by Paul Haines
Tony hooks up a bag of poison onto the IV stand. He pulls a lime green plastic cover over the bag. On the cover is a smiley face, violet instead of yellow. The pupils of the eyes are no longer black, but each is instead a bright red ladybird. Violet. The infinite. At one with God. Peace. Wisdom. The last colour of the fucking rainbow.
'So what will this do for me?' I ask.
'Mainly bleeding. Mostly nosebleeds, but if you can take the dose long enough we can possibly get you up to a touch of proteinuria. Nothing like a bit of blood in the piss in a public urinal to get the alarm bells fluttering.'
'I don't know. Nosebleeds. Public perception of that? Still junkie.'
Tony adjusts the taps and the liquid drips steadily into my veins. 'We're looking at a combined effect. With the FOLFOX the pigmentation in your skin will go haywire. Depending on the day you'll look day-glo tanned or as pale as priest's cock just before it hits your mouth.' He laughs as he looks at me, his eyes twinkling. 'We'll up the mixture of the Irinotecan and hope that that finally burns your hair follicles off. You're looking too healthy.'
'I know.' In the chair nearby, Tiki's face is drawn and pale. Part of his upper arm is exposed, revealing a thick murderous tattoo, a mesh of Samoan and Maori designs fighting for dominance of his flesh. Breath rattles in his chest.
'There's more,' Tony continues. 'Anaemia is higher with this combination, and the diarrhoea will be constant so you're going to have to take something to counter that. But the anaemia will pay dividends quickly. Increased sweating and production of saliva, hypertension, and neutropenia are almost all guaranteed.'
'What's that last one?'
'Neutropenia? A reduction of white blood cells. Usual stuff, but this concentration will really open you up to a lot of other goodies floating out there.'
I nod and lean back into the recliner.
'Oh,' says Tony. 'If you're lucky you'll experience mouth sores and a rash on your hands and feet. The public love the visible signs, remember.'
I nod again, then close my eyes. 'I'm going to meditate into this, Tony. Can you give us a shot of morphine to help the fall?'
'Consider it done, good buddy.'
I breathe in slowly, trying to feel what is happening to my body, the entire cell-death that is occurring right now, in this moment. Thoughts race through my mind; Sally and the house, Doctor Zing forcing my head between her thighs, Tiki closer to God faster than we had imagined, why not me, why not me, why me and the morphine tugs at my blood and drops me an inch, submerging me into the leather of the chair and I inspire all the colours of the rainbow as millions of cells burn in a breath and I expire a vapour of decay and the lights behind my eyes cast yellow Manipura though it splinters in shards of confusion and depression and I'm in, I'm there, and somewhere Tony is chanting our paths to the Gods ...
#
'The living love the dying,' said Tiki, back before we began the new path. 'The living love those who are being denied their life, and they despise those who are wasting it.'
'I don't care. Tiki, you got me all wrong. I don't want to be loved.'
Tiki shook his head, thick dreads beaded and dangling. 'But you do, bro. Deep down you do.'
'Your head's full of shit, Tiki. You're running from your past, not me. I just need some money.'
'Do it this way, bro, and you're not going to worry about money anymore.'
On the coffee table in front of us, he spread out an insurance form, an application for a Health Benefits card and photocopies of x-rays.
His deep brown eyes were clear and straight. 'This'll see us through, bro. Pay for everything.'
'You got any money?'
'You listening to me, bro?' The air between us suddenly felt cold and brutal. In the set of Tiki's jaw lay a thousand demons ready to pounce. His fists clenched, then slowly unclenched. He grasped my chin in one of his large hands. The fingers squeezed hard, and I tried to jerk back, but he held me firm. His other hand caught my wrist as I tried to free myself. 'I don't think you're listening to me at all. Do you want Sally to take you back?'
'I hear you, Tiki. Jesus, man, that hurts.'
He pushed the insurance and application forms towards me, holding back the x-rays. 'There's this doctor I know. She'll set you up with your own x-rays from some dude who's really dying and sort you out for blood tests. Crazy Asian lady. Goes by the name of Zing.'
I took the forms, shuffled from his flat out into the streets, and spent the fifty dollars he'd also slipped me just as quick as it took the Vietnamese dealer to spit the plastic-wrapped bag of powder he'd been storing in his cheeks into my willing and waiting and wanting hands.
#
I watched Tiki slowly killing himself over the next six months. I couldn't start yet, as I needed to wait a perquisite number of months before my insurance would cover me for serious illness.
He lost weight, his hair thinned, the melanin in his skin leached away, leaving him pale and smudged. I'd go around to his flat and the toilet would be stale with vomit, the fridge empty, the cupboards bare. Often he'd sit in a threadbare chair in front of the only window that let sun into his room.
'You look like shit, Tiki.'
He smiled beatifically. 'You look wonderful, bro.'
'You any closer to what you're looking for?'
'Every day I'm getting closer.'
I flicked through a pile of recent CDs. He had a new widescreen TV, too. 'How much did this all cost?'
Tiki laughed. 'Nothing. People are giving me all sorts of shit now they think I'm dying.'
'How do you turn this thing on?'
'Dunno. I'm not too bothered about it, eh? You want to go for a walk down near the river? The sun looks warm out there, and on a day like today there'll be so much life coming off the water you could eat it.'
I had to support him as we took the path through the park. He managed a slow shuffle, as if his feet were no longer his own to control. Tiki squinted at the sun hovering above, emanating a thin winter heat.
'You can see it in the air, bro. It's everywhere. That sparkle, like a dying bursting born-again synapse. It's qi. Everywhere.'
He stumbled and sank to his knees. I held his weight and lowered him to the grass. Even though he had shed kilos, Tiki was still a big man. You could shrink the muscle but the bones were still as bruising as they always had been.
'I don't know about this, Tiki. If you're trying to kill yourself, there are better ways.'
He folded into himself, his palms pressed to the earth. 'Suicide?'
'Yeah, man. Take some pills. Go to sleep. Fuck it, why not just a big dose of heroin?'
'Suicide?' Tiki unfolded like a flower, splaying his arms and legs like petals, opening up unto the sun. 'You're missing the point. I want to be a part of life. And it's here, all around us.' His fingers curled around the blades of grass, tugging them, caressing them. 'God is everywhere, bro, and it wants us to be part of it. Suicide is cheating. The world hates a cheat.'
Bags of flesh puffed beneath his bloodshot eyes. Patches of scalp shone where dreads had fallen out. He smiled, and ulcers lined his gums.
I shook my head. 'You're dying, Tiki.'
His smile widened, then he hacked up a thick wad of bloody phlegm. 'Right now I'm dying. Right now. But in three month's time I'll be fine, and I won't forget this feeling. My eyes are open, and shall never be closed.' He fumbled in his jacket pocket and threw a plastic health card onto the grass in front of me. 'Doctor Zing says hello.'
I put the card in my pocket and we watched the sun slide over the water moving slowly downstream and out into the bay.
#
Somewhere in the back of my mind I hear Tony chanting. Somewhere else, the rasp of Tiki's respiration.
The needle in my arm.
The poison in my veins.
No matter how hard I try, the only colours I see are the swirls of blood in my eyelids. Red. Muladhara. The chakra furthest from the divine. I'm kidding myself that I can even see it. It's just blood.
Somewhere in the back of my mind Tony is saying that a significant lack of energy in the Muladhara can make people weak and self-destructive.
Somewhere in the back of my mind I know this is true of every junkie, of every addict. There is no God here. There is no salvation.
Already I feel nausea permeating my every fibre. I don't want to throw up, it's just a low level sagging of unwell, the very core of my being unravelling on a molecular level. Sally, free and easy, just for fun, just for sex. Give it up come and go and now I'm gone ...
But I couldn't.
And here I am, strapped into a leather recliner, pumped full of cytotoxic drugs following in the stumbling footsteps of Tiki's mad dream.
What am I doing?
He's named after a tribal good luck charm. The tattoos on his arms ward off ghosts. Instead, they fight each other with their greenstone meres. I hear them tearing through the bush, the dull crack of stone on skull as they club each other to death.
I've got nothing but a head full of shit.
I breathe deeper and the red behind the swirls, darker and deeper, phasing into blackest indigo and I'm hot so hot ... and there's ... I can ... hardly ... see ...
... there's something inside my head, filling me and every breath takes me closer ...
purple claws rake my skull
sparkling synapses burst
sharp tiny teeth peel back the layers of my brain like an onion I can smell it sharp and tangy my eyes are watering and thousands upon thousands of them crawl down into the cerebral core oh i can hardly breathe i can hardly bear to be a part of it all
i can hardly
i can
see
#
Tiki is screaming.
I open my eyes and the harsh brunt of fluorescents overhead flood and overload.
Tiki thrashes in his chair. Tony sprawls over Tiki's chest, trying to restrain him. Froth bubbles from the corners of Tiki's cracked lips.
'Kara! Morphine! Get the fucking morphine!'
I've never heard Tony shout before. Kara rushes from the medical cabinet, syringe squirting at hand. She plunges it into one of the plugs attached to the drip feeding Tiki.
'Too slow!' Tony yells. Sweat shines on his forehead. I can see it staining under his arms. 'Stick it into his thigh. Now!'
Tiki throws Tony across the room, a clatter of surgical instruments shrieking over the floor as the cart overturns. The whoosh from Tony's lungs is a clear and beautiful climax to the cacophony. Tiki swats Kara aside as she attempts to stab him with the needle. She collides with the IV stand, and the drip rips from Tiki's chest. A bubble of dark red blood bursts forth from the hole in his skin above the portacath buried beneath. Tiki stands upright on the chair and throws his arms wide, staring up at the ceiling. He warbles a stream of harsh vowels and guttural consonants that dissolves into a bray of frayed laughter.
He turns to face me and I'm calm, so sweetly safely calm as his rotting mouth parts in a cracked smile. He holds a hand out, as he steps from the chair and towards the door, beckoning me to follow.
Tiki's eyes are a deep violet.
I tear the drip from my vein.
#
We stagger out into the twilight, the sky streaked with sacral and solar plexus. The man who gives the sales pitch is still here, his hair still luxuriously thick, though his eyes are wide to see us.
He looks back through the open doors, sees Tony scrambling to his feet. 'Stop them!'
The man reaches out to grab us but stops short, his eyes caught in a violet shine. Tiki touches him and the man falls to his knees, drops back onto his haunches.
'Get out of here,' he whispers.
I'm struggling now. My head pounds with a hundred years of dehydration and the skin encasing my body is too tight, slowly squeezing out my energy. I can feel it pour from my mouth, a steady stream of dancing motes. Tiki drags me with him, effortlessly, a cascade of sound woven with qi. My ears ring, I cannot understand him as he speaks to me in a golden voice of syrup. I'm vaguely aware of the rush hour crowds on the streets parting as we move like water carving sand.
I fall to my knees, riding a wave of nausea too strong to keep my head aloft. I'm going to be sick. Feet move around me, a widening glade of gum-stained concrete in a meadow of tar and asphalt.
'Can you see it, bro?' Tiki's voice is so loud and clear.
The ground rumbles and overhead the tramlines spark. Tiki steps out onto the street his arms held wide, drawing the energy towards him. The ground rumbles, a thundering herd of elephants stampeding through this jungle and the tram hits Tiki in the chest and people are screaming and I can't lift my head, I'm so sick, so sick and I hear his body hit the road, I feel the impact of his flesh shudder through my bones.
I throw up onto the pavement, over my hands, soaking my knees. People are still screaming. The rumbling has stopped. I collapse onto my stomach, then try to roll onto my back, slipping into the gutter. A tram is stopped here, its alarm bells ring. In the gutter, between the cracks of marbled cement, a blade of green grass protrudes, waxily beautiful. A red and black carapaced beetle scuttles from beneath the blade and pauses to greet me. A ladybird. It has tiny sharp teeth. The carapace opens and filigree wings shake themselves free and away it soars into a sky soaked violet.
Nearby lies a pile of ragged clothes, empty save for a crumbling pile of brittle bones and a smear of tattoo ink.
***
Afterword: I've Seen The Man
Mark Deniz of Morrigan Books is a crazed fan of The God Machine, so much so that he commissioned a speculative fiction anthology based around their album Scenes From The Second Storey. I'd heard of The God Machine but not heard The God Machine. The lyrics to "I've Seen The Man" resonated instantly, a sense of despair and disbelief, a terrible emptiness while others around rallied in their faith. My initial reaction was of someone in a hospital while The Man lingers and haunts them, unseen by others, as that someone slowly dies. I let this seed lie fallow for the next few months.
When the deadline loomed and nothing had germinated, I sat down in front of the keyboard and played "I've Seen The Man" continuously while I let myself flow. The story unfolded in front me, a tale of despair and disbelief while others around rallied in their faith. I wrote the final two-thirds of the story in silence, the seed returning its promised fruit.
In the last three years of my life, which has been touched with both the fingers of hell and heaven, I have seen the man. I have been the man, I am now not yet the man, I am searching for the man, and at times, I despair that there is nothing to find—that I shall leave this earth and my loved ones behind prematurely and with nothing.
Can I take comfort in the fact that we are all born with nothing and leave with as much?
No, I cannot, for I love life too dearly for that to happen to me just yet.
***
High Tide at Hot Water Beach
We arrive early, but traffic already crawls, stalled and stalling along the road that snakes the coast to Hot Water Beach. Sam winds down his window, and the smell of the ocean tangy with salt and foam breezes into the car. Above us, television helicopters circle like gulls searching for scraps on the beach.
'We'll make it on time,' I say.
'I know.' His eyes are closed. My brother appears relaxed, at peace. His chest rises and falls with deep breathing exercises. The grey in his hair has almost won the battle with the blond, and the stubble on his chin has gone from brown and red to a stark white in less than two years.
I turn off the air-conditioning and lower all the windows. The sea breeze sweeps us back to childhood.
It's been more than thirty years. There were no car parks then, just a wide berth at the end of an unsealed road where people parked their cars and then continued on foot carrying baskets and towels, while ahead of them children scampered across the shallow stream and then raced the hundred or so metres down to Hot Water Beach.
An official sees the 'participating' sticker on our wi
ndscreen and guides us into the reserved car park for beachgoers. It's almost full. Behind us, the three general admission car parks fill slowly and continuously with sightseers. I close the windows, then kill the engine.
'Ready?'
He smiles, and though his blue eyes are still bright, they are sunk deep within dark hollows. 'Always ready, Toby,' he says, though he sits in the car as I get out and remove our bags—one for the beach gear, the other for the laptop. I put my pass around my neck and hand Sam's in to him through the open door.
'It's warm,' I say.
He holds out an arm. I grasp it—his wrists are so thin—and pull him lightly to his feet. He squints in the light of day. 'Jesus, it's changed.'
We walk through milling crowds towards the makeshift registration office nestled between several cafes, a small pub called 'The Hot Water Bar', and the dairy. People sip at coffees, lick at ice-creams; video cameras are in hands, photos are snapped. We queue ten minutes until another official hands us our allotment number.
'Cutting it close, gentlemen,' she says. 'Low tide was just over an hour ago. You don't have much time to get ready.'
She directs us to the tarmacked ramp that bridges the stream and leads down to the beach. Space has been cleared, and temporary stands have been erected along the pathway. Already sightseers jostle for the best vantage point, the stands almost full.
Others have taken position up on the slopes of the banks overlooking the sand, picnic rugs spread, cameras in hand, cold beers in the other.
We pass security and head down the ramp. Several other participants walk ahead, one an obese man waddling uncomfortably alone, another a middle-aged woman in a wheelchair, being pushed presumably by her husband.
Tina said she wouldn't be coming, that there was no way in hell she would watch this. She had refused to allow Izzy as well. I knew this bothered Sam, though he said nothing.
