From The Basement

Foreword: This short story is by no means an accurate depiction of  a heroin addicts experience and should not be interpreted as such.

From the basement of his parent’s home, Jackson frequently found himself pissing his time away with his friend Leah. As juniors in High school both were average students, producing B’s and an occasional A or C. Both of the teens led basically normal lives, following a monotonous suburban routine: wake, eat, home, eat, shoot up, throw up, come down, do homework, eat, sleep.

Despite being friends with Leah, Jackson had begun to detest her, her parents were home everyday at the appointed time, her mother always had a lovely spread laid out for dinner, their family seemed perfectly ideal in every regard. Jackson ‘s family had taken on a sterile vibe since his mother had died of breast cancer and his father got demoted and started working late into the night and stopped talking to him. He loathed his mother for dying and hated his father for never being around for him.

Dinner consisted of two things for Jackson: a microwave and a frozen dinner, Any appetite he may have had for food was frequently quelled by the Black Tar, and a fresh syringe.

Sitting down in his room, Jackson starts to write in his journal:

It’s been over a week now, my stock of goods is quickly depleting and any of the money I had saved is now coursing through my veins…. I can’t get any cash from Leah or my dad, then I’m gonna have to start taking mom’s jewelry…. Wait. Is this what I’ve lowered myself to, taking from my dead fucking mother???

His tears start streaking the pages of Jackson’s journal, making its blue lines become blotchy and faint.

He continues to write, trying to find the silver lining in what he is preparing himself to do: But then, taking just one or two of the ones she never wore could hardly be considered a heinous act…. And I doubt that dad will notice anything missing….

His father would be home any minute; if he were to take anything now would be the time to do it.

The following evening, sitting in his basement Jackson opens his gym bag, from within he produces a package containing a syringe. He tears it open with his teeth and placing the needle in the pan where he heated his fix he pulls the plunger back. The dark viscous fluid slithers into the barrel. Tightening a rubber tube around his track-marked arm, finds a vein and cautiously pushed in the needle. Jackson had done this so many times before; it shocked him as to why this time felt so much more uncertain.

About five minutes later, Jackson had his head leaned to one shoulder, his back pressed firmly against the wall. The effects had just started to set in. Leah was not with him this time; they had a fight today at school. He could feel his heart racing in his chest, thick beads of sweat raced down his face. oh god, he could feel his heart, bursting free from his chest! And as he stared pointedly from one wall to the other, for some friendly face, he found none. Wait, his mother, standing there, her eyes- two vacuous holes, her face unwavering; contorted into a sickening grimace. The nightgown she wore fell from her, revealing the absence of her right breast, from the hole poured jewelry of all sorts, glistening and shining, but as it hit the floor, it turned into serpents and maggots and crabs.

 Then, there was darkness; the creatures were upon him, he could feel them biting him, desperately he scratched at them but for every insect he crushed there were a thousand more to take its place. As he feels himself being pulled back into the darkness for a final time, he cries out for his mother, his father, god, to save him. Then Blackness.

“Mother? Are you there?” he asks