Chapter Three
"How much do y'want?"
"How much can fifteen dollars get me?"
"One full bottle."
I handed the man my bundle of cash and he leaned into the pharmacy cabinet. As he fished around for a bottle of legal and brand-name slur heroine, I fiddled with the small amount of cash I had left. I had to save at least ten dollars a week to pay the small portion of rent John expected me too, so I silently thanked CiCi for buying breakfast and thusly giving me a small bit of spending money. I was craving a high. A temporary escape.
The man appeared from below his counter, small object in hand. The clear bottle was opaque and thick with the dark blue liquid I was so desperate for. I nodded my thanks, took it from him, and wandered out of the store, into the ocean of people who consumed me almost immediately.
I felt so claustrophobic, being knocked around by the bustling crown. I had been so used to it as a kid, but the more time I spent in the comfort of John's home, the more I wanted to stay away from all this. I hated that I hated it. I missed having friends, some reason to wake up in the morning and swing my dependent feet onto the distant ground. I missed living for more than hallucinatory eye drops and kale salad that I didn't even like.
I took a deep breath and glanced around me, trying to take in my surroundings. Every building was covered in ads. Some moved, some lit up, and some of the less significant structures had plainly pasted, billboard esque, reminders to see "Criminal Defeat" at your local cinema. People looked up at them frequently, or looked down at their phones. Nobody talked to each other.
It was the eeriest feeling I had ever witnessed. Every sidewalk was covered in people, you couldn't see the ground you were walking on, even if you looked down. Everyone was rushing, people ran into each other and into walls and into doors...but it was silent. The small pitter patter of feet on cement, sometimes a loud and obnoxious stiletto; otherwise there was nothing. A million people in one space, not making a single sound or saying a single thing. The hot dog carts had ads bigger than said carts, they didn't need to talk. Everything had already been said. What exactly was the point anymore? I felt like if I coughed, the entire city would stop to stare at me.
I kept walking, not really sure what exactly I was heading towards just knowing that if I stopped, the world behind me would crash straight into my body. So I walked until my bones ached and my throat was parched. Until my mind couldn't do anymore thinking past the fact that I wanted water just as much as I wanted Slur.
I was still holding the bottle tight in my hand when I decided to swerve my body into Central Park. People peppered the grass and rocks, but it was relatively empty. They'd expanded the park to be even larger than it already had been in 2013. That's what my parents said at least. It one of their biggest complaints while also seeming to be their biggest compliment. They hated how different it was from their time, but if it hadn't been expanded it would have been just as crowded as the streets or the beaches. Now, I could slip into a small space on a large slanted stone that was concealed by a forestry of trees.
As I got my bearings, sitting with my knees bent up against my chin, I remembered hearing the story of the nine year old who hadn't gotten lost within Central Park and died three days later. It took even longer to find the body. I clutched my bottle of Slur harder at the thought. No wonder so many drugs were legal now. If they dosed us up, we wouldn't realize how terrible it was out there...out here. I had to remind myself that I was apart of this world. So was John. Maybe he wasn't a part of society, but he would always be a part of this world.
I sucked in a long, deep, breath. Slowly, I exhaled, feeling the heat of my very own carbon escape my body. So strange to think that people breathing was slowly detiorating the world just as much as oil drilling was. I rubbed the bridge of my nose slowly and tenderly with my fingers, wishing John was here to do it instead, or anybody really. The world was so filled with people, yet they seemed to try their hardest to keep their distance from me. I clutched the Slur bottle with my other hand, and opened my eyes, lifting it until it was within my eyesight.
I stared at the bottle like somehow its form would change if I did. I noted with a chuckle, that if I took some Slur it probably would. I looked up and around, double checking to make sure nobody was around. I always forgot how legal taking this was. I could drop it into my eyes in the middle of the street, and nobody would look at my funny unless I mad a noise or stumbled on my feet.
I unscrewed the cap of the slur heroine bottle and leaned my head back. Slowly, I lifted my small, personal, eyedropper over my left eye, which was held open by my other hand. Two drops. I blinked rapidly for a moment before quickly doing the same thing to my other eye. If you wait too long between eyes, the effects won't synch up with each other. You'll have one eye going bat shit crazy, and the other eye barely bending the world out of shape. I'd had it happen the first time I ever took Slur, and it had given me a migraine. I was so used to the routine now, though, that as I laid staring up at the smog filled and dark gray sky, it's sparse clouds slowly began to swirl into each other. The sky turned a dark ocean blue, the clouds a bright white against it's surface as I felt the drug take affect.
I smiled stupidly, turning myself onto my side to stare at the trees which were now warping themselves into odd shapes. They all seemed like slowly deflating balloons to me. My eyes stayed wide open but it felt like they were drooping. I tried my hardest to notice small things moving within the green blotches in front of me. We'd been told at the focus group that it was a more enjoyable experience when you watched the different stages of a specific item inside your vision. There was no harm in trying it.
I was just about to turn myself back towards the sky when I saw a small blue blur dash across the surrealist trees.
I squinted my eyes as if somehow that would fix my fucked up eyesight. Was it real or imagined? In another second, it dashed across my view; closer this time. My eyes widened with surprise as it did so again, this time a bright yellow streak. I had never seen yellow before. It was almost always something blue, and it was the only way I could place the slurred world against the real one.
I sat up straighter, leaning forward and darting my eyes vigorously in every direction. Where the hell was it? What the hell was it? There it was again. Or at least I assumed it was the same thing, because it was purple this time and there really was no way of telling.
I looked around to see if anybody else was noticing this...and then my frantic mind reminded me that I was alone, in one of the only secluded places left in this city. I started to sweat, feeling my hair (or what I had of it) matting to the side of my face, and hearing my heart as it tried to throw itself out of my ribcage. The prison bars kept it in it's place. I began to shake. This was paranoia. The saddest part was that I knew it was not set about the slur heroine. It was set about by me. I needed to know what was out there, and whether it was actually out there. My mind wanted to tell me it was a fox, but foxes don't change color. Sure, that could be the drug taking its hold my mind. Doing what it's supposed to do. I tried to remind myself of this fact, but in a moment the blur was back. Finally a navy blue hue, and practically on the rock.
It stopped in front of me, but it did not stop being a blur. It was a glitching image of so many shades of blue flicking in and out in patches. I felt a strange burning inside of my eyes, like the feeling of staring at the sun too long, or swimming in chlorinated water with your eyes open. Was this a bad trip? Maybe over the counter Slur wasn't as good as the kind at focus groups. Maybe focus group Slur was the best they had to offer, so that all we'd throw at them was good reviews...shit. The reason I had just dropped some Slur was so that I WOULDN'T think about this place. To take my mind and my eyes out of it. Yet here I was, thinking long and hard about the misconducts of this city, of this country, of this world, while staring at a fucking glitch. My entire body felt like it was stored inside of a computer. Compacted, static, and most of all...unreal.
I blinked.
The strange glitch was gone, leaving only the imprinted outline of it's shape within my eyes.
The trees still twisted in random directions, and after a quick check I knew the sky still looked like the ocean.
"Hey!"
The voice startled me, and my body jumped back...hurling itself off the slightly raised rock and hitting the damp dirt below it.
Whoever it was laughed.
"Sorry, I couldn't believe it was you but I had to come see." then she came into view. Well, sort of. Her skin, inside of my eyes, was a light blue, and her face twisted in on itself like a whirlpool.
"Dude, are you slurred right now? Holy shit." the voice paused. "It's Jamie."
Oh. Jamie. I knew a Jamie. Unlike CiCi, Jamie was a lot more like me. We texted each other randomly and had stayed in moderate contact, but both of us seemed to be at different paces and different places. She was one of my only real friends, though, and anything that had to do with her was destined to be entertaining.
She must have seen my eyes light up, because she giggled, and threw her body down next to mine, which was sprawled out from the sloppy fall I'd just had. It was rare to just randomly run into people, yet there she was and there I was, slurred beyond compare.
"Hey there." I let out a small breath, my speech slurring. The entire basis of the name "slur heroine" had come from the slurring of speech it always caused the user. No one really knew why it did it, or how eyes connected to the tongue, but it did. I guess you could call that a side effect...but how off to the side was it, really? Shit. No. Not more of this philosophy crap.
"Man, I wonder what the hell I look like to you, man." She giggled, rubbing at the back of her flaming red pixie cut. Well, unless she'd dyed it. I assumed it was red like it had once been, because all it was right now was a bright and encompassing white.
"A smurf." I informed her, which invoked both of us to laugh loudly and carelessly.
"Oh god, so the drug isn't working?"
For a split second, my eyes widened in surprise and disbelief. Had she gotten that skin-dye surgery I'd been hearing so much about? Oh god had I just insulted her - oh. Oh right. That was a joke. People can still make jokes when you're slurred and only one third of your brain isn't filled with a liquid hallucinatory drug that expanded inside of your mind until you cried it out in your sleep. That was still a thing.
"Sorry. Sorry. I'm not a blue midget communist. I promise." She assured, setting both her hands on either side of my shoulder, squeezing slightly, and smiled at me.
"Jezzus, Jammie-" I heard myself talk, and began to break out in short little giggles.
Having Jamie around made this experience go from a terrible trip comparable to the ones your parents make you go on to visit relatives you don't even know, to a drug-using, music blaring, friendly road trip. She'd just come out of nowhere, and I was little confused as to why, but I was more than grateful.
"What brings you out here? Besides tricking people into thinking you're a smurf."
"Same thing as you I guess."
"You don't look like you're on it." I tried my hardest not to screw up my words.
"Something tells me you didn't specifically decided to come do Slur in central park." she pointed out.
A pause. A lull. An uncomfortable silence.
"How can the world be loud and quiet at the same time?" I asked, glancing down at her shoes, which were morphing back and forth between their real shape, and the outline of a dolphin. My eyes felt droopy, but I knew they were opened a lot wider than was normal.
Jamie sighed, and leaned back until she was lying against the grass and looking up at the sky. For her it was not morphed. For her it was not an upside down ocean. Just an upside down world.
"I don't know, man." She said after what felt like forever.
"There's a lot we don't know..." I trailed, rolling my body to join her.
"At least I know I'm not a fucking smurf." She mentioned. "Jesus, Avey, how do you even know what a smurf IS? Didn't they stop after Smurf Movie 20 back in 2047? You were only five. And they were never good."
I smirked against the air. She was right. My parents said the first one had been terrible, but somehow, somebody somewhere wanted to fund 19 more of them.
