Lure of the Monster

Cleaning Out

Noah was gone when Jane woke me up later. I was thankful to not have to face him. He left a note for Jane, saying that he would be back later that evening and I hoped that I was gone by the time that he did come back.

Jane made a big breakfast for the three of us. She had been scheduled to work, but had called off because she was afraid to leave me alone in case that Alex, who was on call always, had to leave. I didn't blame her for not trusting me. I knew that I wasn't going to end the day sober.

She had bought a few presents for me, saying that she had a hunch that I would be back in time to open them. They were mostly clothes. She'd thought ahead and had bought a smaller size than what I normally wore. I tried them on, glad to be in something that actually fit instead of just hanging off me.

We went on a hunt for my stashes after we had opened all of the presents. Jane and Alex had been supposed to go to Alex's parent's house for dinner, after Jane was off work, but they'd cancelled that. They were afraid that I wasn't ready to face people. And they were right. I hadn't done well around people I didn't know well before I had started doing drugs. Something else I could thank my father for.

I climbed into the attic and picked up the trunk as Jane took the bag out from under it, putting it into a Ziploc bag. We'd flush it all later.

"Where else?" she asked.

I led her to my bedroom, pulling out the stashes I had in there of not just heroin, but the pills and the weed. I found a stash of oxy that I had even forgotten about. I could see her face getting more worn down as I added drugs to the bag. I didn't think that she had even realized how deep into them I had gotten before I'd left. I hadn't either, really, until everything was put into one place.

I swallowed hard and pulled on my shoes, leading her outside to the garden shed. I had to let her open the door. With the snow piled up, I didn't have the strength to pull it open. We stepped inside and Jane flipped the light on, but I didn't need it. I'd been out there plenty of times after dark and knew where I'd stashed things without a light. This was where I had kept the big stashes of my harder drugs. Well, it was harder drugs than weed or oxy.

I crouched down and used a hammer to pry a sheet of wood off the wall. It had looked like it was there to cover a hole, and it did, but not a hole that went outside. I reached in and pulled out a black bag and put it on the workbench, opening it up and pulling out a bottle of blue pills and scooting them towards Jane. She held them up to the light and frowned, looking at them.

"What are these?" she asked as I pulled out bags of coke.

"Fentanyl," I told her calmly as I put the bags of coke into the Ziploc bag.

She dropped the bottle and stared at me. "You took fentanyl?"

I shook my head. "No. I never used them. I snorted the coke and took some of these oxys," I said as I shook a bottle at her, "but I never made it to the fentanyl."

She looked pale now as she looked at the growing collection. I emptied the black bag and closed the Ziploc bag.

"That's it."

"Jesus," she whispered, putting a head to her forehead. "How are you not more messed up than what you are?"

I shrugged, resting my hands on top of the workbench. "I left before I was able to make a good dent in any of this. The heroin is better shit anyways. At least the good kind is."

She turned away, shaking her head as she rested her hands on her hips. I watched her calmly. None of this was terrifying for me. I'd faced my father's rage, who'd nearly killed me on more than one occasion. He'd held a knife at my throat, pointed a gun at my head, threatened to beat my head in with a tire iron. I'd faced drug dealers who weren't happy with the supply Rick had sent them or junkies who'd wanted to get high, but didn't have a way to get it without killing me. The pile of drugs in front of me did nothing but feed the building cravings within me.