The Bodies We Wear by Jeyn Roberts Read Free Book Online Page A

This is why so few Heam overdosers can kick the drug. It’s worse than cigarettes. It makes heroin look like a baby’s bottle. There is nothing in the world that can come close to the cravings a Heam addict suffers. These cravings never subside. You can’t ignore them and no amount of time will make them fade.
    Sounds crazy, right? Who on earth would willingly take something that technically has to kill them in order to work? Especially with such crappy odds of overdosing. One out of a hundred isn’t very good.
    The risk was apparently nothing compared to the results.
    When early Heam users came back to life, they brought stories with them. They’d seen an amazing place while they were dead—a world of peace and beauty that had no ugliness or suffering. They often reported feeling completely happy and relaxed. Many of them saw relatives who had died. They saw angels and their bodies floated on the air. It was the out-of-body experience to end all experiences.
    They saw the white light.
    They reached out and touched it. They felt its absolute warmth.
    Heaven.
    Euphoria.
    And they were fine. No problems.
    Overnight it became the world’s biggest threat and salvation at the same time.
    Suddenly people who had never thought of taking drugs were lining up in the streets for the drug that would let them glimpse the afterlife. Little blue-haired grandmothers were overdosing on Heam and children were being rushed to the hospital in shocking numbers. People stopped going to work and children started dying because mothers were neglecting to feed them.
    Religious groups were torn. Here was the proof of heaven’s existence that the devout had been asserting for thousands of years. The afterlife existed and you could see it for a cheap price. But others began preaching that Heam was not the path to salvation, that just because you saw heaven didn’t mean your soul would go there when you died. God had made heaven elusive for a reason and humans were not meant to test God’s plan. Taking the drug quickly went from being an answer to being a sin but even that didn’t stop people from using.
    In fact, it made things worse.
    Debates raged around the world. Atheists and scientists alike argued that Heam was not a pathway to heaven but a chemical reaction in the body. It was the mind’s way of coping with the body’s shutdown. The images people saw were only brain waves and neurons misfiring in the seconds before death occurred. It was nothing but a nice dream to have while you were dying.
    No one listened.
    The Church of Heam sprang up. It was a place where one could worship and get high at the same time. Governments tried to shut it down but new congregations kept growing. It’s now considered a cult by most countries so the church has gone underground, its followers dropping Heam in secret. But it still exists.
    And people continued to die.
    But no one seemed to care.
    Then a select few began to report seeing another place. One of evil and sadness. Of fire and brimstone. Pain. It only confirmed people’s beliefs that there really was a heaven. If heaven was God’s great world, then it was only natural that its opposite existed too.
    And did society really fall into chaos and anarchy? No, of course not. People still work jobs and the government still functions. But the world is different. Heam changed everything.
    Heam is illegal and the punishment for creating and distributing it can mean a life sentence. In some countries, it can result in the death penalty. After so many years, it is now considered a taboo, and there is no easy way out. Heam addicts are not forgiven. They don’t get the breaks that other drug abusers get.
    No second chances.
    A drug that the world hates and loves at the same time.
    I always wondered: if those two university students could have seen the future, would they have gone ahead with the drug? It’s hard to say. They’re both dead now, victims of their own invention. They never lived long enough