Garden of Fiends

by Matthews, Mark

  I have to admit I saw a bit of hope in Trevor’s death. With him gone and my family devastated, I thought I’d finally have room to shine. But there’s nothing people hate more than someone who tries to shine through grief. My hope mocked their mourning. It was unintentional, but it helped me realize the truth about my station in the Samson family. Even with the death of my older brother, I would never become the coveted eldest child. I would always be in the middle—always invisible.

  Maybe I’ll have a more useful transparency once I have a few potsticking holes. Maybe my family will see the real me, the one in pain, when they see what I’ve given up to feel whole. And if they don’t, at least I’ll be high.

  I try to summon my courage about the surgery ahead, but I keep thinking about what Shankara said. Did she really sleep with my brother, or was she just trying to get a rise out of me? A lot of scum in my circle know about Trevor; some of them knew him back when he was just a stoner. He’d score bags from the Snake Hill residents, never thinking he’d get into anything harder, until the day a particularly pushy pusher convinced him to buy a few hits of liquid atlys.

  “Hey, Earth to Perry.”

  Loshi tries to snap his fingers in front of my face, but they’re too sticky with Shankara’s blood to snap.

  “Do you think she was telling the truth about my brother?”

  “That twat is a few syrup pouches shy of a waffle. You shouldn’t trust anything she says. I guess you can’t anymore.” He snickers, elbowing my ribs. I swear I hear them crack, but it’s just a syringe breaking under Loshi’s shoe.

  The guards at the pagoda recognize him immediately, but this is my first time getting so close to the Kum Den. They look me up and down a few times. I don’t know what disqualifications they look for, since a person would have to be a dirtbag to want into this part of the Smokehouse.

  “Whatsyer name?” one of the guards asks. I start to answer, but he continues. “You look like a Gerald. That’s my brother’s name. You look like my brother. Is your name Gerald? Maybe Gerry?”

  “No, it’s Perry.” The big lug stares me down, silent. “Uh, it rhymes with Gerry, though.”

  He smiles. “Yeah, yeah, that must be why. Come on in, boys. Line starts to the left.”

  When we enter the pagoda, ten addicts look up at us and glare. We’re not stealing anything from them, yet they all look like we raped their dogs for half a line of coke. The looks might not be undeserved; I don’t always remember what I do when I’m high.

  A redhead with a meth-scratched face sitting two chairs away from Ling’s office used to be a girl I knew named Becca. She’s probably still named Becca, but she isn’t the girl I knew. The girl I knew was pretty. She had nice legs and a serviceable rack, and her face was a gorgeous bit of strawberry tart. Ivory skin accented with delicate freckles and soft petals of lips were your reward if you could get her high enough. I thought she was a bad methhead when I knew her, but she’s worse now. Either that or her last potstick-surgeon used a rake on her face instead of a knife.

  As Loshi talks to a chalky black guy with eight gold chains and no teeth, my eyes make the journey up the spiral staircase to my right. Cutting stations are situated on each level, except for the observatory at the top, which is gated and guarded. It makes me want to go to the top even more, but rumor has it the gilded balcony’s freedom belongs to Ling alone. Selfish prick. All I want are a few moments up there, to look out and see Serena on her own porch, joyful that I can finally look back at her. She’s waited so long . . .

  It’s easy to slip into false fantasies about Serena, especially when I’m starving and atlys sick. And why the fuck shouldn’t I? They’re my memories to warp, aren’t they? I don’t think she would ever come back to me, but it makes me happy to lie to myself. Even if that cuntrag lawyer weren’t in the picture, I think she’d be happy just being free of me.

  Like she’s so fucking great.

  It’s hard to keep my eyes open. Each time the line shortens, Loshi has to tug me into the next chair. I faintly hear him ask his new friend why he would potstick if he has gold, but I know the answer before the man says it.

  “A man’s gotta look his best, don’t he?” he says, slapping a divoted hand on Loshi’s thigh. I hadn’t expected the man to have such a high-pitched voice squeak through his floppy lips. It’s less a voice and more an educated fart.

  Screams from the cutting rooms shock me alert. We’re only a few people away from the door, only a few people away from having a chunk torn out of my flesh. It’s easy to tell the first timers from the newbies, even without seeing their potstuck bodies. The newbies don’t stop looking scared about the knife, but there’s a confidence in them—they know the worth in what they’re doing. Just a little piece to get some peace. Just a little shame, and the places drained of worth are filled with something else, something sober folks would never understand. Newbies are enlightened. Delusional, but enlightened. If I weren’t so nauseated by withdrawal, I might think it was pathetic.

  What’s really pathetic is how easy it is for a place like the Kum Den Smokehouse to operate. Here we are, fiends of the streets, selling our poisoned meat to the richest, fattest Primetimers in Baltimore and, wouldn’t you know, the richest and fattest are the folks in charge. Politicians don’t frequent the Kum Den; what kind of message would that send to the voters? I guess that’s why ol’ Ling started offering delivery. As long as he gives enough money back to the city, the city has no problem with him slicing and dicing the drug addicts. They never say it outright, but allowing the restaurant to broadcast commercials on the street screens trumpets their support. The Smokehouse even sponsors the WiFi in some of the kiosks, and if you mention that fact at the restaurant, you receive a free basket of “chicken” tenders.

  The toothless guy enters Ling’s office, and Loshi slides into his seat. I’m about to move into his when someone belches my name. I don’t want to turn because I don’t want to see Becca’s tapioca face, but I turn anyway. I feel bad about wincing, but she doesn’t seem offended. She must be used to it.

  “You look good,” she says. I assume she doesn’t expect me to say the same about her, so I don’t. “How’s Selena?”

  I say “Serena,” realizing it’s the first time I’ve said her name aloud in weeks. It feels strange on my tongue. Maybe it is “Selena.”

  “You guys still over on Linwood?”

  “We broke up a while ago. Shit, I’ve seen you more recently than that.”

  “You have?” she asks, looking up at the ceiling in a daze.

  She’s as high as a fucking kite, smiling as blood blooms on her stomach. I want to be where she is. I want to be high. Sobriety is like being forced to read your little sister's diary, rife with the longing thoughts of an immature mind. If I have to suffer one more sappy memory digging in its spurs and riding me deeper into withdrawal, so help me God, I will—

  The door opens, and Loshi turns to me in glee before dashing into Ling’s office. I shake in an eager terror that makes Becca giggle.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I guess I feel like I won something today.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s just funny who you see here. People you never thought . . .”

  She smiles as she stumbles out of the pagoda. I stand to see her trip down the stairs and crash into one of the cannons. She recovers, straightening her ratty coat before she throws her head back with a boisterous laugh.

  The office door opens, and I yelp. As I scramble for it, I swear I hear the potstickers behind me cheer. That, and Becca’s comment, ups my anxiety, but once I see the bottles of atlys lined up on Sugarman’s desk, the cheers from starving brain sound loudest. I leap inside, and the door closes behind me.

  Ling Sugarman has the face of a Chinese baby and the body of a wrestler turned truck driver. His black hair is plastered so flush to his skull that I assume there’s a ponytail at the nape. I soon realize the hair is tattooed o
nto his head, flecks of white granting a fake sheen. Despite his strong Asian appearance, his voice is a robust muddle of Eastern European accents.

  “Have a seat.”

  I look for a chair, but there aren’t any. He nods to the floor, so I shakily lower myself as he nestles down in the plush seat behind the desk. Leaning forward, he menaces over me like the pagoda over Patterson Park. His lips curl back, revealing large white teeth, perfectly squared and spaced.

  “First time, yes?” he grunts. “I never forget a client.”

  “Even if their faces get fucked up by potsticking?”

  “With as many holes you people dig in your skin, you’re still the same on the inside. That’s what I recognize: the excremental remains of the life that done you wrong. Everyone has a different sob story, a different list of people to blame—hardly ever themselves. So, what’s your story, son? ‘Cuz you’re a new shade of shit.”

  “Just a normal guy, I guess.”

  “No one who enters my office is normal.”

  “Not even you?”

  “I love a newbie. Still so much piss and vinegar. We’ll drain that out in no time.”

  “You’re just trying to scare me.”

  Ling snorts. “And you’re just trying to be brave, to convince yourself that this is nothing to you. What is one lump of flesh compared to an entire body in ecstasy?” His teeth gleam as he nods. “This may be the first time you’ve met me, but I’ve met you thousands of times. So cut the crap and give me a vein.”

  Ling grabs a bottle of atlys and pierces the top with a needle.

  “Does it hurt?” I ask.

  As he draws up the gorgeous elixir, he says, “It hurts more than you can imagine,” but I hear, “Of course not. Butterflies and unicorns from here on out, Perry.”

  I stand up, unzipping my pants.

  “Zip that shit up, kid. I don’t shoot sacks here.”

  “But I don’t get much liquid. I wanna get the most out of it.”

  He tosses me a length of tubing. “The liquid isn’t for you, it’s for my customers. The arm or nothing.”

  It’s no contest. I wrap the rubber around my arm and tie it off. It’s been too long since rubber constricted my flesh. It pinches at first but quickly settles into its usual spot. My arm is an easy chair for tourniquets.

  I'm sweating as the syringe nears, but I feel like crying in joy. As much as I fear what will follow the hit, as much as my desperation disgusts me, as much as it will hurt my family to see the clefted evidence of how low I've sunk, I look Ling Sugarman in his slanted eyes and say, “Thank you.”

  The initial prick is nice, but the flood feeds the craving. Ling snaps the tourniquet from my arm, and the drug rushes into my veins. They become golden railways, with atlys the rainbow train hauling visions of sugarplums and high-class trim throughout my body. The charge hardens every part of me, making me feel like the Incredible Hulk with more craving to fuck than smash.

  Both are out of the question. The nod is minutes away from embrace. Soon, its soft thighs will clamp around my head and I'll sleep without sickness, buried in the gorgeous muff of intoxication.

  Deliciously dazed, I'm led through a back door in Ling's office by a man with a word tattooed on his jaw. At first, I think it says “balls,” but after he turns his head I realize it says “ballistic.”

  Mr. Ballistic pulls me up several flights of stairs, ignoring every question I ask, and I can't blame him. My questions are jumbled and meaningless, especially when I ask if he also hears the girl’s voice calling the word “bear” from the distance. I stop talking. The surgeon in my cutting room appears to be in no mood for an emotional addict. His black, rubber apron hides the blood of past patients, but one look at his operation table makes no mistake about the brutality of the procedure. Sterilization liquids are untouched, still blue in their vats. One would think the liquid would have turned purple from all of the bloody instruments dipped inside.

  I'm thrown into a slippery leather chair that squeaks as I try to find a comfortable position. The surgeon doesn’t care about my comfort, proved by the way he clamps his gloved hand to my forehead and pins me to the headrest. The rumor is that the Kum Den surgeons are pre-med, practicing for the time when they can do reputable work, but this guy looks post-med, forced into the Kum Den because he can’t perform reputable work. It doesn’t matter to me. With a bag of atlys and a wad of cash in hand, who could care about a few crude cuts?

  “Where do you want it from?” he asks gruffly.

  My voice is trapped somewhere behind my fear, but I’m able to point to my thigh. He nods, bending over me with the scalpel. Before he’s able to dig in, my voice emerges. “Is that clean?”

  He sneers. “Are you? If it was my choice, I’d wear an iron suit while touching you filthy rats. All the rubbers in the world ain’t enough to make this transaction safe.”

  “But the blue stuff—”

  “Jesus titty-fuckin’ Christ, fine!” He dips the scalpel into the antiseptic liquid, shakes it out, and holds it two inches from my eyes.

  “There. You happy?”

  “No.” I exhale, more of a sob than a breath. “Just do it.”

  The initial scalpel slice is similar to a needle, but it lacks the glorious result. Instead of the Midas touch of intoxication filling my body with glittering wealth, the scalpel drags. It tears and twists and scrapes at bone until my entire leg is a rock-hard hurt. I close my eyes and allow the atlys to take my mind’s reins.

  “Please steer me away from the pain. Please take me home.”

  My mind goes blank. Even atlys doesn't know where my home is.

  The surgeon's fingers are inside of me. One hand digs, one tugs—like an impatient kid who wants at the pumpkin guts before fully removing the top. I imagine him making a jack-o’-lantern of me, popping out triangular Perry pieces and setting me on a porch for teenagers to terrorize. There's no need for a candle; atlys has already illuminated me. My insides crackle as they burn, but the drug makes me glow too deliciously for pain. Plus, how can I feel pain when Nadine’s there, holding my hand?

  “It will be over soon, Bear,” she says. “I'm going to get you out of here. I'll do whatever it takes.” I shake my head at her and she laughs. “Silly Bear, you don't get to say no.”

  My body screams when the surgeon cinches the last stitch. He breaks the trance. The liquid he sprays across the wound stings before it cools, but the relief is gone when I see a piece of me sitting in a pan. It's the size of a baseball, fraught with its own red stitching. It sickens me to think it’ll be inside some Primetimer's belly soon. I’m really one of them now. I'm a potsticker.

  My head spins when the surgeon pulls me out of the chair. He opens a safe and removes a pouch he shoves into my hand.

  “Twenty grams of powder. One hundred bucks cash,” he says. “Now get out.”

  I hadn't considered how hard it would be to walk out of the Smokehouse after being stuck. The combination of raw atlys and a carved-up leg does me no favors as I descend the spiral staircase. I can't tell if the people in the waiting room look at me with fear of what awaits them, or excitement. I had longed to be Becca in her bloody high, so there are probably a few addicts who think I’m the luckiest fuck in the world.

  I ooze down the stairs, caressing the railing as if its cold metal skin will slick the pain away, leaving the sweet pulse of raw atlys. But it doesn’t. It barely catches me when I stumble down the stairs.

  My first step out of the Kum Den is like the cold slap of a bitch in heat. Reality is so beautiful when she’s angry. I’d give up another chunk of thigh to fuck the fury out of her.

  Dusk has fallen over the park and Loshi is nowhere to be found. I want to collapse, half because I want something to rub my dick against. At this point, a gopher hole would do. I have to get home, back to my binoculars. I have to see Serena and pound my pain into pleasure.

  I feel like I’m walking, taking large, slow steps, but I make no progress through the park. I re
alize I must look like a mental patient on the moon, but I can't help it. Some asshole stops to take a video of me with his phone. I try to tell him to fuck off, but my tongue has gone numb. It lounges in my mouth, sticking to my lips like sluggish honey. I give him the finger instead, but it’s the wrong one. My pinkie pops up, giving the kid more pathetic gold for his blog.

  The asshole suddenly retreats. I'm able to bark, “Yeah, you better run,” but his exit has nothing to do with me. It’s because of the burly, suited man stomping toward me with a baseball bat in hand.

  I recognize him. I should run away, but my brain moves too slow to process the command. Robert Rackman is too fast for me anyway. I hold up my hands in surrender, but he doesn’t want surrender. He wants to hit a homerun with my head.

  I stumble backward as he swings the bat. I’m grateful for my loss of balance until I realize it’s laid me out on the ground, no stumbles left to save me. Robert’s face is solid stone as he looks down, but when he sees the blood seeping through my pants, it twists into a grin.

  “You stupid piece of trash,” he says. “I knew it would come to this. I told Serena a hundred times.”

  “Now you can tell her ‘I told you so.’ You’re welcome for that,” I say. I try to crawl backward, but he stays on top of me.

  “I don’t need to say it. She knows the bullets she’s dodged since leaving you. And I know,” Robert says, pointing the bat at my head, “that you’ve been watching her.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’ve been spying on her from the park. I’m a lawyer, you fuck. You can’t lie to me.”

  “Bullshit. Serena lies to you every time she says she doesn’t miss me or atlys. I’m sure she’s glad for the bullets she’s dodged, but that doesn’t change the fact that she will always miss my big, fat needle.”

  He kicks me in the side, knocking the wind from my lungs. There’s no point in trying to scream for help. Help would only come if the tables were turned.