Will’s Wednesday Writing

From A Ghost; To A Ghost: my submission

“Giver edopy an peroceat. Words to live by.” She said with a smile as she tossed two little pressed pills into her mouth. She shimmied her shoulders and threw her head back, swallowing the pills with a mouthful of water from her stainless steel water bottle.

The words made no sense, but I didn’t care. I could only barely make them out anyway. They were coming from the girl sitting across the fire from me. She was curled up on a comfortable looking lawn chair, just far enough from the fire that the flames illuminated her face with an eerie orange glow. She was tiny. No more than 4’11 or 5’ tops. Beautiful, but like a fairy is beautiful. I had seen her earlier, bouncing around the party like a moth bounces around a lonely light on the darkest of nights. Desperate for someone to notice her.

Now, most had gone home and the music has been turned down low. Only true soldiers remain. I, my good buddy Will, this fairy child creature across from me, I think her name is Destinee, and her friend Lacy.

Lacy sat in the chair to the left of Destinee. Her face was harder to see, as she sat at an angle that caused the firelight to cast shadows across her face. She was also strikingly beautiful. She worked at the club with Destinee and had a lot of, let’s call them, connections. She seemed like she was a lot of fun and outgoing, yet, there was something else there, something broken.

Destinee looked at her friend and smiled, “Lacy, what the fuck are you talking about? Giver edopy an peroceat. That shit makes no sense at all.”

The fire flickered. I was lost in the flames and listening to my favorite song. I could just barely make out the girl’s conversation over the crackle and pop of the fire and the music coming from the little black speaker. Tupac was singing about Life. Singing about death. Singing about sacrifice.

She said it louder this time “You’ll have to decline giver edopy an peroceat and see what happens. FAFO!”

“Hahaha Lacy, what the fuck is wrong with you! That shit is silly girl. Where’d you say you got this molly from anyway?”

Lacy had brought 8 pills of what she claimed to be “pure MDMA”. Two pills for each of us, although Will had simply smiled and shook his head when she offered up his pair. He has had his struggles in the past and said he saw no reason to go back.

She told us earlier about the “chemist” she had met at work. He had been more than generous, both with pills, and $20 bills. She swore they were pure. She said they had tested them together at the club, and that her and Destinee had tested them again this past weekend.

I didn’t think to ask her how she tested them. I wondered for a moment if she even knew how to test drugs, I had a hard time picturing her performing any kind of experiment that didn’t involve a stage or a pole.

The two pills slowly dissolving in my gut started to feel like a mistake.

More so when I saw Lacy slumped in her chair. She looked a little too comfortable. Her face still concealed in shadows, she appeared to be melting.

Destinee sat up fast and looked alarmed. “Fuck! I almost forgot! I have blow!”

She grabbed her purse and rummaged around in it, eventually coming out with a little vial of coke and a folding mirror.

“I swore to myself, no more nose drugs! Then, this dude comes into the club with this shit!! I mean, look at it! Dude always has good shit, but damn, I was not expecting crunchy rocks!”

She spilled some of the crunchy rocks out onto the mirror and began crushing them up with a credit card before carefully separating the pile of powder into two neat lines.

She made the two lines of blow disappear like an old pro. Quickly and efficiently.

No sooner had she had gotten all of her voluminous hair back under control and behind her shoulders, she was spilling some more white powder onto the mirror and handing it to Lacy.

“Here Lace, you’re up.”

Lacy didn’t move. The mirror fell out of Destinee’s hand spilled the white powder out into the night.

“What the fuck?!?! God damn Lacy, you OK? Lacy! Hey! Can you hear me?!?! Fuck!”

The panic in her voice was unmistakable. I didn’t care.

I felt movement to my right and I saw Will move like a blur, up and out of his chair, across the fire and to Lacy’s side.

I saw him begin ripping away the jackets, blankets, and hoodies that Lacy had been nesting in. I could feel the panic in the air. I could see the fear in Destinee’s eyes as Will laid her best friend out on the ground at her feet. He was doing his best to clear her airway and I thought I heard him yell something about Narcan.

I didn’t care.

I couldn’t lift my legs, they were lost to me. My arms hung at my sides just as uselessly. My hands sat in my lap, I could see them, yet they wouldn’t respond.

The fire continued to burn. The flames danced and I floated in between them.

I began to hear a coonhound bawl in the distance and I thought of home. Banjo music filled my head, and I could smell smoke from the clearing fires of March in the mountains. The crystal clear tones of a redbone hound, hot on a trail, were getting ever closer and I began to recognize her voice. She was the best dog a boy could ever ask for, loyal to the bloody end.

It was Time.

Tupac’s voiced filled my head like thunder one last time, I smiled. He was right.

It was Time.

Starin’ at the world through my rearview

Go on baby, scream to God

He can’t hear you.

I can feel your heart beat fast

Cause’

It’s TIME to die

We’re getting high,

Watching TIME fly.

Dear Reader,

Thanks for taking the time to read this. I know it’s a sensitive subject for many. Myself included. It was written with LOVE and UNDERSTANDING.

👻❤️👻