The House That Addiction Built (un-finished 1st draft, no edits)

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This is a set-up to a story I began writing back in 2012, based loosely on the way the things were in my life circa 2009. It the original first draft I'd written, plagued with errors and bad grammar. I thought editing it would take away something from it so i posted it as is. I couldn't really figure out where this story was going so it kind of just flopped. I thought it was pretty interesting and deserved sharing with the Booksie community. It's not really a good story...or a story at all, but i remember the weird places i was in revelation of where I've been while writing this and it brings on a sense of nostalgia today, reading it.
Enjoy and thanks for reading :)

"Stop it." Two simple words. It was all I could latch on to saying with my lack of verbal skills I was currently experiencing. Ironically enough, there was no reason behind me saying these words, really. Reality was seeping back through the cracks of my comprehension. First my sight, blurred but there. Then my hearing followed. The blood constricted from my brain caused my hearing and vision to cut out and be replaced with a comatose black out. The distinguishable sound that I can only describe as the "wah wahs". After I came to my senses, the wah wahs faded out to the sound of my box fan creaking at full speed.

My two roommates Devin and OC are sitting on the couch adjacent to the couch I'm currently melted into, pointing and laughing at me. I take a breath and try to swallow the over abundance of saliva in my mouth. It tastes coppery, like I have a mouth full of pennies. I figure it's blood I'm tasting which immediately makes sense. I put the puzzle pieces together in my mind and I asses what's happened. I nodded out.

"How long was I out," I ask unconvincing to my wonder. Devin catches his breath and composure.

"About thirty minutes. You really should slow down, you were snoring." He responds as he puts a can of Dust Remover to his mouth, pulls the trigger and inhales.

"You're really one to talk." i wanna say, but don't. Devin has always struck me as a "do as i say not as i do" kind of guy. The entire three years I've known him I've never known him to take it easy on anything. He's one of those addicts who loves to blur his metaphorical line between life and death by going so hard on drugs and alcohol that you just assume he's not coming back from where he is. In the back of my mind though, I know he will. His addiction manifests through every aspect of his everyday life. He is the biggest workaholic that I know. He drives like he's from Florida, which is terribly, and he drinks likes man who just caught his wife cheating on him.

I watch as he takes a good fifteen second draw. He throws the can across the couch in OC's direction while staring me down. In the deepest, metallic, almost haunting sounding voice that would make a heavy metal vocalist jealous, he exhales while saying, "see y'all soon." I watch the consciousness leave his eyes. He slouches over and starts drooling.

In my mind, I'm trying to play back the events of the day prior. I try to remember exactly who's idea it was to spend the evening huffing compressed air.

OC. Of course. The biggest junkie I've ever met. The kind of person you can pick out of a crowd and just know, "he's on something". Honestly the only reason Devin and I let him stay with us is because he is in fact gainfully employed. Which reluctant to admit, gives him the one up on having him as a roommate over myself. He has a full time job as a waiter over at a local steakhouse. When I met him he even introduced himself as OC. "OC" in fact is not his birth given name. OC are his initials. Born to an Irish catholic family, his parents named him Oliver Callahan. After the first month of him moving in though, I realized why he had shortened his name to OC. He has a nasty Opiate addiction. " OC" goes hand in hand with the abbreviation of his drug of choice, OxyContin. How he had acquired a prescription, I'll never know. Any self respecting doctor would look at the kid and automatically see someone who's just desperately trying to score pills. The sad thing is it's not just pills. It's anything he can get his hands on. Which leads me to tonight. He probably couldn't find anything worth his time so he resorted to buying two large cans of dust remover. It's sad really how you can get something this intense from a super market with the change you collect in your cup holder in your car.

I watch Devin come back into it as I start to loose interest in the entire situation. OC already has the cans in his hands squaring off to inhale both at the same time. He calls it his "super hit". Which I feel further proves my opinion of him. I manage to find enough energy to pull myself up off the couch and stand up. I take in how nasty we've let the living room become. Between the three of us contributing all of our personal furniture and random belongings to our household it's safe to say we could comfortably furnish a house twice the size of ours. I've gotten used to the clutter of my home, a two bedroom one bathroom house at the corner of two intersecting streets. It's a dump. It smells and is poorly maintained, but I figure hell, I live on the couch anyways and rent is almost non existent. Devin being the only person on the lease and OC taking on half the bills, I contribute by selling marijuana and my Xanax prescription every month in order to keep the three of us high on whatever we could find.

The box fan in the corner of the room is creaking so loud these days. It's almost as if it gets worse everyday, like it's about to come off the motor and saw through the room. Sometimes in my drug induced dazes I notice the obnoxious noise and increasingly get paranoid. I have day dreams of the fan flying out of the box and slicing through everyone in the room. As unlikely as that actually is, it makes so much more sense at those levels of paranoia.

I look over to my left. I notice the bathroom light is on from when OC used it earlier to vomit, shoot up, masturbate; I never really know what he does in there. I use this as an excuse to leave the room and the irritating noise of the box fan which has now begun to bring my paranoia to unbearable heights.

"You left the fucking light on, you idiot." I say to OC without looking at him. He stares at me blankly still drooling. I can tell he hasn't quite fully come back into reality yet. He starts slurring inaudibly under his slow breath. I take this as my que to walk out of the room.

"I'm glad I don't have to pay bills around here," I say off handedly as I shut the bathroom door behind me. I lock the door and walk to the sink. I open the medicine cabinet-mirror-combo and take out my tooth brush and toothpaste. I start the mundane task of brushing my teeth. I can still only taste blood and dust remover chemicals, even over the toothpaste. The chemicals they add to dust remover in order to prevent inhalation abuse are almost enough to deter an addict like myself to consider doing something as embarrassing as huffing dust remover just to get high. "Whatever, fuck it," I think. I can't help it. This is who I am, an addict. Just like Devin and OC. We're perfect for each other. Our little addict family.

Submitted: July 31, 2015

Literary Fiction dark fiction drugs short story tragedy addiction literary

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Comments

Jeff Bezaire

Work on this, dude. This has the makings of a great story.

Sat, August 1st, 2015 1:54am

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I appreciate that, sincerely. I was in love with it while i was writing it. I think it was therapy for me though because there is a lot of myself and my own experiences in this. Maybe it was just something i had to get off my chest. Thanks for reading!
-James Scott

Fri, July 31st, 2015 7:02pm

SuzonneH

Wow. This was good so far. But, let me tell you something. My wonderful brother was/is a druggie and drug dealer. He ended up raping me and telling me to kill myself. Drugs are no fun and they hurt everyone.

Sat, August 1st, 2015 2:44am

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Very true! I myself have struggled with many typed of addiction. Ive been sober for 3 years now but it still seems to creep into my writing. In my other story The Colony, the main character is a heroine addict who looses his arm from using dirty needles....eww! A lot this that you read actually is based loosely off a time in my life where i could consider myself to be like this character. It's sad to read but it truly helps me to get it out.
Thanks for reading!
-James Scott

Fri, July 31st, 2015 7:52pm

Keke Serene

...Why have I not read anything by you before?! Or maybe I have but I don't remember or maybe I did but I didn't or maybe it was in a parallel universe or.... THIS WAS AMAZING. I loved this, well not what they were doing but it was so perfectly written I almost feel like crying for joy, I love reading good writing. Yes, I really do... I mean, gosh. Wow. I feel like I'm you... This was so excellently written... I think the name is also very fitting. Didn't know they put chemicals in dust removers to deter addicts I mean.... Doesn't that make it even more dangerous...??? Sorry, I am being incoherent. Just the way you described OC and Devin was just pure gold, I'd love to get to know them better... Are you going to continue this, bc that would be aaaammmAAAZING. Is my beg worth anything?! Please, please, please, continue this, please, please please... I want to get to know these guys better. if you don't I will feel robbed of a friend I never had! And I'm like, super lonely! My mom won't even let me have a cat! :/ I mean, If this was an unedited draft, good lord, what... Okay. Well done! This was excellent bravo! Sorry if you thibkbim crazy or annoying or both....

Thu, November 5th, 2015 10:40pm