The Midnight City Social Hour

--VRGN RTRD pt2

"It's like I'm stepping on glass Tommy." The clinking sound of glass came as Cat Girl rummaged around. Most of the Dizzy Dust—

(Dizzy Dust: Methamphetamine)

—was near the pedal and brake. A plastic grocery bag, stuffed into one of the pouches of the back seat, was scrunched up with dirt—small chunks of it broke apart in Tommy's fingers, as Cat Girl handed it to him. She placed everything useful from the pick up into the bag: the Dizzy Dust, a pack of cigarettes, a unique pipe that resembled a hot glue gun, only with obscure figures carved into what looked like a wooden body. The tab where the glue would have gone was replaced with a rounded glass vial. The snout of the gun was a needle.

"That's for Hard Nectar?" Tommy asked, as Cat Girl put the pipe into the bag.

Cat Girl confirmed, "Hard Nectar."

(Hard Nectar: LSD-25; similar to Suds minus the more bubbly hallucinations. States of extreme panic are common.)

Tommy held it for a moment, as Cat Girl scoured the back seat, as if feeling no immediate concern for owners of the pick-up. (They could have possibly been living in the apartment's right there in front of them.) The Hard Nectar pipe had everything that would make it a glue gun. Same rounded body, same handle, identical trigger. Might have stumped an untrained professional, if the vial and needle were like a regular glue gun. Only they weren't—the vial and needle were hard to miss.

Tommy remembered one time he used a gun like this. A solid charcoal black. No warmth. All euphoria as the needle was inserted directly into the neck, and with a pull of the trigger, the world would bubble and a sense of weightlessness lifted most feet off of the floor.

Tommy had only shot himself in the neck a few times. It wasn't for him.

Too much paranoia.

There were families arguing across the street, as he remembered, slouching against the pick up as Cat Girl inspected every crevice and precipice of the pick up. A man argued with an Hispanic lilt. "Bro you messed with the wrong devil tonight!" There was a small crowd Tommy could make out, across the street. Children were outside. "You want to mess with me? Then you mess with the devil. Too many horns on my head motherfucker." The acrimonious voice was escalating. The man in the distance was pacing, swinging his arms.

"That man is getting louder," Tommy said.

"Almost done in here." Cat Girl said from the backseat, "There are only a few other things that need to be stolen. Commandeered I mean."

Although a few residents on the other side of the complex had stepped outside. They were out on their balcony, looking out across the street, smoking a cigarette and looking at the parking lot. Tommy could see them through a window on the pickup.

The car lights lit up as they pressed unlock and lock again. 

Cat Girl was still in the back seat. "How long do I have until they're here?" She muttered.

Tommy couldn't really see her through the windows. A small mercy. He said, "They're walking down the steps."