Behind Locked Doors

It's been sixteen hours and nineteen minutes since my last hit. Normally I wouldn't notice things like that, but my legs are starting to hurt.

Johnny, sitting on the floor, is nervous. He's always nervous when I'm trying to quit. Mind you he's usually nervous when I'm shooting up as well. I debate for a moment whether or not to tell him about my legs. It would only worry him.

I say, "My legs are hurting."

He asks, "Badly?"

I shrug, and shoot his character in the head. He pauses the game and gets up to lock the door.

"Why are we doing this at your house? Your father's here…"

Everything about Johnny reminds me of a mouse. His face is small, his nose even smaller. His eyes are huge and slightly bulging. His hair is tame, short and boring, mousy brown. But mostly it's his personality.

He is endlessly timid.

"You could just ask him to leave," I say, unpausing the game before he sits back down. Johnny looks terrified at the very idea of it. He picks up his controller right as a knock comes at the door.

"Yeah?" I call out, jiggling my leg in an attempt to lessen the cramping, whilst simultaneously lining up my newly acquired sniper gun at Johnny's character.

"I need you to do a run. Then I'll give you your stash," came the slurred voice of my old man from behind the locked door.

Johnny looks like he's about to wet himself, and I meet his terrified gaze with a supremely confident one of my own.

"I'm quitting."

It's been sixteen hours and twenty-three minutes since my last hit, and my dad punches a hole in my wall.

=/=

"Daddy? Daddy I made you lunch."

"I'm busy."

"But Daddy-."

"I SAID NO!"

But I cut my fingers trying to make it…

=/=

It's been seventeen hours and forty-three minutes, and I think my stomach is experiencing an earthquake. It feels like it's being ripped apart.

"Are you okay?" Johnny asks, as I get up and walk across the room. It helps my stomach a little. My response is poisonous.

"What the hell do you think?"

My legs cramp, and I wish they wouldn't, because it's making walking very hard. Walking makes my stomach hurt less, and I'd do anything right now to make it feel like my stomach isn't splitting in two. If only my legs agreed with this logic.

Johnny blinks at me, like the mouse he is.

"I was just asking."

His voice has no conviction, and I want to slap him for it.

"Well don't. It doesn't help at all, and honestly it pisses me off."

My father calls from where he's camped outside of my locked door, "You think you feel crap now? Give it a few hours. You'll be begging for the stash I won't give you cause you wouldn't do a run for me. You're costing me money, boy."

"Shut up!" I scream at the door. He punches it violently and tells me I should be grateful for the drugs he gives me.

"I'm not gonna work for you anymore, either," I snap, grabbing the closest thing – an old workbook from school last year – and throwing it at the shut door. The thump it makes is drowned out by my old man's howl of rage, and I stagger back to the bed and bury my head under Johnny's arm.

=/=

"Hey Dad, we got our grades back today. Guess what I got for math's? An A!"

"Good, you can count the money Bundy gave me. I think he's scamming me a few bucks."

"Oh, okay. Then we can celebrate right? I got the best mark in the class so –"

"I'm busy."

"Oh, yeah. Okay."

=/=

It's been nineteen hours and thirty minutes since my last hit. My head is on Johnny's lap.

My father can be heard at random moments, smashing something in the living room, or howling again like an injured wolf. I'm glad he's no longer out in the hallway, trying to break the door down, but with how I'm feeling I really wish he just wasn't here at all.

"I'm sure some part of your dad is happy that you're quitting," Johnny says, stroking my hair away from my face.

I snort. "Yeah, the part that's rationalizing that he can get money out of the drugs he's no longer giving to me."

Johnny flinches like I expect him to. His family is good and wholesome. They all love each other and have nightmares about losing one another. It hurts him to know that my father wouldn't lose any sleep if I were to overdose tomorrow.

I kind of like knowing he cares enough about me to flinch at my words. I want to see him flinch again.

But it's been nineteen hours and thirty-two minutes, and I can't repress a yawn that interrupts the collateral damage I was about to inflict with my mouth. My eyes water, and I rub the tears away impatiently.

"If you can quit, mum and dad said you can stay with us. Mum has a psychiatrist lined up – not to help with withdrawal, but to help with…the situation with your dad." Johnny is babbling and, irritable though I am, another yawn prevents me from answering. My hands are too busy massaging my stomach in an attempt to lessen the pain, so the tears the yawn brings on go unchecked. Gravity grabs them the minute they leave my eye socket and drags them around my ears, along the back of my neck, and into the thigh of Johnny's jeans.

"You told me this already. I agreed to it. That's why I'm quitting."

I yawn again, and any venom in my words is cancelled out by it. Johnny doesn't answer, just continues stroking my hair. A particularly bad cramp rips through my abdomen. I jerk myself into a ball on reflex, crying out. My legs protest the movement by cramping up in a vortex of agony. Johnny is murmuring frantic words of comfort that I can't hear over the pain in my body and I wonder if they're for him or for me.

It's been nineteen hours and thirty-six minutes since my last hit.

=/=

"Hey Dad, Johnny taught me to ride a bike today."

"Mmm."

"I know I'm learning later than the other kids but I haven't really had anyone to teach me so I guess it's oka-"

"I'm busy. You can ride your bike over to Nean's later this afternoon and give him this package, okay?"

"But I don't have a bike…"

"Then save up some of the goddamn money I keep wasting on you and buy one. God knows you could make yourself useful around here…"

"Yes Father."

=/=

Johnny is asleep. I wonder how he manages to sleep at a time like this. My head is on his stomach now; my tears - a near constant stream – have soaked a decent wet patch into his t-shirt. I'd say the patch matched the one on his thigh, but it's been five hours and twenty-four minutes since I made that one, and it's long dry.

My throat is hurting from screaming, and my ears are ringing with the sounds of my cries. I very nearly squeezed Johnny's hand off, and I wonder what about this situation or me is enticing him to stay.

A voice in my head whispers to me, reminding me that one little shot can make this horrible existence go away.

The agony in my stomach will go away. My legs will stop feeling like someone is sticking knifes into them. My eyes will stop watering and my nose will stop running. I don't mind the yawning so much. It's a little annoying, but compared to the pain it's almost soothing.

Lightning-like pain rips across my stomach, and when I recover from it enough to force myself out of the ball it turned me into, I push myself up. I glare blearily around the room. I know where I have a spare stash for emergencies like these.

I stand up, and pain lances through my legs, and then my stomach, leaving me crippled on the floor. The resulting crash wakes Johnny up.

"Wha'?" He calls out, jolting upright. I moan pitifully, wanting to cry but knowing my eyes are already streaming.

"What are you doing on the floor?" Johnny asks me. The question is reflex. The adrenaline from being startled awake is telling him to do something because it's there to protect him, but his brain is too shocked to figure out what the adrenaline is there to help him with. Even as my brain is telling me this, my mouth is expressing my annoyance at his stupid question.

"I decided you were too ugly to sleep with," I say, rolling my eyes and resisting the urge to punch him. For a second he believes me, and hurt and insecurity cross his face. Then he glances at my old school bag. I don't know how he made the connection between me being on the floor and me going to sneak a secret shot in, but he did.

He picks me up off the floor and puts me back into bed, tucking me in tightly under the blankets. I watch as he picks up my bag and unlocks the door. I yawn again, right as my stomach give an unpleasant lurch. It's different to the pain I'd been feeling, and for a moment I wonder why. Then it come again, and I realize, reaching for the rubbish bin Johnny had thoughtfully placed next to the bed much earlier.

It's been twenty-five hours and four minutes since my last hit. I wish I were dead.

=/=

"It's late….why are you here old man?"

"You got some spare cash?"

"What?"

"I need some money, boy!"

"Oh, I have a few dollars…"

"Liar. You can get out of this house if that's all you have to contribute. I don't like freeloaders…"

"But –"

"GET OUT OF MY HOUSE UNTIL YOU'RE PREPARED TO PAY TO LIVE IN IT!"

=/=

It's been thirty-four hours since my last hit, and Johnny and I have migrated to the bathroom. It's nowhere near as comfortable as the bedroom, but the move was necessary. My bladder was like a burst water pipe now, except it wasn't water it was expelling. I'll never laugh at the word 'diarrhea' again.

Johnny had guiltily climbed out of the bathroom window twenty minutes ago. He needed food.

When he'd asked me if I wanted anything, my response was to empty my already empty stomach into the loo.

I'm covered in sweat, and my skin feels like it's crawling. I stare at the shower and wonder vaguely if I have the strength to stand under some cold water. Anything to sooth the searing heat that is racing across my skin and the odd sensation that my bones are trying to jump out.

I stand up, flushing the toilet as an afterthought, because I can't remember if I did it after the last time my bowel had decided to make itself known.

"I know your pretty-boy boyfriend's gone." The voice came from behind the locked bathroom door. So slurred with the intoxication of alcohol, for a moment I didn't recognize it as my old mans.

"What are you going to do when he gets sick of you? Your boyfriend isn't gonna hang around forever. He won't want you. You're just a pathetic excuse for a boy, never contributing anything to anyone's lives."

"I'm busy," I tell him, before turning on the shower. One little shot could make all this better…but then I'd still be stuck with my father.

=/=

"I can't go with you, sorry."

"What? Why?"

"The old man needs help with some stuff, and besides…I can't afford it."

"I'll pay."

"Johnny, you know I can't…"

"Okay…that's okay. We'll just have a holiday at your house."

"You hate it at my house."

"But I like being with you. It evens out."

=/=

Thirty-five hours since my last hit, and Johnny climbs back in through the window to the sight of me standing under a steady stream of scalding hot water in nothing but my underwear. He blushes and looks away demurely.

"Sorry I took so long," he mumbles, "I wanted to eat there. I'm not sure I could have eaten with you vomiting and…going all the time. I brought you back some fries, though. Just in case."

I look at him, and wonder what I did to deserve such a wonderful person in my life. I don't feel like the food, of course. I don't think I'll ever eat again. But he'd spent his money on me.

Johnny thought it was worth spending his hard earned cash on a heroin-addict who'd just spent the last twenty-seven hours and four minutes writhing in agony, vomiting, faecating and being a right old grump, all over the place.

"I think I love you," I tell him, and he blushes again. An awkward silence settles over us, and I move forward quickly and kiss him, forgetting for a moment that I'm soaking wet and almost naked. His blush deepens and he shifts slightly, opening his mouth. He falters, glancing down at his hands. He holds up the fries, attempting to segue the conversation to something less new and scary.

"So you want it?" He avoids the topic, but he's smiling in a pleased-with-himself sort of way. I don't push the issue.

"No. But I appreciate the offer."

=/=

"Johnny, I don't like who I am."

"What? Why? You're a wonderful person."

"No I'm not…don't go making excuses for me."

"But – "

"I want to quit."

"You want to…heroin?"

"Yes. And…and my old man."

"Where will you go?"

"Away. Anywhere, really, just…away."

"Oh…"

"Could I…would it be selfish of me to ask you to come with me?"

=/=

I want to die. Maybe I'm already dead? Perhaps I died, and that's why I've stopped taking heroin, and I've gone to hell as punishment for being such a terrible human being. I can't imagine hell being much worse than this. It's been forty-eight hours and forty-five minutes since I last took heroin. Forty-eight hours and forty-five minutes too long.

We're back in my room. Johnny is sitting on the floor, and I'm laying on my bed. There are scratches on his arms, from where he wrestled with me when I decided the pain wasn't worth the freedom. I want to resent him for putting me through this pain. One little shot would make this all better.

But there's an end to all of this, somewhere. And that end is more appealing than the end heroin addiction was offering me.

Hell wouldn't let people like Johnny in. The thought makes me want to shoot myself, because it means I'm still alive.

=/=

"Mum says you can stay with us until we save up enough to get our own place. But she wants you to quit heroin first. She doesn't want you influencing my brothers and sisters."

"Thank you; thank you…will you stay with me when I quit?"

"When have I ever left you?"

=/=

It's been sixty-one hours and fifteen minutes since my last shot. I heard my old man leave twenty minutes ago, to go on a drug-run. Johnny's asleep, but not for much longer. I grab the tissue box beside my bed and throw it at him.

When he jolts awake, I tell him we're leaving now.

My old man will be gone for about two hours, but we rush. We have a lot of packing to do, and lets face it. I'm not completely sure I'm even alive. Johnny does most of the work.

=/=

"Are you ready for this?"

"Since the day I met you."

=/=

It's been nine hundred and seventy-eight hours since my last hit.