Fiend by Peter Stenson Read Free Book Online

overhead light flickers and the wind picks up even more. It’s coming from the north because with each exhale, the smoke slips past my face, back toward the Twin Cities and my dead parents and KK.
    But for a brief moment, I’m not thinking about all that. I’m feeling the closest thing I can think of to God and he’s playing the samba inside of my body, his fingers gentle as they press on the backs of my retinas, my spine, the tendons along my hip flexors. I’m thinking that I love drugs more than anything. That they are the one and only constant in my life. Yeah, they demand a lot of attention and effort, but their love is legendary, their compassion endless. I hold each hit for hours, exhale for decades. The determination that comes with the onset of a high rushes back and I’m all about conquering the world and making money and finding happiness in the form of a loving woman who knows when it’s time to spread her legs and when it’s time to brush the backs of her nails across my cheek and then I’m thinking about this being the same thing as what God is doing to me now.
    I love it when my heart rattles against my uvula.
    I love it when my vision is a camera shutter.
    I love it when I know that someday, I will do great things.
    I love it when methamphetamines make things okay.
    But I don’t love it when I start to hallucinate because the line between knowing it’s only the drugs and knowing your psyche is about to snap the fuck apart like a high wire is oh so delicate. The giggles. I hear them. I close my eyes and try to remember how I felt half a second before—glorious, about to take over the world—but it’s too late, I’ve switched. I’ve gone from high to completely fucked. I hear more giggles.
    The guy, Travis, spins around, shotgun raised. Maybe he’s fucked too. But then Typewriter drops the pipe and I know the giggles must be real because he’s not the kind of guy to ever drop the pipe.
    Travis says, We got to go, and Typewriter keeps repeating
fuck
. I point my shotgun in the direction of the giggles, the dumpster, the tire rack, but there’s just darkness and I realize we’re under the lights with open space on all sides. I have no idea how to hold the gun. Then demonic laughs come from behind us and we all spin in that direction and then to our right and I see these things coming out of the shadows, a hand here, a face there, giggles all around us. They’re closing in. There must be ten of them, kids and women and men, most of them naked or in pajamas and it’s not God inside my body anymore, but their giggles, loud like sick little kids burning ants, amazed at their power over another living thing.
    They don’t shuffle like the ones in the movies. They walk in careful steps, spines straight, arms at their sides. Some laugh with their mouths closed, some open. I don’t know howlong I’m supposed to wait, how far my short barrel can fire, if the sound will attract more, and I’m thinking of these things, along with visceral images of their fingers and nails—ones that a week ago were braiding their daughter’s hair and ringing up packs of cigarettes at SuperAmerica—tearing into me, gouging out my eyes.
    I want Travis to tell me what to do. Even Typewriter. Somebody to give me direction, tell me where to aim, when to fire, but my voice’s gone dry with fear.
    We can see these walking dead motherfuckers clearly now under the overhead lights. I’ve locked onto one guy and it’s like his upper lip has disintegrated, the space between his nose and mouth gone, just flashes of white bone and tooth. He’s staring right at me and for a second it seems like there’s a person inside there, maybe still able to think and feel. Maybe he can’t help the giggles and missing flesh, maybe it’s something beyond his control, some outside force. But then he laughs really fucking loud and I don’t think I mean to, but I press a touch harder on the trigger.
    The kick is worse than I would have