Watermelon Sugar Die

The Man of Many Needles

Louis staggered to his feet like a drunk. He pawed at his black and swollen chest, his breaths coming shallow and ragged.

Harry stood in the doorway. "I can't, Louis. I need to make sure you understand. It was an accident! You're acting like I did this on purpose, and I'm scared, man. I'm scared your going to decide I'm not worth the hassle."

Louis looked him in the eyes and sneered. He tried to push past Harry. "Move," he gurgled. 

"Did you not hear me?" Harry shouted. "I said it was a fucking accident!" He grabbed Louis by the waist band again, and slung him like a discus. Louis bounced against the gym room floor, and rolled into a ball, a frightened hedgehog.

 "Look what you made me do!" Harry  yelled at the ball on the floor. It wasn't just Louis giving him the silent treatment he needed to be concerned with now. If this story got out....But his charisma. He still had that. If he had more time, he could make Louis see things from his perspective. He could still come back from this. 

"I fucked up, Louis. I fucked up big time. This is on me. I can't, buddy, I can't take you to  hospital." Louis was crawling, choking on blood. "Don't worry, though. I love you, man. You can't be scared of me. I'm not going to hurt you. I'm not going to do anything, but get you better. It's just that I can't take you anywhere until you forgive me."

Harry scraped up Louis's small, bloody frame. Louis didn't protest. He barely wheezed. He was draped like Spanish moss over Harry's trunk-like arms. "Jesus, I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry," Harry said to no one, Louis was flickering out.

He placed Louis in the bed he'd been sleeping in since they got to this rental. Harry wiped at the coagulated blood on Louis's mouth and chin with a white wash cloth pulled from beneath the bathroom sink. Is this the extent of what I can do for him? He's going to fucking die, he screamed internally. Doh-Ray, he remembered. Doh-Ray, the man of many needles. 

An hour later, Doh-Ray, walked up the driveway, a Nike box full of medicinal items under his hairy arms. "Dat Louis Tomlinson?" he asked leaning over his patient. "What'd you do to him?"

"I didn't do anything to him. Some weights fell on him in the gym."

Doh-Ray smirked. "'Ja rape him?"

Harry grew impatient. "I didn't anything to him. What the fuck can we do for him? Look at him! He's in pain."

"Morphine?"

Harry nodded. "Yes. Give him morphine. Give him some now. And leave some for later. What do you think is wrong with him?"

As he pushed the needle into Louis's arm bend, he pricked an ear to the strained hiss that was Louis's breathing. "Collapsed lung, for one. Maybe some other organs got damaged. Don't know without a scan. I can sling a needle, but I ain't no doctor."

"Is he going to die?"

Doh-Ray shrugged his meaty shoulders. "Prolly poking my big nose where it don't belong. And no judgement. I seen a lot of things. Done a lot of things. Some of them for you. If you tell me why we can't take this bloke to emergency, I can be of better service."

Harry considered the offer. This meat head with a shoe box full of injectables already had plenty on him, information-wise. "It really was a gym accident. I was supposed to be spotting him, and my hands slipped."

"That ain't no crime, Mr. Styles. Once this morphine cycles out his system, we can put him in me car, take him to hospital down the road. No harm, no foul, as they say. Unless there is some other reason we got to keep him here."

"Well," Harry admitted, "Louis didn't believe it was an accident."

"Your word against his," Doh-Ray said.

"But..I knocked him into a wall. It was a misunderstanding."

"Will this lad see it that way?"

Harry pulled a hand through his tangle of dark curls. "No. Definitely not."

The man of many needles opened his shoe box, and rifled through materials in his box. "In about 72 hours, your friend here is going to feel  just well enough to walk through that door."

"What am I going to do?"

"A staple in my line of work is to help employers in a certain illicit trade to keep their female employees in a trade they'd rather not be in. Getting my drift?"

Harry shrugged.

Doh-Ray elaborated. "We're talking trafficking here, Mr. Styles, if I must spell it out. And I provide the chemical motivation for these young ladies to stay in their new profession." He swung a bag of tan-colored powder side-to-side. "If you give this to the bloke a few times, he'll do anything you ask."

He knew he should draw the line here. Had he hurt strangers? Sure, but not friends. And Louis had always been off limits, entirely. Yet, here was Doh-Ray, swinging what amounted to pixie dust. 'Anything,' he'd said. 'He'll do anything you ask.'

Harry watched the bag rocking like a pendulum. "Show me how to use it, " Harry said.

Grinning to reveal a row of cracked, green teeth, Doh-Ray held up and needle and spoon from within his treasure box. "My pleasure."