Secret Door

Nineteen

I tapped the end of my cigarette off the balcony and watched soft ash float down in the air. It had been a couple hours since Alex had left, and I had smoked more than enough cigarettes for the both of us combined. I was tired and worried but most of all I was bored. I was so helplessly bored. Bored without drugs, bored without Alex. I paced the balcony for a few more steps, before smashing my cigarette on the railing and walking into our bedroom. I knew Alex kept a stash in here somewhere. 

I dug around underneath our mattress, too obvious. I checked an empty drawer of our dresser, but most of the drawers were empty. I looked under the bed, too spacious. I threw open the closet, no no no!

"UGH!!" I shouted out loud. I was panting, out of breath, heaving, wheezing. Where the hell was that coke!? I tore at my hair in frustration. I collapsed on the bed, trying to catch my breath. My lungs were coated, I knew. Goddamnit. How had life become this way? And where was the coke? 

I drummed my fingers against the bed as I laid flat and gasping. I should have gone out, at least I would have had something to do! I closed my eyes, my heart was thumping loud in my eardrums, so loud it was like crashing cymbals in my brain. I tried to slow down my thoughts and slip into sleep, it was the only thing I seemed to be able to occupy myself with for extended amounts of time anymore. 

As my eyes became heavier and my limbs became weak, I heard the shrill ring of my phone pierce the silence. 

"Goddamnit, Alex," I muttered, slowly getting up. For who else could it be?

I looked at the contact curiously. It wasn't Alex at all. It was an unknown number. I answered it out of habit than anything else. 

"Hello..?" 

"Hi, um, Miles?" the voice sounded shaky, fearful.

"Yeah...who's this, then?" I asked.

"Yeah, um, it's Archie..ya see..Alex.."

My heart dropped. I gripped the phone tighter and tried to breathe again.

"Alex, what?" I demanded. "What? What happened?"

"Hey, calm down, mate...he was on a real trip..LSD and the like..and he was running, running all over the goddamn place. We were trying to tell him to stop, you see, but he was so fucked up...he fell down the stairs and knocked over a vase.....torn open his pant leg and cut his leg real deep on the broken vase. He hardly knows it happened..still rambling on and on. I can't take him to the hospital..they'll know he's fucked up. I didn't know what to do so I called you."

My heart pushed against my chest in rough movements, so fast I felt the blurring of the sound. I couldn't hear anything, Archie's voice just a dull roar in my ear. I knew this would happen. I should have never let him go out. I'm so stupid. So bloody stupid. 

"What's the address?"

--

I sped through the streets, my mind racing like the sound of my car screeching the road. Lights blurred past, and my vision tunneled onto the precise lines of the road. It took me 5 minutes to get there. 

I rushed up the steps, my mind still not fully working. 

"Where is he?" I barely heard myself ask Archie as I burst in the flat.

"Tub."

I followed Archie into the bathroom, and saw Alex lying in the bathtub, blazer removed, in only a tight white shirt and grey trousers. I followed his figure, from his blurred and hazy eyes, down to his mouth with a cigarette perching inside, his shirt unbottoned slightly to reveal his shining sweaty skin. His pants were ripped from the knee down, and bloody, sopping wet and bloody. A piece of his trousers was being used as a tourniquet around the cut, gash, wound. It was huge. It was deep and soaking the cloth, blood seeping slowly down his shin. I looked into his eyes, horror filling mine.