Spine
Page 7
That’s brotherly love for you. Priceless.
Avoiding cocaine was easy enough. Even Rob and Pete steered clear of that shit. ‘Too bloody expensive’ was the main reason. Not the fact that it was dangerous, illegal, bad for your health, that it could rot the inside of your nose. Thank God neither of them were millionaires. Ecstasy was a little trickier to side step. Everyone was on it at one time. ‘Cause it was so bloody cheap. A fiver a hit. And one decent hit would last you all night long. That’s why it was the student’s choice. Cheaper than a bus-ride home according to Rob. Drunk out of my mind on my twenty-first birthday, I stupidly popped half an E and ended up at some house party in the middle of Clifton. Had no idea how or why I was there. If it had been to fuck some stunning redhead then maybe I’d understand. But this party was a complete sausage-fest, apart from the house-owner’s girlfriend who made it pretty clear that she wanted us gone by morning.
For the next fifteen years, I managed to stay completely away from any form of narcotic. My brother smoked the occasional joint with Pete, but that was about it. Nothing major. No habits, no rehab stints, just your usual college depravity. I got married to Amber (the stunning redhead that I didn’t find in that shithole of a house party), and got my dream-teaching job at the local secondary school. Life was pretty great.
Then After-Eye came along. And everything changed.
It was the latest drug craze to hit the streets. Looking back, the craziest thing about it was the fact that it was legal. You could order the stuff online—with free next-day delivery! I mean, the stuff was mad. Bonkers! And the world had never seen such an influx of users since cocaine. Everyone was using it. Even people who hadn’t gone to college, who hadn’t been peer-pressured into smoking a joint were popping two or three at a time. It was messed up. Even Pete’s grandmother was on the stuff—and she was a seventy-two-year-old widow for Christ’s sake!
But then came the side effects. They started off mild. Zero appetite, mood swings, weight loss. Everything you’d expect from a night on drugs. But then the addictions came, and the serious health problems; liver failure, heart attacks, strokes, mental problems.
Death.
Eventually the government banned the stuff, said it was too dangerous, especially buying it online; so many dodgy sellers out there, no way of keeping tabs on the quality. Some patients were prescribed a small, controlled dosage if their doctor or psychiatrist saw fit. But it was rare. The patient had to have been grieving to the point of suicide. And even that took some proving.
Today, you can’t get hold of the stuff online, or at your doctors. It’s now all in the hands of street dealers and junkies. And the quality is so poor, the effects only last a half hour or so, but the side effects are amplified.
But sometimes a half hour is all you need. Thirty minutes to tell someone goodbye, that you love them, that you miss them. That you’re sorry for everything. You see at first, everyone thought that After-Eye was a hoax, a big fat joke to show the world just how gullible and dumb it can be. But it’s not a lie. This stuff is real. One pill (two if the quality is poor) and you’ll see things that aren’t meant to be seen.
I never planned to take it. Pete slipped it into my beer the day after Rob was killed. I always thought that whatever you saw, whoever showed up in your bedroom, in your living room, was all just a hallucination, like the effects of LSD.
But it wasn’t. I know that now. I knew it as soon as I saw Rob, sitting on my couch, next to Pete, like we were just having another boy’s night in. Like we did most Friday nights.
I hated Pete for putting me through that, letting me see Rob in such a way.
I don’t anymore.
How could I? Rob was—is—my brother, and I never got the chance to say goodbye; I never got the chance to tell him that I missed him, how much I loved him. But then suddenly I did. I could tell him anything. Well, for as long as the drug lasted. And that first hit only lasted about forty minutes. By the time I was ready to believe that this was truly Rob, I had to watch him fade to nothing, right there on my couch. It was horrible. Absolutely heart-wrenching. To be given a gift and have to watch it disappear in front of your very eyes. I couldn’t bear it. I had to have another hit. Just one more. I had to see his face again.
And that’s when the addiction started. One hit just wasn’t enough. I couldn’t lose my brother all over again. I had to have him in my life. Being without him was just too much to tolerate. It took me a month or so to find an After-Eye dealer, one that I could trust. But a trustworthy drug dealer wasn’t exactly the easiest thing to find. Pete was no good. He stole his grandmother’s last dose. Just for me. Unfortunately for her, life without her late-husband proved a little too much, and she killed herself.
Pete and I haven’t spoken since her death.
Everything changed the night Rob died.
The drug gives you no high at all. The only euphoria you get is from seeing a loved one again. Just as they were before they passed. It’s easy for sceptics to think that it’s all in your head; that it’s just the mind projecting what it wants to see, what it needs to see. But it is real. Rob tells me things…things that not even I know. He told me what Amber was doing last year, after her work Christmas party. When I confronted her, she denied it at first, told me that the drugs were making me paranoid. But then I found the emails, the text messages. Some prick from work was fucking my wife. And without the drug, without Rob being in my life again, I’d still be none the wiser. When she finally confessed everything, all the gory details, I asked her just one simple question: Why? She told me that she felt neglected, that I wanted to spend all my time, all my energy with my dead brother—instead of her. Well, what the fuck did she expect? Rob is everything to me. He practically raised me, looked out for me. Kept the bullies away. Taught me that life is worth living. She would have done the same in my shoes if she lost someone close to her. Her mother. Her father. Even her best friend. She also said that she was sick of all the money problems that this drug was causing; that all our funds, all our savings had dried up. Gone. But what the hell did she think would happen? It’s now two hundred a pill, and the more you take, the less effect it has. I’ve been on the stuff for almost four years now, and I’m lucky to get twenty minutes with Rob. It’s not enough. I mean, of course, we’d have to make sacrifices to keep Rob with us. He’s family. He is Amber’s family too, and she just walked out on us. Just like that.
Good riddance, I say! We don’t need her! We’re better off without her anyway!
The house has been empty for some time now. Amber is long gone; not even a phone call or a text message. Just an empty wardrobe with a few stray boxes and other trinkets. Don’t think she even knows how sick I am. How would she? My liver is practically gone. I’ve been on the transplant list for two years. Lost my job at the school. They said my lateness, constant absence, my lack of focus; it just wasn’t up to standard. Which means I barely scrape together enough cash for food let alone After-Eye. Can’t sleep at night. It’s all part of the side effects. In the beginning, they said that the harm the drug could do was reversible, that once you got off the stuff, everything would heal. But for us, The Dead-Heads, there is no hope. There is no returning to the real world. I no longer see my brother, no matter how much After-Eye I swallow. I think he saw the damage and just walked away. I don’t blame him. But taking it is no longer just about Rob. It’s much more than that. My brother was a guide. He showed me that there’s more to life. I didn’t understand it until the day he died. The only world we know is the after-life. To touch it, see it for ourselves, is too hard to walk away from, too hard to let go. This life is just one plane of existence, just one view. There is another world waiting for us to explore. When the darkness comes, there will be light. When the pain consumes us, there will be relief.
I’ll be dead soon. But I won’t be alone.
You can have this world. It’s yours now.
* * *
It was fun while it lasted…
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About the Author
Steven Jenkins was born in the small Welsh town of Llanelli, where he began writing stories at the age of eight, inspired by '80s horror movies and novels by Richard Matheson.
During Steven's teenage years, he became a great lover of writing dark and twisted poems—six of which gained him publications with Poetry Now, Brownstone Books, and Strong Words.
Over the next few years, as well as becoming a husband and father, Steven spent his free time writing short stories, achieving further publication with Dark Moon Digest. And in 2014 his debut novel, Fourteen Days was published by Barking Rain Press.
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SPINE
Copyright © 2015 by Steven Jenkins
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All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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The right of Steven Jenkins to be identified as the author of the Work has been asserted to him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Published in Great Britain in 2015 by Different Cloud Pu
blishing.