The Albgebra of Need.

Night cold and clear, Victor and I dodge into all night convenience store under watchful eye of security guard with drooping Pancho Villa moustache and obscene potbelly. I peruse the aisles for deodorant, toothpaste and hear faint gasp from Victor. Admist the feminine hygene and baby laxatives are packages of pristine shiny syringes.

Victor's sounding laughter vibrated through my substance. "I'm holding some sweet heroin back at my room. You buy the needles and we can take a joy bang, brother."

I looked into Victor's eyes, a green universe stirred by black cold currents. "I dunno." I said slowly, "I dunno - I mean, I stopped doing weird shit."

"One shot won't get you hooked, man - c'mon, I just live two blocks away."

Black trash littered sidewalk race under our feet - dodging the venomous Patrols - with our bundles.

Victor touched the door gently, following patterns of painted oak in a slow twist leaving faint, iridescent whorls of slime. His arm went through to the elbow - pulled back an inside bolt and stood aside for me to enter. Heavy, colorless smell of death filled the empty room. A single space with smelly sagging bed, a slutty brown couch, rickety table, dresser missing knobs - adjacent bathroom (the toilet leaked.) and small kitchen. Currents of movement from the two bodies stirred stagnant odor pools; unwashed linens, mildew, dried semen.

Victor reached under the sink and extracted a package in wrapping paper that shredded and fell from his fingers in yellow dust. He laid out a lighter, needle, and a spoon on a table covered in dirty dishes - but no roach antennae felt for the crumbs of darkness.

"Like a firecracker package", I thought looking at the paper of heroin.

"They go off here, baby boy." Victor put a hand to the back of his head. He camped obscenely as he opened the package, a complex arrangement of slots and overlays. The junky fold. "Pure one hundred percent heroin and it's all ours."

Victor was cooking up a shot. "When the roll is called up yonder we'll be there, right?" He said feeling along my vein, erasing goose pimples with a gentle brown finger. He slid the needle in. A red orchid bloomed at the bottom of the syringe. Victor pressed the bulb, watching the solution rush into my vein - sucked by the silent thirst of blood.

Death Fear and Death Weakness hit me, shutting off my breath, stopping my soul. I leaned against a wall that seemed to give slightly. I clicked back into junk focus.

"Jesus!", said I. "Never been hit like that before!" I lit a cigarette and looked around the kitchen, twitching in sugar need. "Aren't you taking off?" I asked.

Victor was jabbing a needle into his borrowed flesh. "Junk is a one-way street. No U-turn. You can't go back no more."

Orale.