle crumbs. There go his expenses for the next month. How he’ll survive now he does not know. A visit to the foodbank just won’t cut it. If only the substance wasn’t so rotten expensive. He could max out big time and attempt suicide with it. He wished he had a criminal scam to fund some more incoming flux. Another white water rapid of powdery surf would do just the trick.
And who gave one about croaking it?
Ed doesn’t know what is harder, living without money to buy a meal or living without just one more line. When he intakes a large one, his heart lurches, his bio rhythm pauses to rectify momentum, all the cliffs of the Earth retract to let the seas roll backward, the wind halts like solidified ice crystals, it feels like all this and more, until he realises its just him struggling with his own breath, tingling and rattling and quivering and shivering at home out of his head. It doesn’t last anywhere like long enough, he thinks.
And now it’s done, the pleasure is over, if only it could last longer, if only he had more brains to blow out and a wallet deep enough to keep them well blown.
Or, if only, he wasn’t addicted at all, and he could focus on being a decent citizen. A normal guy. Wouldn’t that be nice? Sitting at home with the television and family, instead of having no television and family to sit in barely no home with. Heating on, washer going, frosted glasses of drinks with refreshments, bit of company, where would be the harm? Except he’d trade it all for a bag of white, kids included. He’d walked over youngsters before to get his fix…begged for them back…then trodden over them again.
This time it was desperate. In his head, around his warped thoughts, he could get a grasp at it, but in reality, with no credit on his electric meter, it was a different ball park. Too early to go home and get in bed, too late to turn back and be a good man. Ed was caught in the middle but at least he was sober and at least he wasn’t smoking himself to death.
In fact, he was thinking about going to the internet café to write in his online diary. There he told the world of the chaos surrounding him, of the flames curdling within his undealt-with system, of his dreams and desires, his successes and his failures, his worries and his fears, anything he was able to not shy away from.
He would have to go unwashed, unshaven, and hungry. Usually, when he was sat there typing, he was nothing like that. In fact, last time he’d shared his life with the world, he’d been wearing his yellow Helly Hansen skiing jacket. Thinking on, he would now have to try and sell it on Ebay. Only thing was, he didn’t know how to use Ebay. And he liked the damn jacket.
Maybe he could write a letter to his little blood sister, who had all but likely forgotten about him by now. Perhaps he could take a long walk to see her on the doorstep where she lived in almost perfect ignorance of him, and claw back a morsel of her, if she was willing to butter him up with a hug or a smile. But deep within the dried-out wizened husk of him, he thought it a selfish idea. Couldn’t he rely on himself to clamber back to his feet? Only he and he alone had let himself arrive at such a cataclysmic low level, perhaps only he and he alone could muster the audacity to pray for a divine intervention.
Little did Ed know, that people were already praying for him.
