The train rambled along toward Aberdeen, lurching over the tracks with its steel wheels squealing against the rails, as the countryside reflected in my lackluster eyes. I was on my way home after a wild weekend in Newcastle, coming down from a heady cocktail of chemicals, and I couldn’t wait to get back to my flat.

When I opened my flat door, I was struck by the smell of weed. I went into the living room; my flatmate and the two k bitches were sitting on the sofa.

“Oi, oi.”

“Alright man, how was Newcastle?”

“Not too bad.”

I collapsed on the chair, exhausted. They were watching some Hollywood movie, probably chosen by the k bitches.

Maybe calling them bitches was too harsh. They weren’t bad people. Just two nubile young sisters with out of control ketamine habits, who were always happy to spend time with us so long as we kept the powder flowing. They were loose as hell too, but that wasn’t the thing I liked most about them. They made my own ket habit look negligible.

“What have you guys been up to this weekend?” I asked.

“Not much,” my flatmate said. “Just chilling here.”

The younger sister smiled sweetly at me, her hands curled like bunny paws.

“Saaam…”

“What?” I prompted.

“We went through a bit of your k while you were away. But we’ll pay you back.”

I shook my head. “Why am I not surprised?”

“I told them not to,” my flatmate said. “I only had a few lines.”

“Hmm,” I said, getting off the chair. “I believe you.”

I went into my bedroom and removed the bag of ketamine from the stash drawer. I held it up in front of me.

What…the…fuck.

There was a small bit left in the bag. About a gram at most.

I stormed back into the living room. “Where’s the rest of the ket?!” I demanded.

“I just told you,” she said. “We had some of it.”

“What, like 95% of it? There was twenty-one grams in there!”

“There wasn’t twenty-one grams…”

“Twenty-eight grams minus the seven I took to Newcastle,” I grunted. “You definitely didn’t put some on a DVD or something?”

The k bitches just stared blankly at me.

I sighed. “Well done. You’ve rinsed twenty-one grams… in two days…”

I wanted to tell them to go to their room to think about what they’d done, but this was my flat.

“Sorry,” the older sister muttered. “We’ll pay you back.”

“It’s not the money,” I said, frustrated. “This stuff is like gold dust right now.”

“You mean nobody else has k?”

“I know they don’t! This city is a fucking desert! God, I was so looking forward to having a few lines and you’ve gone and-”

I stopped whining and took a long, deep breath.

Count to ten.

“There’s one guy I know who has probably got some,” I said.

“So what’s the problem then?”

“Because I don’t really like going round there. This guy’s a proper grimy bastard.”

“Why, what’s he done to you?”

“Well, nothing. Not yet. But you know Kain Ritchie?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know the full story, but his girlfriend was round there one night and accidentally hit him with a bottle, and he beat the shit out of her. She had to go to hospital.”

“Oh my God.”

“That’s one story about him. There are more.”

The k bitch fell silent. I could tell the story had shocked her.

“Why do you even deal with him?” she asked.

“’Cause I’ve got to hand it to the guy. His ket is absolutely banging.”

I went into my bedroom and dialed Rich’s number. The phone rang a few times until he picked up.

“Hello?”

“Alright man, how goes it?”

“Alright. What you sayin’?”

“Not much. I was wondering, you know that girl with special needs? Have you seen her?”

“Special needs? Aye, she’s here.”

“Sweet. I’ll be round in about an hour.”

“Sound.”

I hung up the phone.

We really needed to work on our codes—girl with special needs? If any law enforcement agency was intercepting our calls, they’d likely deduce from our conversation that we were involved in a prostitution ring involving spastic slaves. I’m not sure what the sentencing for that sort of crime entails, but I’m pretty sure it’s beyond anything a drug dealer faces.

I checked my drug stash to see if anything else was missing. It was all there, including the azaperone.

Azaperone. One of the newer short-acting tranquilizers. It has a wide margin of safety and has been used to tranquilize elephants.

I’d bought the stuff for a joke, but one of these days I might actually try it to see if it had any recreational value. But it was probably best not to leave it here. If those thieving k bitches went through my stash when I was away, the joke could turn nasty.

I put the azaperone in my jacket pocket, then went back into the living room.

“Have either of you got any money for this ket?” I asked.

The older sister shook her head. “Not until I get paid.”

“Not on me,” the younger one said. “I’ve got like twenty in my bank.”

“Okay,” I said firmly. “Let’s go.”

To my dismay, when we arrived at the cash machine it was out of order. The nearest cash machine was a bit of a trek, so I convinced her to come with me to Rich’s and use the one near his flat.

We were halfway down the street when she started having second thoughts.

“Look, you’re coming with me,” I told her. “We wouldn’t even be doing this if you two hadn’t snorted more ket than Amy Winehouse on New Year’s Eve.”

“But I don’t want to be around this guy. Not if he’s as bad as you say he is.”

“Nothing’s going to happen, okay? We’re in there and out. I don’t want to be around junkies any more than you do.”

“What, heroin?”

“No, ice cream. Yes, heroin. How can anyone take that shit?”

“Same way that we take pills and ket,” she said in a condescending tone.

“No, no, no. There’s a big difference, okay? I know you like skinny fashion models and all that heroin chic urban hipster crap, but let’s get one thing straight. Stick a needle in your arm and you’re no friend of mine.”

“Oh fuck right off. I wouldn’t even smoke the stuff.”

“Why’d you make that stupid comment then?”

“What?”

“You were sticking up for heroin addicts!”

“Not really,” she muttered. “I’m just saying… people take heroin for different reasons, just like any drug.”

“Yeah, but you can’t say it’s like any drug. No one would ever rob a house for a pill. Or stab someone for ket. Not even you.”

“Yeah, but not all heroin addicts are like that. Some of them have jobs.”

“And you’re telling me this, why? So I can cry for them?”

“No… I just think you should have a bit more compassion, Sam.”

“Well I don’t, okay? Unless you’re the underprivileged child of junkie parents or someone who has never known better, there’s no excuse to be a heroin addict. Not anymore.”

“Too true… but it’s so addictive… it’s one hit hooked.”

“Then just don’t try it!”

“Easier said than done.”

“Christ, I know that,” I said as we neared the bus stop. “It’s not like I don’t know how shitty life can get.”

Ronan Keating said that life is a rollercoaster, but what does he know? Even assuming he had the talent to write his own songs, why should we trust some guy who’s been singing about love for fifteen years and then cheats on his wife?

My life so far has been more like a broken-down Manson-family-run haunted house, offering me stretches of hellish horror interspersed with some cheap, weird thrills and moments of normality. It’s not that I can’t relate to junkies. In this trip or adventure we call life, we often hit a lot of obstacles on the way. There’s no escaping it. Just because destiny calls you, doesn’t mean that you won’t be assaulted on your path toward it. Whether you’re on the right path or the wrong path in life, the situation is the same: you hit a wall, you pick yourself up again. But there’s only so many walls you can hit before your spirit starts to break down and a temptation to ride the white horse starts to grow… oh if you could only forget your pain, even if for a moment. There are so many times I’ve been close to scoring some smack with the intention of shooting myself to kingdom come, grabbing a knife and slashing my veins in the hope that I’ll be reborn into a new body, become a rodent, or just dissolve into absolute nothingness… which might be better than heaven.

But I didn’t. I’m nothing special. I never stopped working on my problems and I’m still here. I’m convinced that most junkies are weak and feeble human beings, and if they all died facedown in a pool of their own shit, I would encourage the flow of heroin into the country as a quick means of cleaning up the gene pool. I also realize that’s a very hateful and uncaring thing to say, no matter how true it may be.

The bus came and we got on. We dumped our coins, snatched our tickets and moved up the bus. Angry-looking tattoos and gold chains poked out from under T-shirts. There were two empty seats a couple rows from the back. I sat in the window seat, she sat beside me.

A young kid with an ear stud sat in the back, eyeballing us. I looked out the window as the first few flecks of rain hit the glass.

Fucking great.

Where we were headed was ghetto turf. It was a grim enough place without the rain cracking against it.

Feeling myself slipping into moaner mode, I diverted my thoughts to the people in the bus who actually had to live in these areas.

The scourge of heroin affected the lives of all the passengers in some shape or form. Not just the penknife-wielding goblin in the back, whose stolen cash was beaten out of him daily by his junkie dad, or the street prostitute sitting across from us who sold her thin, diseased body for the money to buy heroin. The sad, everyday faces on the bus told their own story too. The old lady who was scared to leave her home at night when desperate junkies prowled the streets looking for money for their next fix; the single mother who worried that her troubled son would soon fall prey to the local heroin dealers; the down-and-out student who was just trying to make it through another day without some junkie scum hassling him for the one thing he didn’t have enough of himself.

It beggars belief that one drug could do so much damage to the world.

And yet it seems impossible to think that without heroin, Alice in Chains and Kurt Cobain may never have reached the depths of despair needed to create their art. Not to mention Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix, whose music owes more than a passing nod to the influence of late 1960s and early 1970s heroin culture, regardless of how much H they may or may not have done themselves. All those bands whose demise was spurred on by heroin, disbanding at the apex of their nascent careers, and those talented but oh-so troubled artists who seemed destined to die young. They say God works in mysterious ways, but that’s not even scraping the surface.

Despite what certain k bitches may say about me, I am not entirely uncompassionate. I can cut the musicians a bit of slack here. I think it’s easy for us now to sit back and point fingers at the Seattle grunge scene or the NYC of the early 70s, but not so easy to envision what it must have been like to have been one of those musicians swept up in a burgeoning art scene where everyone was doing heroin, which took some of them to dizzying heights and brought them down to earth as the lethal realities of heroin took hold.

But these days, unless you’re producing some pretty spectacular art to justify your habit, there’s got to be a million better ways to help your life than heroin. No one said it would be easy. But you’ve got to try.

I gazed out the window as the rain drummed a rhythm into my head.

After getting off the bus, we pushed our way through the wind and rain. This was one of the roughest, poorest parts of town. On our side of the tracks was a run-down car park overlooked by dilapidated council flats. A strong gust of wind blew loose papers along the street as my eyes looked out at an impossibly gray site.

It was as if God had plunged a giant syringe into the street, extracting every last drop of color from the concrete surroundings. Where he had taken all the color was anyone’s guess, but it was far from here. A couple strutted by us in their weather-decayed clothes, their haggard eyes burned feverishly in their sockets.

“It’s f-fucking freezing,” I said. “Go and give us a toke.”

“I thought you hated rollies?”

“I do. I just need to warm myself up.”

“With what, cancer?”

“Better than nothing.”

At the end of the day, even those of us living in the crumbling high-rise council flats still have a lot to be thankful for. We really do. There are people starving.

Life is all relative, and it’s all too human to take what you have for granted. Something a cancer survivor told me in the doctor’s waiting room. You don’t just jump out of bed in the morning glad to be alive, you go back to complaining about the little things.

Like where’s my fucking ket-a-mine!!

I was choking for a line to warm me up. I would get my wicked way soon enough.

We went to the convenience store and got some money and cigarettes, then we walked to the front of the high-rise building, past the vulgar graffiti on the grey stone wall. I went up to the door and rang the buzzer.

We got buzzed in and walked up three flights to the door. A look of fear crept over the k bitch’s face. In an attempt to calm her, I reminded her that “we’re in there and out.”

The door opened inwards, revealing Darren.

“Alright man.”

“Alright,” Darren said, “jus the two of ye?”

“Yup.”

Darren opened the door fully and we stepped into the flat. We went into the living room, where a large circular table was crammed, surrounded by a sofa and floor cushions, one of which Rich sat on as he smoked a joint. Old-school house music played through the Television’s speakers.

“Alright man.”

“Alright,” Rich muttered.

Rich had a tattoo of celtic-looking symbols that stretched up the back of his neck to the crown of his shaven head. If I recalled correctly, Rich was about twenty-seven or twenty-eight, but he looked a lot older. That’s what years of chain-smoking, binge-drinking and hardcore drug abuse will do to ya. Not to mention poor diet and lousy sleep hygiene. It was probably a miracle that this puddle of anal discharge was even walking at all.

I introduced Rich to the k bitch and we took a seat on the sofa. On the table in front of us, a small mound of glistening white powder sat on a DVD.

“So what was the drug of choice this weekend?” I asked.

Rich turned his head to Darren. “What was ‘at stuff we had on Friday?”

“Blue bear traps,” Darren said. “It’s a new legal high.”

“Sounds gnarly,” I said.

“Oocha fucker!” Rich said. “This stuff’s fuckin’ mental.”

“Describe it to me.”

Rich’s eyes widened. 

“Well… Scudder crashed his bike into a lamppost and ended up in A & E. Darren tried to cut Jenna’s arms off with a pair of pliers ‘cause he thought she was a bat. Reidzer spent the whole night in a ditch cryin’. And ah can’t remember a fuckin’ thing that happened.”

“So,” I said. “It did the job?”

“Oh fuck aye! Abdy’s fuckkked!”

“Sounds alright! I’ve just got back from Newcastle.”

“Aye, I do like the Geordies.”

“Yeah, it was pretty good. Town was quiet for a Saturday night, though. The club we went to was dead. But I was too wasted to care.”

“Clubs are shite,” Rich muttered. “Unless there’s a decent DJ on it’s a waste a money.”

“I know!” I agreed, surprised to hear Rich utter something rather perceptive. “I’m convinced that these places are nothing more than money-makers for purveyors of liquor and nuts. They say that smoking is an unsociable habit, but the only time you’re likely to meet anyone in a club is outside in the smoking area.”

“Yous wantin’ a line?” Rich asked as he picked up the card off the DVD.

“Hmm. What is it?”

“Speed… mostly.”

I shuddered. “No thanks.”

The k bitch politely declined his offer and Rich cut two lines with the finesse of a true pro. He picked up the tooter and snorted a line, then Darren came over and snorted his line.

The k bitch and I sat quietly and smoked a cigarette as we waited for Rich to take care of business. Rich and Darren were having a drug-addled conversation about a recent business transaction. Lots of frenzied dialogue and macho posturing jostled back and forth between the two men as they discussed a drug deal gone bad involving “Polish cunts” and stolen bags of purple haze.

I tuned out of their conversation until I overheard talk of “a new batch of super strong swedgers.”

“Have you got any pills?” I asked at the first moment of silence.

“Not for sale,” Rich said. “I’ve got a sample.”

“What type?”

“Green Rolexes.”

I nodded, impressed. “Do you mind if I take a look?”

Rich shrugged and got up.

“You can look, like…”

He squatted down and opened the door of the Television cabinet. Reaching in with both hands, he pulled out a small wooden box.

“This is ma baby right here…”

He came over and put the box on the table in front of me. He took the lid off and a swarm of drugs glittered madly.

“My my!” I said.

“Pill’s in there somewhere…”

Rich turned away from me.

I started rummaging through the teeming box.

“So what do we have here?” I asked.

“MDMA, MDA, MDAI, Methylone, Scopolamine, LSA, LSD, Mescaline, Pescaline, Salvia, DMT…”

“But there’s no such thing as pescaline,” I said in a small voice.

“Aye there is!” Rich insisted. “It’s the powder they make from all the cactus pricks.”

“Oh wow!”

Rich continued: “2CB, 2CI, 2C-T-2, 2C-T-7, 4-HO-MET…”

“See, this is why I come here, Rich. You’re the Indiana Jones of the drugs world.”

Rich grinned like a maniac, and I knew he would wear that title like a badge of honor from now on.

I fondled the pleasure treasures and exotic narcotics, marveling at the beauty of them all. There was a rainbow-colored array of pills of all shapes and sizes, diminutive bottles, baggies of mysterious white powder.

“Would you sell any of this stuff?”

“Nit. Personal use only.”

“Dammit.”

I found one of the Green Rolex pills and examined it. The speckled pill was imprinted with the luxury watch’s logo. I put it back in the box.

“Get that box away from me!” I said. “Jealousy is the most powerful emotion.”

Rich smirked and picked up the box, putting it back in the cabinet.

“Right,” he said firmly. “Come through and I’ll sort this for you.”

I followed Rich into his messy bedroom. The scales were sitting on top of his chest of drawers. After I gave him the cash, he weighed me out three grams of ketamine, tipping them into a baggie.

“Sound.”

We went back into the living room and I sat beside the k bitch, eager for a line of ket.

“Let’s have a small line before we go,” I told her. “It’ll make the trip more tolerable.” I looked at Rich. “You guys want a line?”

“Wouldn’t say no,” Rich muttered.

Darren nodded eagerly and handed me a DVD. I cut four lines of ketamine, the two smaller lines being for the k bitch and I.

All of a sudden, I heard the k bitch let out a small moan. I looked over at her, saw her eyes were half open.

“You okay?” I asked.

She made a noise that was midway between a dwarf’s orgasm and a gurgling sound. And then she sank down into the sofa, facing away from me.

I tapped her on the shoulder three times. She didn’t respond, so I tapped her harder on the shoulder twice. “Hey, you okay?”

Again, she didn’t respond.

Huh?

I turned her around so her back was against the sofa, with her eyes closed and her head drooping down. I slapped her across the cheek, then slapped her again harder. Her eyelids fluttered but didn’t open.

“What the fuck?” I muttered.

“K-hole?” Rich said.

“No, that’s not possible.”  

“Why not?” 

“Because she hasn’t had any yet.”

I frowned at her asleep on the sofa. I could hear her breathing, in what was almost distinguishable as a snore.

“I saw her have a bit of your gear while yous were sortin’ the k,” Darren said.

I frowned. “What gear?”

“The gear in your jacket pocket.”

I kept frowning for a moment, confused as to what Darren was talking about.

And then it hit me smack dab in the crotch.

She had taken the azaperone. 

“Oh shit,” I despaired.

“As soon as yous left the room, she went into your jacket looking for the cigs,” Darren said. “She found that baggie, opened it up, took a bit.”

“What do you mean a bit?” I asked. 

“A pinch,” Darren said, holding up his thumb and index finger.

“Shit,” I muttered.  “This stuff isn’t gear… it’s azaperone. It’s an elephant tranquilizer.”

“You dirty cunt!” Rich blurted.

“Huh?”

“Want to knock her out so you can get one up her, eh?”

Darren laughed.

“No way!” I blurted.

“That’s fuckin’ sick, like. I should fuckin’ call the feds on you.”

“It’s not like that at all! I just bought this stuff for a joke. She stole my ketamine from my flat, so I took this stuff out in case she snorted it too!”

Rich and Darren laughed.

“That’ll stand up well in court.”

“Aye, the judge’ll love that,” Darren added.

“Wish ah’d done that every time some quine stole drugs from me!” Rich said. “Ah’d be livin’ like a fuckin’ Arabian Prince!”

I wasn’t happy with being called a rapist, even for a joke, but I kept my mouth shut. Rich had probably beaten people up for less than my gripes.

I grabbed my phone and started searching Google for safety information on azaperone. I found some courtesy of Elephant Care International.

“I think I need to take her to hospital,” I said. “It says no specific drug interactions have been reported for azaperone.No specific information was discovered regarding overdoses of azaperone.But it also says for capture of wild juvenile African elephants 60-80 mg.” I paused for a moment. “She’s pretty small, so even a small bit could be dangerous. I just want to play it safe.”

“Is she your girlfriend?” Rich asked.

“No.”

“Can I finger her, then?”

I chuckled uneasily. “I thought you had a girlfriend?”

“Ah don’t do girlfriends. Ah just fuck ‘em.”

I shrugged. “And why not? After all, variety is the spice of life.”

Rich snorted.

“Sixteen vaginas since parole. How’s that for spice?”

He pulled a cigarette from the pack and put it in his mouth.

I looked at the k bitch again. Her face was pale, her jaw dropped open like a trap door. I grabbed her shoulders and shook her vigorously. “COME ON, WAKE UP!”

But her eyelids didn’t so much as twitch. She seemed to be sinking deeper into unconsciousness.

“I’ll call us a taxi,” I said.

“I’ll give yous a lift,” Rich said.

“Seriously?”

“Aye, I’ll easy drop yous in town. I need to go into town anyway.”

“Well, when are you leaving?”

“In a minute.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

I snorted one of the lines I’d made, then the flat buzzer rang. Rich went into the hall and buzzed them up. A few seconds later, someone stumbled noisily into his flat. I could hear a woman’s husky voice coming from the hall.

I waited eagerly for Rich to come back through and tell us we were leaving. But ten minutes or so later, I was still waiting.

I went into the hall and found him standing in a cold room that reeked of cheap alcohol and sweat. A haggard woman was sitting on a thin and filthy mattress, with heroin paraphernalia on the floor next to her, preparing her next hit.

“Rich, I don’t want to rush you, but I need to get going,” I said. “If you can’t take us soon, it’s cool. I’ll just call a taxi.”

“I’ll take yous,” he said firmly. “In a minute.”

The woman lit a lighter and held it underneath the spoon. The solution started boiling and frizzing until it was liquefied. She put the spoon down on the floor when the flat buzzer rang again.

“Fuck’s sake,” Rich muttered. “I’ll deal with this quick, then we’ll go.”

He stormed out of the room.

The woman put a ball of cotton wool in the spoon. She pushed the needle through it and pulled up the plunger, until all of the heroin was sucked in. Then she gave the needle a little flick.

“Go give us your belt, hun,” she hoarsed.

Already well out of my comfort zone but too engrossed to leave, I removed my belt and handed it to her, holding up my jeans. She wrapped the belt around her arm and pulled it tight, holding the end in her teeth. Faint bluish veins sprouted in her arm. She picked up the syringe. It’s time.

And as I watched her push that needle into her deathly white arm, I knew it was a mistake to bring the k bitch here. We needed to get out of here, now.

The woman plucked the syringe from her arm and put it down on the floor. She took deep breaths as wave after wave of warm orgasmic pleasure coursed through her body.

“Oh my God,” she hoarsed, closing her eyes. She lied down on the mattress with my belt still wrapped around her arm.

I moved over to her, crouched down and took hold of my belt. I began to ease it off her arm, when my jeans fell down.

Rich stormed back into the room.

“Right, let’s g—”

Rich suddenly stopped, looking down at my boxers. Then he looked at the woman nodding out on the mattress.

A grin ripped across his face.

“You are one sick bastard…”

“It’s not what it looks like,” I said, pulling my jeans up. “But coming from you, that’s a compliment.”

Rich dragged the woman out of his flat and dumped her on the stairs, then I followed him into the living room. He combined two of the lines of ket I’d made into one line, snorting it loudly. 

“Right, we’re awa!”

I tossed the k bitch over my shoulder and we left the flat. She sat slumped over my shoulder as I followed Rich and Darren downstairs, being careful with my steps. She weighed about as much as a Latvian child; I could have handled two of her.

We stepped out of the tower block. Rich unlocked his car and got into the driver’s seat. Darren got into the passenger seat. I opened the back door and laid out the k bitch on the backseat, then got inside and lifted her feet on my lap.

“You sure you’re okay to drive after that line of ket?” I asked.

Rich jammed the key in the ignition, the engine roaring to life.

“Piece a piss.”

The car sped off into the dark Autumn evening.

Godawful hard dance music blared in the car as Rich ploughed toward the hospital. I sat in the back, a feeling of dread growing in my stomach. Although I was fairly sure that the k bitch would be okay, I needed to make up a very convincing story in case she didn’t wake up or I would be held responsible.

Suddenly a police van pulled up behind us, lights flashing.

“Shit,” Darren muttered. “Feds.”

“It might not be for us,” Rich said.

“Just pull over.”

Rich pulled over to the side of the road. The police van pulled up behind us, and the two police officers got out of the van.

“Shit,” I muttered.

“Just keep yer mouth shut,” Rich said as he rolled down his window.

I was tempted to throw my k out the window, but they’d probably notice unless… too late.

The cop peered through Rich’s window.

“You want to tell me why you stopped at that green light back there?”

Rich said nothing.

“Um… ah didn’t notice.”

“I know you didn’t notice,” the cop sneered. “I saw exactly what you did.”

“Um… terribly sorry… officer… sir…”

Darren chuckled.

The cop peered into the backseat and saw the k bitch lying unconscious.

“Right, everyone out. Now.”

I lifted her feet off my lap and got outside with Rich and Darren.

The cop rapped on the window. “Everyone!”

“She’s a bit out of it,” I said.

The cop fixed me with a mean-eyed look. Then he shot a glance at Rich and Darren.

“Right boys. Where are the drugs?”

He moved down the row like a drill sergeant.

“We don’t have any drugs,” I explained. “Me and her just got a bit drunk.”

“Look.” He glared at me. “Do I seem that stupid?”

“But—”

“No, listen. We can do this either of two ways. You can make things nice and easy for us and hand over the drugs, or we can search you. And we will find them.”

Shit, I thought. Maybe I should just hand over my k, get a slap across the wrists or a minor fine and be done with it.

But what about my azaperone?

Azaperone wasn’t illegal, but I had no believable reason to be carrying it. The k bitch was unconscious in the back of a drug dealer’s car. And if they found out I was carrying a bag of uncut elephant tranquilizer, they wouldn’t need the inquisitive skills of Columbo to suspect that something shady was going on.

But how would they find out?

If they searched me, I could lie to them and say it was something else. But if the k bitch came to serious harm, it would warrant further investigation. And if they sent the azaperone away to be analyzed, they would know exactly what it was!

I could hear the gavel bang down and the judge proclaim: “I SENTENCE YOU TO FIVE YEARS FOR ATTEMPTED RAPE.”

“NO!”

“I’ve just got a bit of ketamine,” I said.

I took out the bag of azaperone and handed it to the cop.

“Good man. Anyone else?”

Rich and Darren stood their ground.

The cop glared at the two men. “No?”

Rich suppressed a smirk at the cop’s glare.

The cop let out a sigh.

“Right, empty out your pockets.”

The cop proceeded to search Rich while his partner opened the driver’s door to search the car.

Shit.

Rich and Darren will probably hate me for not adhering to the “don’t talk to the po-lis” code of the streets, I thought. But so what. I was just a customer. I had no loyalty to their operation.

Would the cops take me to the station or just take my details? 

Probably just take my details. Hell, I’m sure the cops are a bit too busy chasing smack dealers, crack dealers, coke dealers, meth dealers, speed dealers, weed dealers and pill dealers to care about a little bit of ket… right?

The police van headed for the station with us cramped in the back, all handcuffed, when Rich launched into his verbal attack.

“You fuckin’ prick! If you’d just kept yer fuckin’ mouth shut they might’ve just fucked off!”

“Don’t be stupid,” I muttered. “They weren’t going anywhere. You heard the cop, if we didn’t hand over the drugs they were going to search us!”

“Of course they’re goin’ to search us once they know we’ve got drugs on us, you fuckin’ prick!”

“Look, I know you’re pissed off, but don’t take it out on me. It’s not my fault you had all that shit in the car. And why the fuck are you even driving after a line of ket? That wasn’t the smartest play!”

“Do yourself a favor and shut up,” Darren warned.

I took a deep breath and lowered my eyes.

I knew Darren was right, and I didn’t want to anger Rich further.

“Look, now is not the time to fight,” I told them.

I slipped my cuffed hands into my jeans pocket and pulled out my wallet. Then I removed the bag of ketamine, holding it up in the air.

Rich scowled at the bag. “What’s that?”

“Ket,” I said.

“How the fuck do you still have ket?” he demanded.

“They didn’t search me! I gave them the bag of azaperone.”

Rich and Darren exchanged curious looks.

“They’ll probably search me at the station, so I definitely don’t want to be taking this in with me. I was thinking I could empty it on the floor here and hope they don’t notice. But to be honest, that just seems like such a waste…”

A mischievous grin spread across Rich’s face.

“Fuck it… rack ‘em up!”

We knelt down over the seat in the cramped space, as the police van jolted along. I dumped all of the ketamine out onto the seat.

“How much is there?” Rich asked.

“Three grams, what you sold me.”

“Fuck, a gram each!” Darren cried.

I ran my bank card vigorously back and forth over the pile, crushing up the crystals. I tidied up the pile, then continued to crush them down, working the card like a piece of sandpaper.

“Doesn’t have to be perfect!” Darren said.

“I know,” I grunted. “Still, I’d prefer to have as few sharp rocks coursing through my brain as possible.”

“Give it here!”

“I’m going as fast as I can!”

The crystals crackled and popped as I frantically tried to flatten the pile.

I stopped crushing, gasping for breath. The crystalline powder was more crystalline than powder.

“Fuck it, that’ll do,” I groaned. “We don’t have much time. Cut the lines.”

Darren cut the pile into three thick lines as I rolled up a note. I cleared my nasal passage and looked down at the line I was about to take.

“Here goes…”

I put the note in my nose and snorted the whole line.

“Ahh!”

An avalanche of excess ket spilled out of my nose.

“Christ that hurts!” I said, pinching my nostrils.

Darren grabbed the note out of my hand and snorted most of the line.

“Oocha fucker!”

He put the note back in his nose and finished the line.

The police van came to a halt.

“Shite!” Rich yelled. “Give it here!”

Rich shoved the note in his nose and hoofed up the whole line.

“AHH!”

We heard the doors slam shut as the two cops got out.

I swept the remaining powder off the seat as the van door swung open.

“Everyone out!”

We stood up quickly and stepped out of the van into the evening. The cop slammed the door shut.

We walked towards the police station’s front door with the two cops behind us. I felt the weight lifting off my body as bright, creamy light emanated from inside the station.

“Brrr,” Darren shuddered. “Ah that money n’ they can’t fuckin’ paint!”

Suddenly I remembered that Rich had my note.

“Rich,”I said, trying to get his attention.

But it was not Rich.

It was Darren.

I turned around, and the door that had shut was open again.

WTF?!

I went for the door and the handle was… on the door again.

I stopped moving, panic washing over me.

Oh no, I thought. Don’t fall apart now. If I can just get through this door, everything might actually be okay.

I tried to think of what I should do, how I could get out of this, but my mind was blank. I didn’t really know where I was. What was going on?

I was sitting on the bed in my cell when I came out of my hole. I’d been in a very confused and fragile state as the cops had shuffled me from room to room to take my fingerprints, a hideous mugshot and some other stuff I’d forgotten about.

How long ago was that?

It seemed like a lifetime had passed in this place. I was dressed in a jumpsuit thing, a bit like a onesie but nowhere near as comfortable. My clothes were sitting in a heap on the floor next to the bed.

I wondered how the k bitch was. I picked up my jeans to look for my mobile phone, but it wasn’t in the pocket.

Dammit.

For the next hour, I sat bored in the cell, listening to the loud drunken voices pervading the walls. Eventually the cell door opened and the two officers who had arrested us came in. I looked angrily up at them.

“You’ve been arrested for possession of ketamine?” asked the dark-haired cop.

“Yeah, that was like an hour ago.”

“Don’t be cheeky,” the blonde cop snapped. “We are not social workers. This is the law.”

I lowered my eyes meekly.

“Sorry… I just don’t see why you had to lock me in a cell over a bit of ketamine. Couldn’t you have just taken my details or something?”

The dark-haired cop shook his head.

“You were found in a vehicle with a lot of class A drugs. That was reason enough to detain you here.”

“But I had nothing to do with them! Fucking pigs.”

“What was that?” the cunt stubble snapped.

“Nothing.”

I dropped my head and made sure to keep my thoughts to myself from now on. Truth be told, I really do respect the police. They have a job to do, and a damn hard one at that. I can’t blame them for the government’s shitty laws which they have to enforce. Top cop Richard Brunstrom caused quite a stir back in 2008 when he claimed that ecstasy was safer than aspirin. That’s a bit further than I’d be willing to take it, but like many cops who deal first-hand with our alcohol-related crime and disorder, he’s probably a bit perplexed as to why a drug which produces a relaxed and empathetic state is put in the same class as heroin.

The blonde cop quickly mumbled some legal jibberish off a sheet of paper and got me to scribble my signature at the bottom. I changed into my clothes and they accompanied me to the main desk, where the man retrieved my shoes, wallet and mobile phone.

The blonde cop informed me that Darren had thrown up all over his cell and passed out. Rich had attacked an officer with a Costco gift card and would be spending the foreseeable future behind bars. Where he belongs, really.

I picked up my phone, saw I had a new message from the k bitch.

“Hey, I just woke up in a police car. wtf happened?”

“Got everything?” The blonde cop asked.

I looked up at him. “Yeah.”

“That’s you good to go, then.”

I nodded. “Sorry about being rude earlier.”

“That’s okay,” he said, walking me to the door. “We can tell by your record that you’re not one to cause trouble.”

I said goodbye to the officer and left the station with the intention of being on my very best behaviour for a very long time. I was physically and mentally exhausted, feeling like my character had been put to the test these past few hours. I wondered if the small bit of ketamine would still be there when I got home.