Junkies Anonymous.

My hand jerks in galvanized movements to the small strip of blackened aluminum foil being passed to me. The fingers holding the strip are blackened and dirty, shiny over the dirt. The windowless room in this hellhole building is lit only by the three white candles on the trash littered table. The walls are grimy yellow from years of tobacco, tar drips from the corners and collects in pools of orange grease. Our shadows dance across the vast left wall like disembodied ghosts. Banda music blares from the outdated hi-fi. It garbles and sputters static.

Pablo sits on the floor jabbing the syringe into his neck with hissing through his silver capped teeth. Slumps into dark and strange dreams. Jose takes said syringe, cooks up the tar clear and sweet and injects the solution into his junk thirsty veins. Eduardo quivers on that milk crate starring at darkness wrapped in the flames of devils. Somebody is lying on the blackened cracked concrete floor facing the wall strung out on goofballs. The tattoo on his back reads "Life is Death." The air is thick with smoke from cigarettes and marijuana and methamphetamine.

An old whore sits next to fat old fucker on the nod. Whore glares into the darkness, "I'm so horny, Johnny. I'm so horny." She falls to a whisper mouthing the words over and over. Slowly rubbing her scabby thighs. The smell of shit and vomit are strong.

As I said, I take the strip of aluminum as Carlos places the filthy straw into my mouth and ignites a lighter under the foil. I watch as the white rock melts into a syrupy liquid and casually inhale the silver smoke deep into my lungs. The smoke takes on a living liquid like consistency as I trail it down the groove on the aluminum strip.

It hits you in the spine first and like an electric current traveling along your column up into the brain to the forehead. I can feel my hair pricking as it rushes across my scalp. My teeth are grinding and my tongue clicks obsessively on the top of my sticky dry mouth. I exhale the fumes and pass the aluminum strip to Old Pete sitting next to me on the overstuffed tattered couch, relic of the 1960's. He smiles a toothless old woman smile and the wrinkles stand out in the shadows.

Carlos slides his hand under my dirty t-shirt and caresses my back that is soaked in sweat, clinging to my quivering frame like a wet condom. He whispers in my ear sexual perversions but I tell him that I am in no condition.

I down the orange juice and vodka on the table and wait impatiently for my turn to come again. And again. And again. How long has it been since I had slept? Four...five days? When the dope ran out, we stumble out into the darkness and a shit smeared alleyway of a crappy hotel in a crappy part of town. The air is sweet and fresh. Stars shine bright and the moon is a huge hideous orange.

Money gone. Dope gone. I tell Carlos come with me. I find an ATM and the party resumes full force. For the second time in my life I try heroin. This time I do not puke. The needle slid in silent and I feel the junk writhing up into my vein. A soft blow to the heart. My body goes slack and I feel all warm and relaxed. Carlos, Jose and I go into conversations of Mexican politics and 1950's science fiction.

The boy felt a touch on his arm across eight feet of murky room. He was suddenly siphoned into the booth, landing with an inaudible shlup. He looked into the my eyes, a green universe stirred by cold black currents.

"You are agent, mister?"

"I prefer the word... vector." My sounding laughter vibrated through the boy's substance.

"You holding, man? I got the bread...."

"I don't want your money, Honey: I want your Time."

"I don't dig."

"You want fix? You want straight? You wanta, nooood?"

"Ever see a hot shot hit, kid? I saw the Gimp catch one in Philly. We rigged his room with a one-way whorehouse mirror and charged a sawski to watch it. He never got the needle out of his arm. They don't if the shot is right. That's the way they find them, dropper full of clotted blood hanging out of a blue arm. The look in his eyes when it hit -- Kid, it was tasty..." Old Pete cackles.

Jose looked at Old Pete and spread his hands in the junky shrug.

Old Pete spoke in his feeling voice that reassembles in your head, spelling out the words with cold fingers: "Your connection is broken, kid."

The boy shied. His street-boy face, torn with black scars of junk, retained a wild, broken innocence; shy animals peering out through grey arabesques of terror.
"I don't dig you, cabrone."

The world network of junkies, tuned on accord of rancid jissom, tying up in furnished rooms, shivering in the junk-sick morning. (Old Pete suck the black smoke in the Chink laundry back room and Melancholy Baby dies from an overdose of time or cold turkey with-drawl of breath.)

I get eager and walk out with Carlos in tow. I light a Lucky Strike hand one to Carlos and head downtown. Everything is sharp and in focus. The lights stand out. The people alien and insect like. I get the horrors and Carlos calms me. He is so sweet.

Cooking smells of all countries hang over the City, a haze of opium, hashish, the resinous red smoke of Yage, smell of the sea and salt water and the rotting river and dried excrement and sweat and genitals. High mountain flutes, jazz and be-bop, one-stringed Mongol instruments, gypsy xylophones, African drums, Arab bagpipes...

The City is visited by epidemics of violence, and the untended dead are eaten by vultures in the streets. Albinos blink in the sun. Boys sit in trees, languidly masturbate. People eaten by unknown diseases watch the passerby with evil, knowing eyes.

My feet feel sluggish as I walk and I stumble into the 24hr Internet cafe on 2nd and Constitution to write this crap. I mean, file a report on these sinister goings on. Upstairs in this cubical, curtain drawn, Carlos sits next to me like an immobile lizard, waiting for the next fix. We both smell like shit and covered in a layer of greasy sweat. he kisses me as I try to type and his mouth taste like diseased metal.

I type faster and more frantic. Sweat dripping short of breath, horny boy at my side. Fuck it. I return to the Red Zone because I want more. And more I get...