Garden of Fiends

by Matthews, Mark

  Crouching beside me, his voice lowers to a hostile whisper.

  “She made her choice, and it was the right one. You’re dead to her, you got it? You’re less than dead. You’re abortion slime, Perry. It’s as if you never existed.”

  I know it’s stupid to piss off a man with a baseball bat and a vendetta, but I’m too high to hold my tongue. And honestly, what damage could Robert do that I haven’t already done to myself?

  “She might say she doesn’t think of me when you’re around, but it’s not true. When she’s alone, when her fingers slide between her legs, she still pretends they’re mine.”

  The bat swings, smashing against the weeping wound in my thigh. Pain whips me from head to toe. As I writhe on the ground, a broken bottle cuts my arm. I wrap my hand around the jagged bottleneck and try to propel a wad of phlegm in Robert’s direction. When the loogie lands on my own face instead, he doubles over in laughter. While his eyes are averted, my hand flies up, slashing at him with the brown shard. Unfortunately, my aim is also under the influence of atlys; my attack isn’t even slightly on target. He growls as he chops at me with the bat, but I roll away just in time. I push myself to my feet, brandishing the bottle, but the head rush makes me wobble. Disoriented, I thrust my weapon at him, but he grabs my wrist all too easily. He bends my arm backward and redirects the shard into my own gut.

  By this point, the injury is just another note in my symphony of pain. The only difference is that this note might be the last. I pull the glass out of my belly and collapse to the ground, the breeze making ice of my open wounds. Patterson Park is already a pale place, but it dims by the second.

  “It will be over soon, Bear,” I hear my sister’s voice, but I can’t see anything except for the fake grass crushed under Robert’s Italian loafers as he walks away. I weakly call for help, reaching out to the dozen walkers passing by. A teenager spots me, running over and squatting at my side. I tell him I’m dying, and he slaps his fingers to a pressure point on my neck. I wonder if he can feel my pulse, because I sure as hell can’t.

  “I’m dying,” I repeat.

  He nods, assuring me that he understands before reaching into my pocket and removing the pouch of powder and money. Shoving it into his jacket, he whispers something into my ear and darts away. As my eyes close, I realize the thief is right. I won’t need them where I’m going.

  *Read more of this story in the full length novel: The Green Kangaroos*

  About the Author

  Jessica McHugh is a novelist, poet, and internationally produced playwright running amok in the fields of horror, sci-fi, young adult, and wherever else her peculiar mind leads. She's had twenty books published in eight years, including her bizarro romp, “The Green Kangaroos,” her Post Mortem Press bestseller, “Rabbits in the Garden,” and her edgy YA series, “The Darla Decker Diaries.” More information on her published and forthcoming fiction can be found at JessicaMcHughBooks.com.

  GARDEN OF FIENDS

  by

  Mark Matthews

  Chapter One: Tara Snyder

  “Stop listening right now if you don’t want to hear the truth. I know you all think I overdosed and died. Or that I was off somewhere getting high. I wanted to. Death didn’t scare me. Staying clean did. I never thought my life would be this dark and this cold. Always hungry for something. Somehow I kept alive, kept waking up, so I went back to detox. Again. And here I am, back at NA. Again.”

  My voice quivered and tears welled behind my eyelids. Any more words and truths too deep might spill out, so I stopped talking and gazed at my wrist. I traced my dirty fingernails along the cursive letters of my tattoo: The Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes.

  The woman next to me laid a hand on my arm. Then pulled it back.

  I wished she had kept it there. Her touch was warming.

  The Narcotics Anonymous table meeting moved on, and I couldn’t stop my knee from bobbing up and down as I listened to the next person speak. He wore a pin-striped suit, white shirt with top button undone, red tie loosened, and his own neck tattoo was revealed just beneath the collar line. In the middle of the table, within arm’s reach, sat a woven basket full of donations. At least twenty bucks was inside, enough for a pack of dope if anyone chose to jump ship.

  But I didn’t need dope money. Not anymore. How clean my skin had become, how rested my veins were. I hadn’t cooked up a pack of dope for four months straight.

  The first time I went to an NA meeting was three years ago. I put on a fake smile and told them how happy I was to be there, but the whole time I was itching to leave. I was certain I was missing an essential gene, the very gene that made people know how to live without drugs. I was defective and unfixable.

  As soon as the meeting ended, I rushed to the parking lot where Brett waited. I chopped and snorted an OxyContin off his Metallica CD cover. God, I needed that.

  We continued our life of ripping-off places like Home Depot, stealing tool sets, drills, and even generators, then returning them for cash. We made three hundred dollars a day sometimes and needed it all for pills. Then the morning came we learned Home Depot changed its return policy, and we were stuck with dark pain in our bodies, aching for a fix but unable to scrape up the cash.

  No problem, heroin was cheap and easy to find. Brett tied some plastic around my arm, warm blue veins rose to meet the cold metal syringe, and he injected me with dope. I was cured. Defective no more.

  After years of scamming and shooting moves, it caught up with us. Brett went to jail, and I went to treatment.

  And even at NA meetings, with two hundred people sitting around these twenty tables, I felt alone.

  I ran my fingers through my black, spikey hair, smooth and shiny from conditioner, while Mr. Pin-stripe suit talked about acceptance. Next to me sat Stacey, who I wished would be talking instead. She weaved a magic spell each time she shared. Nine years clean, and her energy radiated into all of those who would listen. Tapping into her spirit was my best hope to stay clean, so I had rehearsed asking her:

  Stacey, will you be my sponsor?

  Stacey, I am looking for a sponsor and...

  Stacey, do you have space to sponsor someone else?

  Mr. Pin-stripe shared his last words, the table meeting ended, and the members huddled for a closing prayer. Stacey stood, and we made eye contact for a split second. I tried to speak, but my throat felt dry and my soul turned to stone. She was surrounded by so many others who craved her attention.

  I had to wait my turn.

  I spent the time nibbling on my nails. Working in the garden with my parents had left dark bits of soil underneath each nail and it crunched on my teeth, but I didn’t mind. The dirt melted in my saliva and felt like tiny granola pieces. Stacey kept talking, so I kept chewing, until I got a good grip with a canine tooth and ripped the nail across the top. Nobody was looking, so I spit it to the ground.

  Pewt.

  I leaned against the wall, cell phone in hand, waiting for the text from dad saying where are you? Stacey was surrounded by happy, sober dope fiends, chatting away with smiling eyes as if at a cocktail party. None of them had the defective gene.

  Onto the next fingernail, crunchy dirt on my tongue, canines clamped down, ripped across the top, and pewt.

  Someone from another table saw me spit that one. I could feel the energy of their eyes on my cheek. I heard footsteps approach, like an unseen Home Depot security guard. My eyes perked up.

  And there he was. Brett. Clean shine from his shaven head, walking with swagger.

  My heart valves fired open. Sweat bubbled on my skin. Where’s the exit? I looked at the door and measured the number of steps until I’d be gone, but next thing I knew, my vision was full of Brett. My back hunched like a Halloween black cat, while he stood tall like a cobra. Guilt raced through my blood, like I’d abandoned a sick loved one.

  “Expecting me?” he asked.

  I shuffled my feet on the floor, scraping the bottoms of my black boots. “Hell no, you had thr
ee more months I thought.”

  “Talked the judge into work release, and now I’m employed. I am an employ-eeeee. I canvass neighborhoods for new window sales. Doing good. Long as I get back on time. I got until eight tonight, in fact. Going to this NA meeting buys me more time.”

  Brett waved his signature sheet with contact names to confirm attendance.

  “I drove by your house a couple times. Could have gone to prison for breaking your dad’s restraining order, but it was worth trying to see you. Thought about stopping, but I kept on. I knew I’d see you soon enough. And you knew it, too.”

  I imagined his rusty Jeep slowly rolling down my street, my dad out front mowing the lawn, seeing Brett and wondering if he should call the cops or attack Brett with his fists.

  “God-damn amazing. Work release. You never get your ass in a pinch your mouth can’t get you out of.”

  That sounded more spiteful than I wanted it to, and I stared at his pupils looking for a sign he was high. No pinhole eyes, no yawning, no itching, no runny nose, no nods of the head. Nothing, he was clean, like his former self reborn, same as me.

  “Fuck, Brett, you’re out. You know what I been through?”

  “You’re talking nonsense. What you’ve been through? I was in jail, Tara. I am in jail. Almost got prison time, lucky to be here. ‘What you been through.’”

  I felt my chest getting pulled, him a magnet, me a defective piece of metal. He was right, I knew I’d see him soon enough. I was expecting him, but not there, not then.

  “I’m sorry. I gotta go. My dad’s waiting. If he knew I was with you, he’d call the police. He thinks you are in jail, and they’re supposed to tell him when you get out. Victim’s rights and shit.”

  “Tara. It’s me. I will not trip you up. I will bow to your performance but not participate. You go if you need to.”

  He touched my arm. I flinched, like his flesh was flame and blistered my skin, but then let it be. I remembered each circle of his fingerprints, and today could feel that he was clean. No dope inside his body. How often we had embraced with cramping, sweaty skin, waiting to get high, but not today. He looked good as when we first met. Our first date was a Slipknot concert, and Brett was in the center of a mosh-pit where rib cages got smashed, eyes got blackened, bodies collided like atoms creating nuclear explosions. Brett was just a tiny cell in the big mass and I wanted to possess that same power.

  Text from my dad. I scanned my phone. Hi Sweet-Pea. Burritos for dinner, I’ll get Tabasco sauce if you want some.

  My ticket to leave. Instead I texted back: meeting’s still going strong.

  I didn’t want to leave. Brett was a warm, dirty blanket, picked up off the floor on a winter morning and wrapped around some aching bones. It felt right to walk with him out the door. I was someone special, someone longed for. I didn’t have to fight for his time and attention. Wasn’t long before I was back in his Jeep Wrangler, hard-top off, Burger King wrappers on the floor, Monster energy drink in the cup holder. We’d gone on countless adventures in that Jeep. Once, we had to get it out of impound. Other times we’d stand by with an empty gas can, getting suckers to believe we were out of gas and needed five bucks to fill up. Once we had fifty bucks, we filled up our veins.

  Back in the passenger seat, the memories and the wind whooshed through me. Had he found another girl to sit in that seat yet? No sign of marijuana roaches in the ashtray, no works anywhere.

  “You finished rehab, I know this, right after we got busted, and that’s what made your judge happy?” he said, or asked, I wasn’t sure which through the rushing wind.

  “Yep, under advisement. Did treatment and if I stay clean for a year, they’ll drop the charges.”

  Brett turned his head as if to spit out the disgust in his mouth.

  “You’re the stupid fuck who got us caught,” I said. “We stole way too much. If we had just wrote one check my dad wouldn’t have noticed.”

  “We were both stupid and got caught up. I sit in jail and think about you all the time. It wasn’t me that got us caught, it’s just me who is doing time for us both.”

  Time. Maybe I’d have been better off doing jail time than sitting in rehab, listening while my therapist kept poking at my sore spots. And the family therapy sessions. My crunchy granola mom and my brooding, controlling dad. Just the look in their eyes made me want to get high.

  “You’re taking this clean stuff serious, I can tell,” Brett said. “I watched you all meeting long. It’s good. Good for you. Clean your soul. We always knew you were the strong one, always knew you might leave me by myself. I’m tired of getting caught up, too. Doesn’t mean I’m not gonna make some coin though. We’re gonna stay clean together, and together we need to take a trip to Russell’s about now.”

  My left ventricle valve fired open, and my heart filled with charcoal dust. Russell’s. The place we scored often. The place I still had drug dreams about, often waking up soon as the syringe poked my vein and then wondering if I really got high or just dreamt it. Brett was taking us there, and I could feel the heat of his thoughts, his determination, cylinders firing in his head, foot firmly on the pedal. I was a hostage of sorts, an eternal lover of another.

  “Fuck that, I don’t want to go there. Take me home.”

  No response. The pavement underneath slipped by faster. We were shooting down Fenkell toward the city, zipping past party stores, gas stations, and bus stop signs where downtrodden figures huddled around and held their heads low.

  “Tara. That’s nonsense. You really think I’d let you get high? I’m not getting high, and neither are you. And you don’t even have to come inside if you don’t want, but don’t you want them to see how good you look? Last memory they have of you is nasty. I feel proud of what my girlfriend looks like clean.”

  My silence gave approval, and my eyes drifted to my cell. No follow up text from Dad yet. We pulled down the street, same party store on the corner, same men leaning against the brick wall drinking from paper bags. Suspicious creatures shuffled down the street. Russell’s house was covered in permanent shade from a huge towering tree that dropped tiny little helicopter seed pods that would twirl to the ground. In the driveway, huge weeds grew from the cracks. A strained mattress leaned against the side of the brick house. That was new.

  How good it felt going there sober instead of dope-sick. So many days I’d walk under the shade of the tree, seed pods raining down, while I prayed to the heavens someone would help us out. We would knock on the door, five-thirty a.m., as the morning birds chirped and us begging for a pack. More than once, we’d have to drive away and come back later when Russell was awake.

  But there I was, in control, not a strung out ghoul of the night, but above them all. I did want to see Russell and let him know I wasn’t the ‘mascara-stained-crazy-bitch’ they’d called me last time. Nothing but smooth, clean skin on me. A touch of makeup and dark eyeliner made my pupils zing. Life pumped solid underneath my cheeks, natural rouge, and I wore a fresh pair of Levi 520 jeans and black leather boots with heavy buckles.

  “Glad you’re with me,” he said and grabbed my shoulder. “You left me. I never thought you’d leave me. Always thought we’d be together. I knew it. I know you.”

  We walked up the front steps and heard the music pumping inside. The front door vibrated from the bass. It took some knocks and patience, but soon enough, Russell answered, a gun tucked into his waist, muscles ripped under his shirt from who knows where, just born that way. He’d never gotten high off dope or took a puff of crack, just the occasional Gilbey’s Gin with Squirt.

  “Damn, look who’s here,” he announced to uncaring faces sitting on the couch. “Come on in to the house of worship. Y’all know you ain’t getting shit, and I ain’t saying a word until you lift your shirt. Freaks who been gone long as you two looking to bust someone higher up the food chain. Show me you ain’t recording what I’m preaching up in here.”

  Tara knew exactly what he meant. People get arrested for poss
ession, claim they can help bust a dealer, and a lighter sentence hangs in the balance. Brett had to hold his shirt up and show front and back to prove he wasn’t wearing a wire.

  “And now the bae,” Russell said.

  That meant me. I thought of leaving, but that would make me look guilty, and I’ve seen more than one bae get her ass beat here, so I lifted up my shirt, bra exposed, all eyes on me. Russell gave the okay, and my blood pressure dropped.

  “She’s looking wonderful, beautiful, right?” Brett said. “She’s done getting high, going straight forever. Going to NA and taking twelve steps so don’t even ask. She doesn’t want it.”

  Brett and Russell walked off to the back bedroom, promising to be just a minute, and I scanned the room for a friendly face. Russell’s friends were high on the couch, but it was the basement where the real freaks were. I could feel death seeping up the basement stairs. Crack-heads who’d been down there for days, dope fiends nodding out, overdosed bodies that get dragged to the side and dumped off somewhere, near a hospital if they’re lucky. All of that was just below my feet.

  I was safe upstairs but had no place to sit. The sunken couch was full of newer customers, none that I recognized. I was alone, my moment to shine had faded. I put my back against the wall and slid down to the floor. The area rug was dotted with pinhole burns, the hardwood floor with a coating of dust. I saw a little spider crawling along with tiny, frantic legs. Just a baby, probably.

  A man walked over, each of his skeletal limbs jerky and agitated and his jaw sliding back and forth. Boney arms shot out of his green T-shirt that had “88” written on it in white. I got ready to dash or punch him in the neck or nuts, but he kept his distance and sat down nearby with a stem and a lighter, ready to take a hit.

  “I’ve seen you,” he said, proud of himself. “You want a hit? I’ll give you a hit. Nothing’s for free, ‘course. You don’t have to touch a thing, just show me a bit, just lift your shirt like you did. Just show a little more.”