Coke And Crush

I inhale and the smoke runs into my lungs. I hold it in as I hand the joint off to my friend. I exhale and feel the smoke's effect on me begin. I feel my worries wash away and happiness take over. As my friend inhales, I say, “This is good shit man.”

He nods at me and hands the joint back over to me. “We'll be fucked in no time bro.” The smoke slowly snakes its way out of his lungs as he talks. I inhale again, looking up at the stars above his house. There aren't very many, and I have no fucking idea why. But who cares? It doesn't mean they're not there. Right?

“Dude, we should smoke up here more often. The roof is a fucking chill place.” I tell him as I exhale. He nods at me and I hand him the joint. We keep passing it back and forth for a while before we have to light up another one. He takes it out of his pocket and makes sure it's in good condition before he lights it.

All of the lights in the area suddenly shut off, leaving us in darkness. All I can see is his outline and the red end of the joint. If I look up I can see the smoke rising to the sky. “Whoa! Dude, this is trippy shit! Yo, what the fuck is in that shit? Are we tripping out or something?” We start laughing and he doesn't answer me. Instead he just hands me the joint again.

“Yo, wanna try some cool shit? I just got it from our 'buddy'. He promised me that it'd fuck me up good.” He finishes off the joint and tosses it off the roof carelessly. “Besides, we're done all of our green.”

“Let's do it man.” I say, stoned out of my mind already. “What was that green called anyways?”

“Our 'buddy' said it was Orange Crush.”

“Cool, I love that drink.”

I follow him back through his parent's window and we stumble down the stairs. “In the kitchen.” He tells me. It's pitch black inside of the house and finding my way around isn't easy when I'm stoned. But I manage to find myself to the kitchen where my friend has managed to light a few red candles. In front of them there are two lines of what looks like sugar.

“Dude, is that sugar? I've tried snorting that before man, it doesn't work.” I start to laugh at him, thinking he's a complete idiot. “Oh wait... Coke?”

I stop laughing and he picks up instead. “Duh, dude. You think our 'buddy' would sell us sugar? He knows that shit's not good for you.”

He hands me a straw and nods at me in the candle light. I have second thoughts. What if I get addicted? Dude, I know Coke is expensive. I can't afford to get addicted. Stuck at a stoned crossroads, I stand in place holding the straw motionless. My friend, tired of waiting, sticks it in his right nostril and blocks the other one. He inhales, following one of the lines of Coke, and the addictive drug shoots into his body.

“Holy shit, man!” He says after he's done, pulling out the straw and holding onto his nose. “That shit hits you right away!” He starts laughing hysterically, as if he lost his mind entirely. “Yo, man, we should invite the girls. I got some more. We'll all get fucked together.”

He vanishes into the darkness as he looks for a phone. I think he finds it because he begins speaking to something. I can't make out what he's saying but my interest is quickly lost. I'm still standing motionless holding the straw. Something about this doesn't feel right, even for a fucked up druggy. I don't even know why I'm doing this shit. It's not like I'm from the ghetto. My family isn't poor and isn't drug users. I don't even smoke cigarettes. I make fun of those addicts who stand outside in the cold just to get a little buzz. But at this point, am I any better?

“K, the girls are coming, man. They sounded really fucking excited about the Coke. It's good shit, ain't it?” My friend stumbles across the house, tripping over things as he heads towards the red candle light. I still haven't done it. I don't think I can. The Orange Crush begins to wear off, or at least stops giving me a clouded mind. I think.

“I haven't done it, man. I'm not sure about it. It's kind of sketchy, don't ya think?”

“Not at all, dude. You need to chill. The girls will be here any moment. Try not to scare them off like you did with the other ones.”

“Fuck you, man.” I say seriously, but he takes it as a friendly thing and stumbles off to the front door. Somebody's knocking, but something tells me that it isn't the girls. I think about leaving out the back door, which is only a few feet away from me. I dismiss the thoughts as paranoid and my friend finally makes his way to the door. The door opens.

“Hey, boys!” One of the girls yell into the darkness beyond my friend. They can't see the light from the candles from over there.

They take a couple steps into the house before they scream. The scream pierces my ears as it echoes through the house. A stoned laughter follows it. “Asshole!” They yell at my friend and slam the front door, with them still inside.

“Vasil? Are you there?” The first one yells into the house. I stand there in the only light in the house and consider yelling back. My parents named me Vasil, which apparently is derived from a Greek word for king. Freaking crazy-ass parents.

“Yeah. I'm here.” I say without letting much emotion out. If anything I sounded annoyed. The red candles continue to burn with the Coke in front of them. The wax seeps down them like Satan's tears and I drop the black straw in my hand.

The girls find their way to the dying light of the kitchen, only to find me standing there like a statue. The Orange Crush is known for taking away all the worries in the world, but its only temporary. That carelessness fades far too quickly for me. My parents gave birth to a thinker, someone who will always spend his time thinking about what he does and what others do. No amount of drugs can ever take that away from me, as sad as it is.

My nostril begins to burn with the thought of taking in the white powder. I inhale, and blow the Coke away. “Vasil! What are you doing? That's not how you do it, you high piece of shit!” The girls exclaim, half serious, half joking.

“I know what I'm doing. Go help him up, I think he's fallen down. I'm going outside, to look at the sky.” I tell them, pointing towards the door where a loud thump had come from. I walk to the back door and stop in front of it. I look down and realize that I never took off my shoes. I slide open the glass door and walk out into the cool night.

The girls go help my friend up and they head back to the dying light of the red candles. I overhear bits and pieces of what my friend is telling them. He's probably explaining my odd behaviour. “Don't... Bout... He's... Breakup...”

He's probably talking about my recent breakup with Malika, whose name is probably Arabic if I'm right. It was nothing, just a short relationship. It wasn't longer than two weeks, so it's not like we really got serious at all. It was just fun, like all the others. She didn't seem to understand that, and neither does my friend. But right now I don't think he understands anything.

I start walking around to the front of the house. Without the lights of the city, the stars can finally be seen. It's a new moon tonight, making the stars the only light in the world. I walk up the road, with trees from people's lawns hanging over me. I remember back about two weeks ago seeing Malika in the moonlight. It was breathtaking, how could I not go after her for some fun? Any guy in his right mind would.

The world around me seems like it's asleep. A deadly silence carries itself through the neighbourhood. Bats can be seen flying like death above me, catching the clueless bugs for a quick meal. I follow the road up, and turn on the next intersection. I eventually find myself sitting on a park bench. The peace seems so beautiful and perpetual.

I start heading back to the house. Chances are that they're all stoned out of their minds right now and probably need some help. But they need much more than just the help that I can offer. Maybe some rehab would do it. Maybe Satan could have a nice little talk with them. Either one works for me. Suddenly sirens begin going off and they grow louder and louder with every step I take towards the house. When the house is just out of view I see an orange light on the horizon as a firetruck races past me. A police car and ambulance are farther behind me and I manage to stop the police car.

“What's going on?” I ask, trying to be heard over the sirens of the ambulance as it passes. The police officer motions to the back of his car, and I get in. The sirens of the car are turned back on and we speed off to the scene.

“There's a fire, probably from someone forgetting to blow out candles before bed.” My heart stops as I think back to my stoned friend.

The house pulls up on the horizon, engulfed in a crimson flame. I almost puke, but I swallow it. The car stops outside of the burning house, and I immediately jump out. I look at the fire and I can hear the sizzling of human flesh, accompanied with the sound of boiling blood. “Oh my god...” I say with tears burning down my face like melted wax.

Firefighters rush out of the house empty-handed as the house collapses onto itself, sealing the doom of those inside. “It's all my fault.” I whisper to myself. “It's all my fault. It's all my fault. It's all my fault.” Everything goes black.

I wake up in a hospital bed sometime after. No one tells me how long its been and the white of the room is blinding after the perpetual darkness I had just escaped. I move my body parts and it takes more energy than usual. I've been here for a long while. I can't stay in this bed forever. I turn and sit on the edge of the bed and prepare myself to stand. My bare feet touch the cold hard floor and my legs almost give out under me, but they hold me. I stretch and look around the room.

There's only one bed in the room, a small chair beside it, and there's a window that looks out onto the city outside. I go to look out of the window, but before I make it there I hear a voice that I never thought I'd hear again. “Vasil!”

I turn towards the door and see Malika standing there with the largest smile I've ever seen on her face. “Malika? What are you doing here?” I ask her, realizing that I sound more aggressive than surprised. But that's pretty normal when it comes to me speaking to my ex-girlfriends.

“I came to check on you, is that alright with you?” She says, returning my aggression and surpassing it as well. She isn't really asking if it's alright; she's telling me that it doesn't matter if it is or not. I nod, answering the rhetorical question anyways.

“Just surprised that's all.” I say to her, then the thoughts from that last night come back into my head. “Look, I'm sorry for hurting you. I thought you knew it was just for fun. I thought you knew about my reputation.”

She smiles at me. “Oh, I did know. I knew it was going to happen. But even with the walls around your heart, I managed to get in. Otherwise you wouldn't be saying sorry.”

My heart stops dead in its tracks. She's right. She got in. That's why I still care. “How long has it been since the fire?” I ask her, trying to change the subject.

“Just a couple of days. You really had everyone worried.”

“What about the others?”

“Your friend and those girls?”

“Yeah.”

“Dead.” The ice comes off of her tongue, and I realize her own heartlessness. I thought she was not like me in anyway.

“Why are you so cold?” I question her, planning on destroying the walls. No one should be that cold. It's just not natural. Compassion and empathy is what makes us human. Without them, we are nothing more than heartless machines of death and destruction.

“I'm just as cold as you are, Vasil.” She tells me. My mind rejects the idea, but it seems to understand that I really was that cold once. But that was before the fire. After hearing the sizzling of human flesh, and human blood boiling, I don't think I could ever be so heartless again.

“You're just as cold as I used to be, Malika.” I say in a dominant tone. There is no way I'm going to let her dominate me. “Do you know what really killed my friends? Orange Crush and Coke. And I know you know what I mean by that. You are, after all, who introduced my friend to that world. To think that all this time, I thought you were innocent.”

“You're just an idiot, then.”

“Stop. This is crazy. Why are we fighting?”

“I don't know. Just seems like what we ended up doing.”

“We can't let ourselves become crimson like the fire that killed my friends. It'll destroy us too.” The sad part is that what I'm saying is true. Anger and hate only leads to more anger and more hate. It's a never ending cycle. She just nods at me and turns to leave. “No. Wait.”

She stops and we sit down. We look each other in the eyes. Her near-black eyes meet my grey eyes and they lock onto each other. At first there is silence and 4 minutes pass. Then, we get into a conversation that isn't aggressive or angry. She tells me about her own life, past and present. I tell her about my past and what went through my mind the night of the fire. She laughs when I tell her about my friend telling me not to scare off the girls again. As crazy as it seems, I feel myself warming up to her. It's like every word is bringing us closer together. Is she really like the rest?

The nurse comes in about three hours after we started talking to tell her that visiting hours are over. She jumps when she sees me awake and runs out again. The sun shines through the window, and the white of the room is emphasized. “I think you have to leave.” I say to Malika, actually regretting it.

“Probably. But let's wait until someone tells me that I have to.” She replies with a gentle smile on her face. We continue to talk, now on the topic of taxi drivers in Ottawa. We laugh together as the nurse walks back in. The nurse is carrying something, but I can't make out what just yet.

“Here's your clothes, you can leave whenever you want.” She tells me, and then walks out of the room. I look at Malika and give a smiling shrug. I guess I should get dressed.

“I'll go wait in the hall.” Malika says with a smile as she gets up. I reach out for her hand, but she's already turned around and started walking away. The door opens, and then it closes again, leaving me alone once more. My hand hangs there as if it is waiting for her to come back. But she isn't unless I call her back in. It drops with its will broken.

The hospital gown slides off, exposing my bare body. I look down at myself and see cuts and scars across my body. I don't know where they came from. Suddenly a broken feeling overtakes me. I slowly slip on my own clothes. They feel warm, but most importantly, concealing. The sunlight fades and the room seems to fade to a grey.

I walk out of the room and leave for the exit of the hospital. Malika follows like black death. I stop and turn around. “Why did you stop?” She asks me.

“Tell me why you're following me. What is it that drives you? Be honest.” I question her as if it is an interrogation. She shrugs at me, shaking her head as well. I look into her eyes and see my own reflection in them. “You're playing with me.”

She starts to laugh, mirroring the laugh I let out when she said the same to me weeks before. “Of course not, baby. It's all in your pretty little head.” She repeats word for word, mocking me, yet being totally serious. It's almost like we just switched places.

“Fuck off, whore.” I reply and turn to walk away. But something stops me. A pain shoots across my body as one of the cuts reopen from the small blade in her hands. A dark laughter overtakes the hallway. The white of the hospital begins to fade, slowly turning the darkest black imaginable.

“Careful what you say, baby. You're weak and easily hurt. Just like I was.” If this was happening to someone else, the irony would make me laugh so hard I'll cry. But this is happening to me. The hunter has become the hunted, essentially. Can someone please just shoot me?

I back up, but find a wall blocking my path. I'm in a corner, trapped. She dances with the blade, reopening all of my cuts and scars. Crimson red begins to flow from my body and a lightheaded feeling begins. But the feeling is quickly cut off by adrenaline. My body feels like it's a do or die moment. So do I.

I charge her. The knife stabs through the side of my ribs. The pain is unbearable. My hands wrap themselves around her neck. I squeeze as hard as I can. Slowly, I push her to the ground. I sit on top of her. The life escapes from her eyes. I stand up and realize what I just did. I look at my hands and pass out from loss of blood. There on the floor two of the same person lie dead. It isn't murder, but suicide.

My eyes open to find themselves looking up at the full moon. I turn my head and see Malika in the moonlight. Her beauty is unrivalled. I hardly resist the urge. Her head turns and I see the light brown eyes that truly belong to her. My wrist stings. I look down at it. Scars from self-inflicted wounds attempt to hide themselves, piling on top of each other. I slide my sleeves back down.

“Why don't you come sit beside me?” My heart stops. Her voice sounds pure and innocent again. I shake my head. I jump off of my friend's roof.

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Just a note, Malika is the arabic word for Queen. It's something I came across thanks to my own friend, Malika. Vasiliás is the Greek word for King. Just thought I'd let you know.

-Zero