The Long Dark by B.J. Farmer (important books to read .TXT) 📗

going to have a little snort of morphine, and then go about my merry way. But as any addict will tell you, there is no such thing as moderation when you have a pile of dope in front of you. Before I had even realized it, I had taken more Adderall and morphine than I’d ever taken at one time. After all, why wouldn’t I, I had to make up for lost time. Within minutes, I was overtaken by the concoction.

I fell back on the cold floor. Waves of emotions, images, and an outpouring of lousy shit flashed through my mind. All of what I’d seen since the lights went out mixed in with a wicked composition of bullshit pre-blackout: Cold, blue skin of the infant. The rancid smelling sniffers. The loss I felt for my friends at the Patch. How I let my parents down most of my life. The cherry on top was my general inadequacy, not to mention my then-current state of dereliction. I began to cry.

The drugs facilitated moments of honest, unhesitant introspection mixed with bouts of rage. The rage stemmed from the un-hindered self-appraisal: after all, who wants to be honest about oneself, especially when the main reason for taking drugs in the first place was to forget what you already knew. I wiped my tears. I remembered why I was angry with my parents in the first place. They were overbearing assholes. They weren’t going to make my decisions for me, tell me who to hang out with or decide for me which school I went to. I’d be precisely the damn loser they said I would be, probably worse. You know what, though? I’d make the damn decisions myself.

The irony of the situation wasn’t lost even on me, even with my addled mind. I laughed at the notion of my parents making my decisions for me. They would’ve almost certainly never chosen, as an option, me lying in my own piss, in a cold-ass emergency room, teetering on the edge of an overdose while in the midst of a nervous breakdown. Maybe I needed them. It’s a shame they were probably already dead.

The more significant issue with my parents was I’d never dealt with any of the problems I had with them until that moment. There I was a forty-two-year-old man, dying inside over things that happened over twenty years ago. Not to mention how the world seemed to be falling apart all around me, and there I was dealing with daddy and mommy issues. I was a damn mess, but that goes without saying.

My eyes were getting heavy. No, I told myself. I can’t go to sleep. If I did, I probably wouldn’t wake up. Maybe that was okay. No more bullshit. No more worrying about anything. It wouldn’t matter how good or bad or how much of a disappointment I was. I was going to die. Maybe that’s what I wanted the entire time. It just took the ridiculous scenario unfolding for me to know it. To understand it. Fuck it.

My parents were probably dead anyway, so even if I did need them, it wouldn’t matter. That made me sad. I don’t remember anything else after that.

I woke up on my pallet. Aadesh must’ve come and gotten me. “Dammit,” I mumbled. That was about all I could get out.

My head felt like it was going to split in two, and my mouth and throat were so dry they might as well have been old leather.  I grabbed my coat and began to go through the pockets. “Shit!” I didn’t remember a large percentage of what had happened that night, but the one thing I had was stuffing the oversized pockets of my coat full of big bottles of narcotics. Aadesh must’ve taken them. The hell with feeling gratitude for him bailing my ass out. All I cared about is the bastard took my shit, and I wanted it back.

On wobbly legs, I made my way to the small kitchenette. I grabbed two bottles of water and a couple granola bars and walked over and had a seat at the conference table. Aadesh was seated directly across from me and was pretending to read a magazine, so he didn’t have to deal with me. Tish had her feet propped up on a chair, staring into the abyss for all I knew. For all I cared.

Aadesh lowered the magazine. He took a long, probing look at me. He must’ve not liked what he saw because he returned to reading the magazine.

I tried to calm myself before speaking. After a time I felt was sufficient, I decided to speak but only managed a faint croak. I downed one of the bottles of water and began on the other before trying again. “I appreciate you bailing me out back at the hospital. That was on me.” I waited for a reply, but none came. Instead, he offered the slightest of nods.

That irritated me. On some level, I knew I was irrational. I knew the drugs, or lack of, were screwing with my mind, but I was in a place where I didn’t think I could deal with things without them. To go along with the massive headache and terrible sweats, I had started to shake again. I needed them back.

My knees bounced as I sat there, waiting for him to say something. When he didn’t, I finally broke the silence for the second time. “So, I guess you aren’t going to talk to me?”

He shrugged. “Of course, I will dalk do you, bud I am dinking you do nod really wand do dalk do me now. If you would, jusd cud id do de chase.”

“Okay… Alright… you didn’t have the right to take my shit.”

“You were being passed oud in de floor of a deserded emergency room, in a deserded down, afder Jesus knows whad happened, and you wand do be delling me whad I did nod have do be doing? Jesus, man… ged a