Hi.

"Hi," she says back, ice cold, wanting to communicate, for a very specific purpose.

"Zoe found it."

Did he? And he told on me. He tattled. Well, good on you, whistleblower, you're so loyal to your family in law. You remember when I shared all my drugs with you? And now you cast me out, exile, scumfuck. I guess I do blame you. I guess I figure, I would do better, if I was in your place. But morality is tiring. You felt healthy and energetic, and thought you would give me a piece of your mind. You know, you're asking me, ignorantly, unknowingly, to reach inside myself, and see if I have any ethics or morality. I won't even talk about soul. Soul what? So I will. And I'm still fumbling around. Tickling glistening entrails. I got guts.

But I don't know yet, if I would sell my soul, or if i already have. Maybe I want to. Maybe I will. Maybe I have. Maybe money is my God. Maybe it's a very simple algebraic equation. Maybe I just want a needle in my arm all the time, maybe it doesn't matter what's in it. That's why I use the word sick. Because it is sick. But I haven't evolved fully yet. I still have perspective, morality, ethics. I feel guilty, and I try to atone for my sins. But I'm moving out shortly. Maybe I will skip the breakdown stage and go straight to - well, it would be so uncouth to, is a proposition. Come is a verb.

Lou Reed was accurate. When you put a spike into your vein, it does make you feel like a man. It's my substitute, for losing my women. I'm hirsute, at least, as Rose says, and I love that she loves it. She was one of three godesses I met on my journey - not bad for one walk. But I was left by two of them, and it emasculated me. I feel weak, and impotent, and lacking. So I embrace drugs - they substitute - it's a bourgiouse supplement. It's my war, my struggle, self-imposed. It's goth-schlock, although I subsumed it into my own alien homeworld aesthetic. It's not a justification, merely an explanation, as to how I've arrived here.

When I wrap up the tie, slap the crook, and prep the veins, I start feeling the rush already. Then I clean the site. Then I poise the spike. Then comes the sweetest part of all, the contact, the injection. Gingerly, but kind of roughly, I stick myself, I hit the vein, I hit my mark, I've become a good marksman, I go by feel, not by sight. I draw a bit of blood into the syringe, when I see the red, that beautiful dark crimson tainting the clarity of that sterile H2O I know I've hit the bullseye. Then I plunge. I push the plunger down, slowly, not too fast, but not TOO slow. I love the sight, but I don't linger. It's business. There's a hit and it's time to load it, time to put it directly in my system, cut to the chase. So I push and push, it's not too painful, just a little sting to know I'm in. And in a few seconds, I finish, immediately release the tie, and stretch out my arm. If I've really hit the vein good, then a river of blood pours out the site, down rightey, spills over the crook of the arm, and that is the sweetest sight in the world, so beautiful it brings tears to my eyes.

And then - split seconds later, comes the rush, what I live for. Ketamine, passing the blood brain barrier and hitting my synapses, close to a gram, a monster hit for a monster. A cotton fuzz, a feeling of safety and accomplishment, shelter sought. A painful awkward compromised exterior to zero, numb, in less than one thousand milliseconds. Herein lies the hook. And it's beautiful. It's unusual. It's off the beaten path, but there are many who know. It's sick and it's sublime. It's this:

It feels like I got away with something, the ultimate bank heist. All the drama about injection, about hiding away like a scumfuck, a weak disgusting drug addict, it's over, it don't matter no more, I did what had to be done. I'm driving the getaway car, full speed, past the limit, to oblivion, the coolest club in the neighborhood. SO LONG, SUCKERS! It's a fix. It patches over the cracks - and there's so many these days - the Chinese curse, may you live in interesting times. It's so old, and I feel like an old soul, and it's not all that cool, but it will be, when the oil runs out. You know.