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Pusher Blue Chapter 7



 You know how sometimes you’re lying in bed, struggling to sleep, and the last words someone has said to you keeps flowing down your mind? It’s something in the tone, or rhythm. Whatever was said could be completely meaningless, entirely minuscule, and yet somehow it echoes across the room. As if deliberating it further would inspire a revelation. Revelation always fails, however. Well, it’s the same when you’re fighting a heart-attack.

‘Your watch’, the words rang clear and flowed down my memories. The metal racket from the train below us was still throbbing in my head. Malia’s hand was white and cold, it made me think of a hard-boiled egg, the way she held my watch. I collected it, and slithered my body up onto a ledge dangling above the steel beast chugging below. My lunges weren’t straining, I thought they should have been. My muscles were warm and relaxed as I lay back on the city pavement. They should have been shaking. I should have been trembling. Yet even after that feet of super-human of running against the freighter, all that squirmed through my body was warmth. It was almost nice. Malia now hovered over me with her mouth perched open. Her eyes were twinkling to a phenomenal degree…..something told me she was waiting for a reaction from me.
“You’re one…messed up….” My voice rasped… and my lunges began to need so much more than they could hold. A heat coursed through my body… it was almost itching.
I drew in deep breaths of the asphalt air, stretching out my ribs and arms in hopes of gathering in more oxygen. But something was stopping me. It felt link a glob of syrup lodged in my lunges, and veins. Fire coils of barbed wire, it was almost like agony.
And she watched. She was grinning with her wide-eyes.
“What’s happening?” I tried to spasm at Malia, but my jaw had clamped shut under its own will. I could hear my teeth grinding against themselves. I couldn’t describe the feeling, I’ve tired too hard to forget it. But I must have been shaking and jerking. I must have had a seizure, because my back was scraped and bleeding.
“Don’t fight it, son.” Malia smiled. “This was your decision.”
I think my mouth was foaming… if it hadn’t been, I would have replied something to the extent of ‘AGGHH’! She firmly pushed her hand against my chest, forcing me to stay still. Her smile remained, but was now some sort of perverted satisfaction.
“Don’t fight it!” she commanded again, and thrust her hand against me. “Look… just accept the hurt. It’s only harder because you won’t breathe. It needs the oxygenated blood.”
I think she got her kicks this way. De-flowering the Blue virgins. I felt dirty and used. She wrapped her fingers around my wrist, and glanced at the watch that was clutched in my hand. I assume she was taking my pulse.
“Slow down!” she still giggled it. I felt raped. “Just calm down, boy…breathe in… slowly. Like me.”
She took deep breaths to demonstrate. I was still jerking against the pavement, tearing my flesh. This was the beginning of it all. Flashes and flurries of grunts and fire. A cataclysm of silence raged in my ear, like being suffocated with the loudest pillows on Earth. And still echoing through my head is her words…’Just breathe in, you’re fighting the burn. Inhale the pain’.


Four days had passed, which would make it Wednesday. I can’t remember those four days as well as I’d like. Though I think they were nice. The term elated comes to mind. Also, the term drugged-up.  I’d like to say that I did, or did not, see Malia over that time.  But I can’t really be sure. All I know is that I knew nothing about that ominous blue candle she had consumed. That we had consumed. I had so easily participated in whatever it was I had. I would say I don’t know why I did, but I do. It’s this addiction to humans and the human experience, whatever that may be. I’d join in their games to feel apart of them, but I’m not sure I ever really believed I was. Partly due to the fact that I never had that ‘whatever that may be’. I often ask myself how they think, how they feel. When they talk to themselves, does their own voice annoy them? Do they ever laugh simply to remember what it sounds like? When they’re abandoned, do they wish they could leave themselves, too? Surely there must be a universal theory to generalize each human being. And Malia was. She was immensely human.

Wednesday meant “Making wise decisions is the first step to success”.  I hated that calendar, and yet I kept flipping the page for the next repulsively inspirational message. I could just imagine a middle-aged white woman flapping her frigid finger in my direction with each line. It dropped a pile of frustration in my stomach, and threw a hot plank at my head. I was sick, again. So much more than the time before. By then, I was fairly certain that I was having withdraws from whatever Malia had pushed into my system. My pores seemed to jump off my flesh, into a pot of fire, and back onto my skin. They alternated which of them hopped in what order as to make sure I was evenly in agony. I would have appreciated the sensation if it had not been so painful. To make matters worse, on that particular day, my job duties included spelling out the little slide-text sign in front of the Chiropractic office.
You know those poor fools on the side of the road, struggling to apply those black letters onto the white sign? That was me. Ordinarily I’d take advantage of the interesting prospects this task affords, such as creating various body parts with the number 8. But it was only aggravating, especially since I was forced to turn an M into a W. And that’s when she approached once more. The sun was setting to my back. Her shadow had then crawled over me, eerily leering with her length-coat silhouette. She always wore one.
“Oy-o, boy-o,” Her voice was clear and confident. I flipped my head around, flinging some painful sweat about. My eyes crawled with blood spider webs, and they stared up at her.
“….You know where I work?” My cracked voiced sputtered.
“Are you aware that M is upside down?” she pointed to the incomplete sign.
“ How do you know where I work?” I was more baffled than angry. But my tone may have suggested otherwise… the pain in my stomach was frustrated.
“How about a welcoming ‘Hello, Malia! Nice to see you!’?” She motivated with arm motions. “Yes… yes, I know where you work. You told me, forgetful Freddy.”
I’m not sure if what was true or not… I couldn’t quite remember the previous days.
                       
               
“Hello, Malia. Nice to see you.” My eyes were half-closed, and by then it was fairly evident that I was not feeling well. She leaned over me with a hand on my shoulder and glanced inside the box of all the large black tiles that would soon be placed on the sign.
“Hey, you ever put anything dirty up here?” She sifted through the cardboard box. The letters resulted in a noise that reminded me of poker chips. And incidentally, made me think of poker-food. My body didn’t even want to consider chicken wings..
“This is ridiculous!” She almost giggled. “They have apostrophes, but no periods!”
 My bladder swelled, and my lunges contracted. My skull felt like it had collapsed and left bits of bone lodged in my brain. Healthy decisions lead to a happy life. I felt like hell, and by then, I think it was too late for a healthy decision. I had already made my choice when swallowing the thick, warm, remarkably un-waxy substance. I think I already loved the way it crawled down my throat and soothed everything wrong in my life. Suddenly my stomach decided it needed to expel some excess material. And so it did, in chunky forms of flesh and waste splattering against the grass. It was redder than I was used to. Bloodier than I was used to.
“I thought you looked a little sick!” she exclaimed, and hopped back from the pile of vomit. I sputtered some more, and coughed out blood from my nose. I think a few drops had dripped from my eye. My face dripped a distorted red from various holes, and I was left hunched over my knees, coughing the wettest noise I’ve ever heard.
“Nasty little side-effect, huh?” She said it so casually, and rubbed my back the way you would a child.  My vision turned a foggy pink and seemed to drip in waves.
“Side effect of what?” Thick globs of blood and bits of throat-flesh dangled from my lips. “What did you give me?” I braced my arms against my bent knees, and tried to breathe in.  But only got liquid.
“Okay, so by now… you must have realized you’re taking drugs, right?” She flicked her black razor hair behind her ears.
“Taking drugs? Taken.”
“If you expect to feel better, it’s going to be taking, sport.” She pulled me up straight and supported my shoulders. She dug into her coat pocket, pulling out a small, blue, bead
“Here… try this.” She pushed her hand towards my blood-drenched mouth, but I pulled away. I wasn’t going to be so easily drugged without first knowing what I was getting into. Although, that should have occurred to me the first time.
“Tell me what it is.” I wiped my mouth, and squinted my eyes in Malia’s direction. It was difficult to see clearly. It felt like my entire body was crashing.
“It’s what you need, Tommy boy, what you need.” She held her palm open and offered the smooth marble.
“I don’t even know who are you, and you expect me to trust you?” I barked the blood off my face.
“You trusted me enough the other night. It’s how we find ourselves at this situation.” She replied. “I’m trying to help you here, but if you want to continue coughing up blood and organs, go ahead.”
I didn’t answer, I just started walking. I needed to get ‘home’. I needed to collapse. So I started walking, even though my legs were melting off. I left Malia just standing there, and left the chiropractic clinic un-tended. With every step I took, it felt like pieces of my leg would stick to the pavement. I was made of wax, or dough… dragged along the city, smearing me among the public. I was disintegrating, and the only solution was found with her.  At that point, I wasn’t really sure of the relationship we had. The way she spoke would suggest something more than I had thought. Malia sounded almost hurt, as if we had a connection. Or she was a really good liar. Am I projecting that? Was I too deprived of life, that I sought to unveil companionships where there were none? But what was held in Malia was not companionship. What was held in Malia was something more complicated…


 I stumbled through my beige apartmen door, gasping for air. I was drained in more ways than one. ‘Running on empty’ is a bit of a cliché, but it’s how I felt. The pain, which swam through my body, came in waves. I took advantage of the free moments to contemplate the next moments of agony. I felt doomed and lost, but that’s not to suggest I didn’t appreciate the experience. Part of me somewhere liked my twitching body, larva skinned and pulsating in pain. Pain is part of life, they say… and this was life. I’d purposely spew out the blood all across my white carpets and walls. I was seduced by the tainting of it all. Maybe I was tired with routine. Maybe I was bored. Whatever the reason, I decided to seek her out, and pursue this terrible and thrilling thing. I managed to suspend my body once more, and turn the doorknob. But she was already there. Waiting for me in the hallway.
“Change your mind yet?” She invited herself into the apartment.
“Yeah… okay,” I let my body rest against the wall, and I’m fairly certain I stained it red. “I’m game. But I want to know certain things.”
Malia turned me around and let my neck dangle in her hand. She then slid the little blue marble in my mouth, and instructed ‘Swallow’. I obeyed, and sat myself down on the couch, waiting for its effect.
“What do you want to know, back-road Joe?” She crossed her arms and remained standing.
And so, I began to gather as much information as I could. The small blue candle was introduced to me only as ‘Blue’. She had said it worked like a steroid in the blood-stream. And it was highly addictive, as I had gathered. After a small, diluted dose, she would explain, the side effects were not so severe. Diluted doses like those with which she had laced my vodka. But in much more potent servings, like that of the pure blue candle, you were hooked. I was hooked. And I had a dilemma to deal with.
“So you’ve gotten me trapped on a habit forming substance?” I looked up at her, almost docile. “Why? What do you want with me exactly?”
“Too many questions, Mr. Bond, too many questions.” She sat next to me on the sofa. “Maybe I like you, ever think about that?”
“And what about this dependency? What am I supposed to do with that?”
“I’ll take care of you, kid. No worries.” She smiled confidently.
“At what price?” I didn’t return her smile, though I had started to feel better. The cool marble had already dissolved inside me and soothed my veins… I think at that point I fully realized the affects it had on me. My mind was more aware, and even my vision was sharper. My muscles, my skin, my everything was so much better.
“Feeling better?” She stood, and hovered near the door. “Good. Go clean that blood off ya, we’ve got matters to tend to.”