Deeper Illusions

by Jocoby, Annie

  The dreadlocks guy spoke. “Who are you?” Then he looked me up and down. “You don’t look like a cop, but you never know anymore. Those undercover cats can look pretty good these days.”

  Should I give them my real name? Sure, what the hell. “Iris. Iris Gallagher. And yours?”

  Still looking slightly suspicious, the dreadlocked kid held out his hand “Brad. Brad White. Now, why are you here?”

  “Shaun sent me from down the street. He said that I could, uh, maybe stay here for awhile.”

  Brad narrowed his eyes. “Let me see those arms. You don’t look like a junkie.”

  “I’m not. At least not yet,” I said, showing him my arms.

  “Then why are you here?”

  “I…something happened to me. Well, a few things have happened to me. And I need some way to forget them for awhile.”

  He nodded. “Sounds like a familiar story.” Then he motioned his hand in a sweeping motion. “You can stay here for as long as you need. There’s no electricity here, and no running water. But we got a guy bringing us food every few days and soda from the 7-11 around the corner.”

  “I hate to ask this, but-“

  “Where do we do our business?” He apparently was trying to be at least somewhat delicate to my sensibilities.

  I nodded.

  “Well, let’s just say that after a little while you’re not going to care about that, and leave it at that.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Come here,” he said, taking my hand. He led me up the creaky stairs, which included a missing stair, and into a room with a closed door. There were several newspapers stuffed into the crack underneath the door. Then he opened the door, and I almost fled right then and there. There were newspapers on the floor, and, on these newspapers, was where the people in the house did their business.

  I looked at him and asked “how does this get cleaned up?”

  “We have designated people to do this every day. You get to earn drugs that way, so it is actually a popular job, believe it or not.”

  “And the food runner, what does that entail?”

  “We take turns doing that. Sometimes the food comes from the convenience store, other times the person dumpster dives. It doesn't really matter. If you're hungry, you eat it. If you're high, you don't care about it. Sometimes the dumpster dive is pretty good shit, though. Jackson over here,” he said, motioning to an unconscious young black guy with a bald head, sunglasses, low slung jeans and baseball t-shirt, “gets some good shit. He takes the bus over to a pizza joint a couple of miles away on a Wednesday, and finds about five pies there in the dumpster behind the place. Wednesdays are good around here,” he said, rubbing his slender belly.

  I nodded my head, already looking forward to Wednesday. What day was this? Monday. Two more days until pizza day. That is, assuming that young Jackson climbs out of his present stupor to get the promised pizzas. Then I asked “I notice that you seem to be the only person around here who is conscious. How does that work?”

  “In this house, there is always one person who agrees to not get high on a designated day. My day is Monday. Penny over there,” he said, motioning to a slight blonde girl in a t-shirt dress under a heavy coat, “is Tuesday. Jackson is Wednesday. Etc. We always have to have somebody around with their wits, in case the cops come, or there's an emergency, or something like that.”

  “I guess if I stay here, I'll get a designated day, too, huh?”

  “Sure. We may be a bunch of junkies, but we also have a kind cooperative society around here.”

  I took a deep breath, then looked at the white powder in my little baggie. How much should I use? How do I find a vein? The only drug that I had ever done was pot and, once, mushrooms. I looked over at Brad, who was eyeing me with an interested expression, while he munched on a bag of potato chips.

  “First food I’ve eaten in three days,” he said. “You look like you might need some help.”

  “I do,” I said, fighting back tears. “I’ve never done this before.”

  “Ok. Let’s see, you’re, what, a buck oh five, buck ten?”

  “Somewhere around there.”

  “Here, let me fill the syringe for you.” At that, he put a tiny dab on the spoon and lit it, just like Shaun had showed me. Then he filled the syringe to the right CC level. “Look here,” he said, taking out a sharpie and making a tiny black line. “This is how much you need to do. Anymore than that, and you might have problems. Any less, then you might not get a very good high. It’s like Goldilocks – you gotta get it just right.”

  Then, he brought out the rubber tourniquet and tied my arm off with it. I started to feel panicky upon feeling the tourniquet on my arm, as the memories of Rochelle and her attack started to flood my brain. I fought it down, though.

  Brad said “here, feel your vein.” I did, putting my finger into the position where his finger was. “Ok, now, you get your needle, and stick yourself right there.” I did so. “Now, push down the plunger.”

  I felt nauseated and terrified, but I did as I was told.

  At first I didn’t feel a thing. But then, after a few seconds....there were no words. I had never in my life felt this way. Rochelle and the bad man receded into the background. It was paradise. I literally hadn't a care in the world. I had the most vivid dreams about myself and Ryan. He was here with me, and nothing bad had happened at all to me, nor to him. We were perfect, whole and happy. So happy. So very happy....

  I had no idea how long I was in this state of bliss, but it was better than anything that I had ever felt before. Well, maybe not better than making love with Ryan, but it was the equivalent.

  But when I started to crash, it was horrible. First, I got hot, so hot that I walked out into the December air and stood outside, and was still burning up. I walked up and down the streets with no coat or hat, still in my Hello Kitty pajamas and tank top. I even had taken off my shoes. I wanted so much to take an ice cold bath, but the house didn’t have running water. I was halfway tempted to go and pay Shaun another visit, and ask him if I could take a cold bath there.

  Then came the shakes and the chills. Suddenly, there was no way for me to get warm. I piled my coat, hat and gloves on, and stood by the stove, which was woodburning. I would stand by that stove for hours, not feeling the heat at all. I was still chilled to the bone.

  Then came the violent twitches, pounding headache, nausea and vomiting.

  All this was cured with another hit, though, and paradise began anew.

  I did this for days, and didn't think anything of it, because everybody around me was doing the same. They were all going through the same thing.

  I started to get to know some of the people who were also staying at the house. Jackson, I learned, was a performing arts college grad who once performed on Broadway. He was a music major at a prestigious college, so he always had a radio with him that played his classical music CDs. Nobody seemed to mind, and it was relaxing to hear Vivaldi and Rachmaninoff, to tell the honest truth. It sure as hell beat rap.

  Penny was a girl who grew up much like Ryan, with a silver spoon in her mouth. From what I could tell, she did drugs for much the same reason Ryan did them – to forget about some serious sexual trauma in her youth, perpetuated at the hands of her father. She left home at age 14, same as Ryan, but didn't have a benevolent mentor like Ryan. Instead, she started living on the streets, prostituting herself and getting high. At age 25, she looked around 50. She told me that she had been living at this house for six months after having been thrown out of her last home by her pimp.

  There were several others who lived there as well. There was Lakisha, a thirty-something black girl who was the sometime girlfriend of Brad. There was Terry, who was a former computer geek. He graduated from a tech school and went to work in Silicon Valley in California before his drug habit got the best of him. There were also various transient people who came in and out, sometimes when I was conscious. Other times, I would wake up and they were just there.<
br />
  At some point, I needed a change of clothes, because I was getting ripe. A nice guy with extra pairs of sweats and t-shirts gave me one of his pairs of sweats and one of his t-shirts, and I put them on. “You didn't come prepared, didya, little one?” he said. To this, I merely shook my head. I changed in another room, being very careful about the rings in my underwear. Those rings were my connection to my real world, which was frightening. But, they were also my connection to Ryan, and this made me feel elated and depressed all at once.

  There was a nagging voice that told me that I needed to call him, but I couldn't bring myself to do so.

  I also wasn't thinking about what would happen when that gram was used up. I didn't want to face it.

  I ate and drank water when the designated runner brought food and soda from the convenience store down the street, which was every few days. As promised, Jackson brought pizza on Wednesday, but I was unconscious that day. When I came to, on Friday, all the pizza was gone. So, I didn't eat much, nor did I want to.

  All I wanted was on this spoon.

  Then, one night, to my absolute horror, Ryan appeared. My mind knew what was happening. My body couldn't react, though. My mind was somewhere else, but I was vaguely aware that he was picking me up and slinging me over his shoulder. Then he put me down on the floor next to him, then I was being picked up and put into a bed, a heavy coat being draped over me. Then his body was covering mine on the rickety cot. Then it was morning, and I was once again being picked up and carried down the stairs and into his Porsche. By then, I was more conscious about what was going on, but the twitches, chills and shakes were starting, and I was in serious need of another fix. My mind started to get desperate as I realized that a fix was not going to be coming now that Ryan had found me.

  How did he find me? I was trying not to be found. I didn't want reality. He was going to take me back there, where the bad man...attacked me. Inside my head, I was screaming, I was freezing, and I was feeling ready to puke. And I couldn't quit twitching. The car was making me more and more sick.

  Please, please, please Ryan, just give me what I need. I'll do anything, just give me what I need.

  But I couldn't talk. I just kept twitching, and panicking.

  Then I was in a hospital bed, an IV in my arm. I could feel myself convulsing on the bed, and Ryan's hand on my hair, stroking it as he was talking to me.

  On and on and on it went, for days. I shivered, convulsed, and shook, and was transferred to the drug floor as soon as a bed opened, then shivered, convulsed and shook there. My head was splitting, my ears ringing, and the feeling of dry heaves was constant. I had nothing in my stomach, so dry heaves was all there was. I felt like I was dying. I wanted to die. Anything would be better than this. Burn me at the stake, boil me in oil, bury me alive. Anything would be preferable to this.

  Finally, after days of the constant feeling that I wanted to die, I was able to sleep.

  Then I came to, apparently days later, although it seemed like only minutes. Ryan was sitting by the bed.

  He took my hand. “Hello, beautiful.”

  I looked at him, then looked away, feeling more than ashamed. I suddenly realized that I was now going to have to face what happened to me on the kitchen floor.

  I couldn't possibly get away from it now.

  “Ryan,” I said weakly. “I'm so sorry,” then started crying.

  “Beautiful, don't cry. I was worried sick about you, but I found you. We'll get through this together. What happened to you that made you go off the grid like that...we'll get through it.”

  “You don't understand. You don't understand. You don't understand,” I said through tears.

  He took a long breath, and rubbed my hand thoughtfully. “I know what happened to you.”

  “How do you know?”

  He stared at me, his beautiful eyes sorrowful. “The doctors examined you,” he said quietly. “They noticed that you had dried blood on your legs.”

  Then I turned my head again. I could feel myself shaking.

  “Beautiful, you can talk to me when you're ready. I need to know who did it.”

  I shook my head, the tears now coming fast and furious. I started sobbing uncontrollably, and he climbed into the bed with me, holding me and stroking my hair. I felt like I would never, ever stop crying uncontrollably. I was finally accessing the emotions of what happened to me with Andrew raping me. I was re-living it all. The tightening of the belt, the searing pain, the humiliation, the feeling of extreme violation. And it coming so closely on the heels of Rochelle's attack.

  It was too much, too much.

  I was sobbing so hard that I was hiccuping. I needed something, I needed a fix, I needed something to push this awful pain out of my head. The emotional pain was excruciating.

  Ryan just sat there in the bed with me, stroking my hair and my back. He kissed me on the forehead. “I'm going to lie here with you. I'm here, and I will never leave you again.”

  I cried for the rest of the night. At first my face and body was turned away from Ryan. Then, at some point, I buried my face in his chest and cried and cried and cried.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  After I stabilized, Ryan checked me out of the hospital, and informed me that he was taking me to Los Angeles, to the rehab facility where he stayed. “That place is world class, beautiful. You'll get what you need there.”

  I sighed. I was starting to get a little bit better, but the emotional issues were still like a 1,000 pound elephant sitting on my chest. “Ok,” I simply said. There was no arguing with him, I knew, so I didn't even try. Plus, I was feeling the familiar feeling of exhaustion and depression. I remembered this feeling from after the Rochelle attack, only now it was 1,000 times worse than that. I realized that I never mentally recovered from the Rochelle attack, at least not to the extent that I would be strong enough to survive something even more devastating.

  “Really? You aren't going to fight me on this?”

  “Ryan, no offense, but I feel that I have no fight left in me.”

  So, we took his plane out to Beverly Hills. I stood there, on the tarmac, waiting for the plane in the cold, feeling resentful and pissed-off. Ryan had his arms around me, but I felt like screaming. Christmas was coming, and I was going to be in this place. Nobody knew where I was going – I told my family and friends that Ryan and I were going to Jamaica for the holidays.

  Well, I was going someplace warm, but a sunny beach on Jamaica wasn't it.

  At the same time, I felt badly for Ryan. He, too, was going to be spending the holidays away from his mother and best friend. Sarah even invited us to spend Christmas with her.

  On the plane, Ryan was trying his best to make small talk, but I politely ignored him. I wasn't in the mood for his chipper observations. Plus, I was feeling extremely nauseated, and had been for awhile. Ryan told me that was normal with the drugs – my body was getting rid of the nasty poisons, so feeling sick was a good sign that my body was doing what it was supposed to.

  Still, Ryan talked “So, I've been thinking beautiful, about us. I know that what you want to do most in the world is to have an animal sanctuary. When you get better, I'd like to take you to some property I found just out of town. It's perfect – lots of trees and tall grass. I've also been in contact with some people who can help me in setting that up. I have to have a team of veterinarians working there, of course, and I'm in the process of finding out what else it entails. That will be an exciting project for us to work together.”

  I just huddled beneath a blanket and said nothing. There was a movie playing on the big screen television, and I pretended to be watching it. I didn't want him to talk to me anymore. But I really couldn't think about the television, either. I found that I had to have my mind a perfect blank, because if I started to think anything at all, I could only think of...him. Andrew. He was in my thoughts obsessively. So, I simply willed all thought away, and found that to be better. I watched the screen with a blank stare and tuned out Rya
n and everything else.

  I wanted that plane ride to be over. I wanted some peace and quiet, and some alone time.

  We arrived at LAX, then took a limo straight to the facility, where he checked me in.

  Betty, the woman who was there the last time, when Ryan was here, was sitting at the receptionist area again. She gave me a warm smile, but I didn't smile back. Ryan, did, however. “I called ahead of time. My wife needs to be checked in.”

  “Of course,” she said. “Mrs. Gallagher?”

  I nodded and said nothing.

  I got a room that was similar to where he stayed. Meaning that it was cozy and beautiful, and even had a little meditation area.

  I lay down on the bed, and Ryan lay next to me. “Beautiful, I want you to tell me your needs. I want to hold you, and touch you, but you need to tell me if you feel uncomfortable at all.”

  I looked at him quizzically. My mind was slow to process his words. “I don't understand,” I simply said.

  “You seem to flinch when I touch you. You don't say it bothers you, but I see the face you make.”

  I nodded. “I'm sorry about that. I really don't want to be touched right now,” I said, then turned my back on him and attempted to sleep. We were both on top of the covers, fully clothed. Then, I turned back to him and said “Actually, I hope you don't mind. I really need to be alone.”

  He looked briefly stricken, then his face was completely composed. “Of course, beautiful. I'll be staying at the Wilshire while you're here. I hope that I can come and visit you tomorrow during visitor hours.”

  “I'll call you and let you know,” I simply said, turning my back away from him again. I was fully clothed, including my shoes. I heard him leaving, then I sat up in bed and wondered what I would do until I was able to see somebody.