Through a Dark Blue Lens: Chapter Five

This story has existed in some form or another for 9 or so years. It was “completed” in 3.5k words at one point. But someone told me that the real story was still in there somewhere, between the lines. So here is the second version of Through a Dark Blue Lens, presented one rough chapter at a time.

Through a Dark Blue Lens

Chapter Five:  Going the Other Way

By: Peter R. Heaton

That was the smell, she thought.  

The one in the mindfield.  The one that permeating every memory--ghoulishly gripping the mind strings—the scent reminding the memory remembering the scent: 

Gunpowder.  

The tastes of Earth trailing her, reminding her that she would never be free.  That, sooner or later, she’d be going the other way.

All smokey-sickly-sweet.  The mindfield.

Query: Do you think what you did to David was wrong?

Gunpowder.

Snap-crack.

Result: You always ruin everything.

Gunpowder.

Why did her vomit taste like gunpowder?

Withdrawal.  Bad. No. It had been.  She’d been traveling in space.  Time was like...nothing.

The stimulus of the mind field--the newness of it had covered it.  But now that was gone and onward rushed the withdrawal: filling the void, a con-artist cozying up to her soul and then taking her for everything she had.

Her head hurt too bad to think about it.

At some point someone had come into the room.

“Anya.”

Fingers were snapping in her face.  She saw the fine lines in the skin, the hairs, all dark and coarse.  The fingernails slightly overgrown. The voice was speaking and she thought it sounded like something she remembered that she had liked.

“People can’t see you like this.  I shouldn’t--you shouldn’t even have said what you said to me.”

A hand on her face.  Eye to eye.

What are the words to the spell?

“You need to hear me.  I need to know you’re hearing me.  Look, I’ve...damnit. I got...something, what you asked for . I’ve a friend who runs a clinic.  We just, I can’t just bring you there like this, and if anyone else--no one else has been in here have they?  If that clerk ever says anything to anyone

Cycle.  Recycle.  Stop.

“This can go so wrong so fast. Anya, no one else can see you like this. If you go out there you’ll get arrested before you get down the block.  I’ve got two pills of pheramol and--”

You’ll do, pip, she remembered saying and started laughing.

“Shut up.  Shut up.” He was shaking her.

Finally she got control.  And she felt better. Just knowing that the drugs were here in this room, she could think clearer.

“No one’s been in here,” she mumbled.

“I can’t see you take these.  If I get caught--I don’t know, that’ll buy me something.”

Her hand was out.

“No, wait.  Look. Look at me.  Look, Anya.”

Her eyes lifted up and met his.  He was sad and angry but he wasn’t wearing a mask anymore.  “You have to make me one promise. If I give you these, you’ll come with me tomorrow.  My friend, he’s a doctor and he can really help people like you. There’s a treatment and it works.  That’s why we take this so serious, Anya.”

She didn’t want to even think what she was thinking because she hated herself too much for thinking it.  So instead, “Okay.”

“That’s it?  You promise?”

“Yes?”

“Do you even know why I’m doing this?”

That caught her off guard.  “I-I don’t.”

“I don’t think you’re as stupid as you sometimes act.”

“Me either,” she said, managing a smile.

He almost smiled--started to until his hands felt the pills in his pocket.  Hesitating, stuck between play and pause, he turned, and then lingered at the door, his back to her.  “I’ll leave these here.” He reached out, holding the bag over the table near the door. “You promise?” he asked.  She thought he wouldn’t turn around to look at her because he knew she was lying. If that was true, he was the stupid one.

“Yeah.”

Or was she being stupid.  He was going so far to try to help her.  Didn’t that mean he really could?

“Damnit,” he spat and dropped the bag on the table.  “I’ll be back tomorrow. There’s some food and water by the bed.”

“Antonio,” she started to say but he shut the door.  Shamelessly she leapt over to the bag. She checked the stamp, no code she recognized.  It seemed high grade--medical, maybe. Start with one, just in case.  Who knows how it’ll hit me after traveling.  Who knows when I’ll get more.

It wasn’t medical, that she was sure.  Her body lurched before it hit her--a wave of near-nausea caused by the synthetic tobacco that identified it with lower quality, homemade-type stuff; the tobacco was there to kick start the front end--

It did its job. There was no need to take the second.  

She stood there, staring at her hands.  She wanted to laugh. Laugh at all those people who didn’t think that they could ever feel this good, because they were too scared to take a little pill.  Little people, afraid of a little pill.  

And it had come to her easy and dream-cliche like: How she’d use the second.

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The fugue-like wanderings of her mind leave her with one question:

Is it worse not achieving a dream or is it worse to grow up and realize your dream is stupid?

Isn’t that the thing with little people? They see the nothings and don’t realize they’re looking in the mirror.

What if that is what I am?  What if I’m looking in the mirror and I’m too stupid to see the nothing I am?

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Anya was leaning against the table, stroking the carpet with one hand.  She looked up over her shoulder at the contents on the table. They seemed so far away.  She was floating, a blissful hue tinging everything .

The water would make a nice home for the pheramol.  He wouldn’t get the kick from the tobacco, that’d come at some point, once his stomach had gotten a hold of it, but if he was a true as he pretended to be, that’d be more than enough.

The door opened and it croaked for what seemed like forever.  Hello, Señor Frog.

“What are you doing?”

“The floor.  It’s comfortable.”  Anya rubbed her hand across the carpet, feeling the woven bumps trailing a sensation across her palm--a pleasurable scratching of an itch she hadn’t known she’d had.  

Antonio crouched down next to her and eyed her.  He had giant pit stains on his shirt. She laughed, pointing.

“It’s hot.”

“I think it’s nice.  If you’re hot, have a sip of water.  It’ll cool you down.”

He wiped his hands across his linen pants.  She saw the gun tucked against his waist as he stood up, his shirt drifting open.  His undershirt was ribbed with strong stripes of smooth cloth, she wondered what they would be like to touch, all wet with sweat.  

She smiled as he reached for the glass, taking a large sip, frowning, swishing it around in his mouth.  That’s right, she thought as he swirled the water, take your time, feel it slipping into your bloodstream…

Still frowning he looked at her.  “They’ll be here in a minute. Can you get control of yourself?”

Control.  Connntrol.  She could. She had to.  But not because of what he wanted.  She had to have control if she was going to get the hell out of here.  

Going through withdrawal had made her lose her grip, but even as his face drifted side to side in front of her, she fought back for reality.  

“Anya?”

“Yes?”

“The drugs, they’ve impacted how you see...how you experience life.  You don’t soak in the things that happen when you’re on them. You lose that experience.  You don’t learn from life. That is why you keep making poor decisions. It is not your fault, but you’re only as social aware as say a ten year old.  But we can help, Anya. With the addiction. With the social skills. That is what I’m offering you. A way out. You just have to take it.”

His lips smacked of dryness.  He licked his lips and took another sip of water.

“Yes.  I-” it was almost as if he was recalling the taste now--his tongue searching the sides of his cheeks--they bulged as he poked and prodded.  “What did you do?” He looked down at the glass. Looked back at her. He knelt down, grabbing her wrists, the sensations lighting up her brain with pain and pleasure.

“Tell me you took them both! Tell me, ANYA!  You wouldn’t do this, I know you wouldn’t.”

“It’s alright, Antonio.  It’s alright you’re going to feel so much better any moment.”

“No, Anya you don’t understand...they’re...they’re coming, now.  You wouldn’t do this.”

“You know, Antonio.  You knew the moment you saw me.  What I was. And still you...you tried.”

“My mistake,” he said, his eyes struggling, his face trying to maintain composure.  The drug was getting to him. “Mistaking you for, mistaking you for a human.” His eyes began to glaze over.  He was staring up at the ceiling, still holding on to one of her wrists, squeezing it on and off and on and off.  She didn’t stop him.

Time passed.  There was a knock on the door.

She slid the gun out from Antonio’s waistband, kissing him hard as she did.  Control. There was one way out of this.

“Come in,” she called, having hid behind the door.

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