The NecronomICON #3 – Happy 
Nigel stared at the pile of white powder on the table beside him. It was there, just waiting for him, waiting for him to get the balls. No fear in that powder, he thought, no hesitation. It knew what it wanted — it wanted him.
He was already flying. There was enough combined Coke and Heroin in his veins to kill three average men, but he knew he’d live. He knew it with bittersweet certainty, knew it as surely as he knew that one day he would die.
Why not today? Why wait? He’d seen the edge, how about the other side? A little Jim Morrison philosophy for the masses, a tribute, if you will, to those who’d gone before. Truly gone.
He scanned the walls of his apartment and let his gaze linger on each photograph, each album cover, each memory and each pain. Melissa. She was gone, too, more truly gone than even Morrison, because Nigel could follow where ol’ Jimbo had gone; Melissa wasn’t coming back.
There had been one time, with enough Coke, when he’d thought that one of the endless string of groupies that had paraded through his room and across his bed was Melissa. His warped-out mind had told him that she’d slipped in with the other tramps to win him back.
Then reality had kicked him in the balls and slammed back into place with finality and mocking laughter. The drugs had faded, the girl had been so stoned she had to be carried to a taxi and sent on her way, and the memories that had surfaced in her passing still lingered to tap and chisel away at his sanity. Time to go now, before that eroded, too, and he got locked away where there were no choices, no doors to the edge or windows to the abyss.
Nigel Waters, man with everything, man with nothing. Already gone. All that remained was the image, the plastic mannequin image he’d formulated to hide himself from the cameras and the world. Now it was empty, and they didn’t care. Image was everything — who’d said that? Some athlete, he thought vaguely, someone who didn’t understand the truth of it.
The heroin glittered in the dim light, mocking him, calling out to him. He felt his hands move as if in a dream, following the commands of his mind, but not at the time they were issued. He was fascinated — possessed. He managed, somehow, to get the hypodermic to rest in his hand without dropping it, and he brought it to the arm of the chair.
Setting the needle aside, he reached for the red bandanna that lay across his knee. A dirty red bandanna. He smiled crookedly. Still holding onto that trademark, that rock, roll, and who-gives-a-damn image. Shit, he should have looked through the drawers to see if any of Melissa’s silk stockings were still around. That would’ve looked better in the magazines.
He wrapped the bandanna tightly around his bicep, pulling one side tight with a trembling hand, the other with his teeth. Not a rubber hose, but it would have to do. He’d been searching veins out of skin for years — no problem. He’d find one. He always had.
He grabbed the spoon next. It had some residue left from his previous hit, but he splashed it onto the floor, momentarily fascinated as light glittered across the arcing droplets. He shook his head and lurched to the table once more, nearly knocking the entire mess to the floor, and grabbed the bottle of Jack Daniels that sat there. He’d always wanted to try this. One shot left, so to speak, might as well be the Jackmeister.
He tipped the bottle back, taking a big slug and letting it wind its fiery path down his throat to his stomach. Then he tipped it again — slowly — catching a spoonful of it and tossing the rest of the bottle aside where it shattered against the wall and dripped down to form an alcohol-abusive stain on the carpet. Didn’t matter, not his problem any more.
The amber liquid in the spoon quivered once, twice, and then was still as he rested it beside the needle on the chair’s arm. And now for the flames and the finale, the grand show-down.
He grabbed the spoon again and began to heat it with the candle that burned beside him, mesmerized by the flame, watching the red-gold flickers rise and fall, shifting about with a life of their own. It wasn’t until the handle of the spoon began to get warm that he remembered what he was doing. Shit. He hoped to Christ the whiskey didn’t catch fire!
He reached into the pile of powder and grabbed a large pinch — a very large pinch, dropping it into the whiskey. He watched it beginning to dissolve, then said, “What the hell,” and tossed in a second pinch. He worked it all around with the tip of the needle, stirring and crushing, creating.
He was creating a way out, a doorway to another place. When it was all one consistency he dipped the needle in and drew up several CC’s of the mix — several too many. The bandanna, almost forgotten by then, had done its work, cutting off the flow of blood to his hand.
“Good thing I only need one for this,” he said with another grin. It was the closest to happy he’d been in years. He stared at the largest poster on the wall. Jim Morrison stared back at him, one hand out in front and beckoning, calling out for him. He plunged the needle through his skin.
“I’m coming, damn you,” he said. As the drugs hit him, he slumped to one side. His eyes spun back into his head, which lolled backward aimlessly.
The spoon and the needle crashed and tinkled to the floor together, a brittle sound that rang through his fading senses like the peal of a broken bell, the notes of a twisted banjo. It all blended then, a single note, a single tone, blending with others that rose from his drowning mind to form a chord. Then all was silent.
Written by David Wilson - Visit WebsiteFollow me on Twitter
