White Dwarf | 8. Resolution

There was something unsettling about the evening. I stood nervously outside the old house with Bunt and Dee, blinded by the floodlights that had kicked on in response to our arrival. Never a big fan of drugs or booze, Travis stayed home to work on a model spaceship. Pitt Bulls, trained for fighting matches, barked viciously from a pen off in the distance. The house itself looked like it should have been condemned. The roof of the front porch was caving in and white paint peeled from all around the house. The precarious steps leading up to the porch were detached from the building and cobbled together with untreated wood. They looked as though they had been put there recently. Leafless, snow-covered trees surrounding the house were eerily silhouetted by the faint blue glow of night. Like skeletons, I thought and began to shake as the freezing winter air bit through my scrawny body.

Eventually, the front door creaked open to reveal a warm orange glow inside. A giant stood in the doorway–he was even bigger than Travis–grinning down at us with his round glasses and long black hair. Even with the goofy grin and glasses evoking fond images of John Lennon, Willie was intimidating.

We wasted no time escaping into the warm cocoon of the house, passing over creaking floorboards and winding around unrecognizable clutter. Dee filtered into the cramped kitchen with Willie’s wife and I followed Willie and Bunt into the living room. The white walls were peppered with a strange collection of paintings: a small white cottage in a forest painted on black velvet, dogs playing cards, a castle surrounded by lightning.

Willie sat on what I figured was his end of a green vinyl couch that had a number of tears leaking foam. To his side, a large black trash bag sat on the floor, filled with pot. I tried to guess the pounds of grass in that bag–I had no experience with quantities that large and it was futile to guess what had to be an enormous weight. The skunk weed had such a strong odor that I could smell it from where I was standing on the opposite side of the room. Next to the trash bag, a black Mossberg shotgun rested against the arm of the couch. Bunt sat in a high-backed, rose-colored chair next to the couch. Willie’s rickety wooden coffee table was covered with magazines, rolling papers, ashtrays, empty Doral cigarette packs and a full gallon of Jim Beam. Upon close examination, I noticed the large bookshelf next to me was filled exclusively with pornographic video tapes.

As I looked around, I realized I was standing in the doorway to a pre-teen girl’s bedroom. Her walls were papered with heavy metal posters, leaving no trace of white paint. She was sitting on her bed talking to a very attractive blonde woman who appeared to be in her early twenties.

“Hey Darren!”

“Josie! Long time no see.”

It was a small world indeed. I had met Josie before but had no idea she was Willie’s stepdaughter.

I remained somewhat subdued, deciding it was probably best not to do anything to agitate Willie.

Josie noticed my extreme fascination with the blonde, “This is my Aunt, Samantha.”

I thought of Elizabeth Montgomery in “Bewitched.” How appropriate. “Cool name,” I grinned mindlessly.

Samantha smiled, probably more out of pity than anything, “Thanks.”

I was invited into the room to join Josie and Samantha and I plopped down on the bed with them, somewhat nervously. I imagined the disgust going through their minds at having to sit next to such a loser as myself.

“So, what’s up, Darren?” Samantha smiled.

I felt as though she was mocking me. How could something that cute really care what I was up to? I replied, my voice shaking, “Oh nothing much. Just trying to stay high, you know.”

She grinned–again out of pity, I imagined. “Well, this is some New Years Eve party. We need to liven things up a bit!” She pinched me on the side of my butt. My face turned red. It was one of the few times my mind couldn’t produce a witty response.

A pang of nervousness shot through my gut. My hormone-addled mind imagined a wide spectrum of activities that could liven up the party, each of which involved Samantha and I in a moment of private ecstasy.

“What do you suggest?“ my voice quavered.

“Let’s go jump on Willie and Lena’s bed!”

Oh my God! She was inviting me to jump on the bed with her? That could lead to acts I would have thought impossible. My imagination was getting carried away with me. Maybe it was a trap? Maybe she wanted to watch Willie blow me to shreds with that black Mossberg. A girl this cute surely would have nothing at all to do with the likes of me.

“I don’t think that would be a good idea. I’m not anxious to get killed tonight.”

“You’re no fun!” Samantha winked at Josie and engaged in conversation I sensed was designed to exclude me.

I hung around awkwardly a few moments before moving out to the living room, onto the opposite end of the vinyl couch, near Bunt in his chair. Bunt removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes and nose in his usual masturbatorial way. Up and down, up and down. After a few strokes, his hand would go further down, over his mouth, his chin and to his neck. When he was finished, he replaced his glasses, “Yeah. I was with some friends out in the desert in Arizona.”

He laughed loudly and took a hit off the joint before passing it to me. I inhaled deeply, determined to forget my complete failure with Samantha, and listened intently.

“We ate a bunch of peyote,” he nodded reassuringly, “and this one cat… man…” He laughed again.

I passed the joint to Willie as Bunt continued, “he laid out on the floor. He was paralyzed man!”

More laughter. He took the joint from Willie and held onto it as he resumed the story, “His eyes were wiiiide open man! His pupils were tiny little points.” He heightened the pitch of his voice at the end of the sentence and slowly moved his thumb and fore-finger together to better illustrate the contracted pupils. He took another toke and passed me the joint.

I took the final hit and put the roach in an amber ashtray sitting on the coffee table. That was the money hit. The one where you feel it pounding into your head with your heartbeat. I exhaled the smoke as my mind was overcome with a euphoric rush and my vision clouded by blobs of color.

“And we kept saying, hey man are you alright?! He couldn’t even say anything, man!” Bunt shrugged and shook his head, “so I just got a straw, put a horse tranquilizer in it and shot it into his mouth!” He guffawed heartily.

Willie and I laughed along with him. Not so much at the story, but at the fact that he actually expected us to believe it.

Bunt finished, “So the next day, we asked him what the hell was going on. He said he could hear every word we were saying but couldn’t respond. He was completely unable to speak.” Bunt laughed hysterically.

Bunt had introduced me to Willie a few days before. Willie had agreed to supply me with a pound of pot that I was certain would sell within days at the station. My mind, trained from all the computer programming to look for patterns, realized there was a niche begging to be filled at the station. What if the customers could get smoke there too? Now that would be a “full service” station! I asked Bunt if he could hook me up with someone who could supply me a lot of good smoke and he brought me to Willie.

That night, I cashed my check at work and took a fifty dollar charge so I’d have a full two hundred dollars and some extra. That was enough to buy a half pound of the best skunk weed I’d ever smoked from Willie. I’d be able to make over four hundred dollars profit on it. What a racket! I wasn’t sure how long it would take me to sell that much pot. I hoped my intuition was right, and I could get rid of it in at least a week, so I wouldn’t be out the money too long.

I sat next to Willie on the green vinyl sofa with a half pound of pot shoved down the front of my pants. Bunt was to my left and, having decided our laughter meant that Willie and I had bought his story, decided to cap it off, “That was back in my day,” he nodded reassuringly, “back in the ‘60s.”

Willie shook his head, “Man, that’s fucked up.”

I nodded in agreement.

He poured a glass half full from the Jim Beam on his table, then filled it the rest of the way with Coke. He handed me the glass.

“Oh dude. I don’t drink. That shit tears me up.”

“Come on, man. It’s the last party of the year!”

It never took much to convince me. I took the glass, “Here’s to the first hangover of the next one.”

I drank the whiskey slowly. I could barely get it down, though the Coke helped.

“Finish it up man, and I’ll make myself one.”

Oh no. I took another swallow–horrible. Another–that one went down a bit easier. Another–easier still. Another–the glass was empty. Willie prepared himself a drink and downed it in one massive gulp. My back shivered.

Two hours later and the entire bottle was gone. Half of it was eating away inside my 120 pound body. I felt absolutely nothing except the room spinning wildly. If I could put so much as two words together in my head, I couldn’t get them out of my mouth without distorting them into a sloppy, unintelligible mess. It didn’t stop me from trying. My mouth was normally shackled thanks to the low self-esteem Shafto had burned into my mind. The alcohol unlocked the demon and I sat there between Bunt and Willie spouting a constant stream of utter nonsense. They just sat there laughing at me.

Willie reached into the trash bag and rolled a joint so perfect it looked exactly like a factory-made cigarette. He lit it up and handed it to me. I looked at the joint in my hand and completely forgot what I was supposed to do with it. With some labor, I lifted it to my mouth. That seemed like the right thing to do. I looked down my nose at the white tube between my fingers, the glowing ember emitting a stream of pungent smoke. I desperately tried to focus my eyes. It was impossible. I brought the joint to my mouth, hesitated and then put the cherry to my lips.

Bunt and Willie both called out to stop me, but it was too late. I could taste the ash, but I felt nothing. I took the joint out of my mouth and felt my lips with my finger. They felt alright, as best I could tell. Willie relit the joint and I was able to finish it with him and Bunt.

Eventually, it hit midnight and Willie grabbed the Mossberg and shot it off outside a few times in commemoration of the passing year. The dogs went wild upon hearing the sharp bang of the shotgun. When Willie came back inside, I was still releasing a constant stream of incoherence that had been bottled up after years of hiding from Shafto. From somewhere within the deep recesses of the foam-vomiting green vinyl couch, Willie brought out a vial filled with a clear liquid. Another mysterious, shadowy place gave birth to a syringe.

“Here, man. I think you need some of this.”

Bunt waved his hand, “Oh no man! Don’t give him that!”

I flopped my hand spasmodically at Bunt, “pppfffuoch it!”

Willie chuckled and took my right arm and plunged the needle in. I felt nothing there, but almost instantly began to feel a wave of euphoria spreading out from my spine and overtaking the rest of my body. I warmed even more than I already was from the whiskey. My faces numbed and I was overcome with joy. It was like an orgasm that lasted several minutes. My vision blurred and my consciousness shrunk steadily until it was black, taking the years of torment from Shafto along with it. I had finally found that beautiful pure blackness I had been searching for so long…

The next thing I knew, I was standing outside in the freezing cold, propping myself up against a tree. No, Bunt was propping me up against the tree.

“Hey man, are you OK?”

I keeled over and vomited forcefully.

“I s… s… s… orre…e…, Bun…”

“Just get it all out man, so we can get you in the car.”

I vomited more. And more. And again. My stomach wrenched but seemed empty. I tried to spit, but my mouth was dry as cotton. Even in my extreme nausea, I wondered what happened to Samantha. I hoped she wasn’t aware of this most unbecoming behavior.

“Are you done, man?”

I nodded lazily, then my stomach spasmed and I vomited again. After thirty minutes of wondering where all this liquid was coming from, I finally settled enough that I was able to flop into the back of the Bunt’s little white Subaru. Bunt got in the back with me and propped me up, aiming my head out the partially opened window. I rambled incoherently the entire twenty minute drive back to Bunt’s house, a constant stream of vomit issued from my mouth out onto the back of the car.

Dee was silent until we reached the house. I got out of the back of the car on my own, took two steps and fell flat on my face. Bunt closed the car door and lifted me up.

“Man, are you OK?”

“Man, just leave me here. Let me sleep. I don’t care.”

Chuck laughed, “I don’t think I wanna explain to the cop next door why you’re laying out here in the grass, man!”

I was closer to consciousness, at least.

Dee rubbed my shoulder, “Honey, why do you do that to yourself?”

The question took me by surprise. It was the first time anyone had asked me that. It wouldn’t be the last. I shrugged and shook my head. The etiquette of proper conversation prevented me from telling her the truth. I wanted to flush away everything that had congealed in my head. I wanted to forget the past, ignore the present and not know there would be a future.

* * *

I awoke the next morning, laying on one of Travis’ model spaceships. It, along with my hair and shirt were covered with vomit. I was so ashamed that I left immediately. I went home, took a shower and arrived at work two hours late. The kids were packing in as usual looking for acid. Josh let them know I had some awesome cheap pot for sale. It was gone by the end of the night. Four hundred dollars pure profit, just like that.

Willie had taught me to roll joints properly. They looked exactly like cigarettes. I rolled one and smoked it with Josh. The pot was so potent it was nearly hallucinogenic. With each hit off the joint and each bag I sold to some kid coming in looking for drugs, Shafto melted further and further into obscurity.

Willie had taught me something else that night–the wonders of opiates. A path down which I would wander and not find my way back for years. If Shafto was an impending storm, opiates were a tornado that would chase me relentlessly until they had shredded my soul to pieces.

I didn’t care. I had long realized having a soul was nothing more than a burden gifted to me from hell.