A small room off to the side, what could’ve been a sitting area at one time, was aglow in candlelight, the scent of my lover stronger, sticking to the inside of my nostrils. A group of four sat around in a circle, in various states of chasing their dragons. One, slumped over against the wall. Another, smiling with anticipation as he flicked the syringe with his finger. There was one person that stood out to me above the others. I could only see the top of his greasy brown hair as he tied off an elastic band around his arm. I didn’t see his face until he was tightening it with his teeth. His eyes met mine, and I gasped. Shock. Pure fucking shock shot through me. My stomach rolled and my heart pumped wildly. Every single hair on my arms stood at attention. I took a step back and shook my head because there was no way what I was seeing was real.

Eric.

It couldn’t be. He was dead. Wasn’t he?

I heard a bang, which turned out to be someone tripped over a chair. When I looked back into the room, the man was gone. Either I was seeing things or my Eric picked a really shitty night to start haunting me.

“Come on out back,” the girl said. “We got a taste of everything out there.”

I followed her through the house and into the backyard which butted up to the cemetery. We hopped the small gate where a larger circle of people were gathered under a large tree, sitting on the big bulging roots which had upturned several headstones as they grew through to the surface.

“That’s Dom,” the girl said, pointing to a dark haired guy unrolling a ball of foil. She cast me a knowing smirk then glanced down to my arms. I folded them around my chest, instinctively protecting my scars from her knowing gaze. “He’ll hook you up with whatever you want.” She clucked her tongue. “My guess is that you like to chase the dragon.”

I didn’t say anything, there was no use in denying something I wore the evidence of.

A few minutes later, I was sitting next to Dom, Indian style, while he fired up the heroin, getting ready to reintroduce me to my old lover. I salivated for a taste of her. I already felt her in my blood. My knees bounced anxiously. The second he held the needle up to my arm, I pulled it back. “Second thoughts, pretty girl?” Dom asked, leaning close enough to me where I could smell his rancid breath.

I didn’t get a chance to answer. Not him. Not my own question about why I’d hesitated. Because the needle was yanked from Dom’s hand and plunged into his neck by a masculine arm covered in tattoos.

“Good shit, right?” Preppy asked Dom, pulling his gun from his waistband and pushing it to the back of Dom’s skull. Screams erupted, and the partiers scattered like cockroaches exposed to light. Dom’s face was contorted in both fear and pleasure, which proves that even with a gun to your head, heroin wins.

Heroin always won.

I untied the elastic from around my arm and let it fall to the ground. Preppy’s hair was mussed. His face was red and his eyes were angry and determined.

“Get the fuck out of my town. I see you here again and it will be a bullet in your neck instead of a needle next time,” Preppy warned. “You understand me motherfucker?” Preppy pulled Dom’s head back by his hair so he could see the seriousness in his threat. He then released him, and Dom nodded sluggishly until his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell over in a heap onto the grass.

“You don’t know what else he’s had. He could die!” I said, standing up.

Preppy shrugged, his face uncaring and hard. “Oops.” He scratched his head with the barrel of his gun. “You know, it’s not very nice to run off like that. You could have at least said bye first. Maybe a ‘Hey Prep, just gonna go shoot some dope into my fucking veins. BRB.’”

I couldn’t deal with the possibility of never having Mirna back and Preppy’s sarcastic bullshit at the same time. “Fuck you!” I spat, taking off into the cemetery, jumping over thick roots and tripping over small triangular shaped headstones, barley visible over the grass which was the same height. It was pitch-black and my eyes weren’t adjusting well. I fell into half a dozen statues and headstones, like a ping pong ball, before I stopped to catch my breath under a crumbling mausoleum.

My head was on my knees when I heard Preppy approach, his heavy footsteps a hard thud on the wet ground. “You know what the really fucked up part is?” I asked. “Well, I’ll tell you. The really fucked up part is that I thought I saw Eric in the house when I got here.” I lifted my head and glanced at Preppy, who had his arms crossed over his chest. His biceps flexing. “I mean, I know he’s dead so it’s impossible, right? But I’m fucked up, more than I ever thought. So much so that I imagined I saw him. But even after that, during that split second when I thought he could really be alive and there in that house, ready to shoot up, I’d made the decision that I was going to stay, anyway.” I ran my nails up and down my calves. “That’s how badly I wanted it.” I paused. “WANT it.” I corrected.

The desire was so great inside of me I groaned out loud. Preppy crouched down in front of me, his gun hanging from his hand between his legs, pointed at the ground. His finger stroking the trigger.

“Look at me,” he demanded, tilting my chin up so I was looking into his eyes. “There are no old junkies, Doc. You either make the decision to stop inviting it into your fucking veins or it kills you.”

“I…I know,” I stammered, staring up at him through a curtain of my own dark hair. But I just don’t care.

Preppy pushed the hair from my face, tucking it behind my ear, and trailing his fingertips over my cheek in a sweet gesture that both thrilled and frightened me. I wasn’t expecting that, especially after what he’d just done to Dom.

Preppy sighed and withdrew his hand. “I need to point out that letting the H kill you is the same as leaping off that tower, because it’s still you making that decision to die.” He trailed the barrel of his gun up my leg, from my ankle to my knee. The cool metal set my skin to prickles and made me shiver so hard, my teeth chattered. I sucked in a breath. Preppy’s voice slowly turned from an eerie calm to a violent rage. “You were going to use,” he said, but it wasn’t a question, it was an accusation. A fact.

I nodded, my eyes on his gun as he rested it on my thigh. “And you still want it?” he asked. I nodded again, too ashamed to speak the words out loud.