The "vigilante drug" they called it. It wasn't, not really, but it was an even catchier title than the "loner drug" that they tried hanging on it first. I don't know if it really could be called that, either. Sort of, I guess. What it really did was detach that part of a person that wants to be part of a community, that really, truly cares what ( Read more... )

Into the deep from the dizzier heights is a dizzying transition. The world flies by, the logic and sheer rationality of the heights is left behind, and you find yourself deep down in your own id. You might think that this isn't a very safe transition, and you'd be right. You might think that this shouldn't be done without therapeutic supervision, ( Read more... )

Why would you slip a Mickey to an entire crowd full of people, including all the waiters and cooks and so on, lock the doors on the restaurant and pull down the curtains, and then let them recover themselves after the drug wore off, apparently with nothing changed for the worse? Even more of a question--how? How could you even get everyone? Either ( Read more... )

How do you get the name Discoball? Well, you take drugs and go on a really bad trip, as my grandpappy would say, and you bash your face into a mirror. Let's not get into the deep-level analysis of what the drugs brought up, eh? Let's just leave it at this: now I'm straight-edge, and I've got a face cracked with scars that looked pretty ugly. I got ( Read more... )

Toad Way split off from the merchant's district in Dragon Row, and that was where the sailors went. Sometimes sailors asked why the pleasure district's street name was Toad, but older hands took them aside quietly and explained about certain beneficial effects of toad-licking, and why you should avoid it, but why there were parlors dedicated to ( Read more... )

Did you do drugs? Did you do drugs? They flashed the questions at him on the screen, broadcast it over the loudspeaker at random intervals throughout the day and night, and casually asked him in the line for the cafeteria or as the guard was leading him to the rec room. Once when the cafeteria lady held out a ladle of mac 'n cheese and casually ( Read more... )

His morning meth appointment wasn't going well. For starters, there was always the problem of meeting a meth dealer who took his own product. Sometimes you'd get the hyper-paranoid vigilant smart on top of everything guy, and sometimes you'd meet the lost crashing guy. But either way the breath was awful and the sagging skin and falling out teeth ( Read more... )

The kick, the kick, the kickthekickthekickthekick.... It echoed inside his head, and it made him angry/hungry. He needed it. Didn't they understand that? That was the irrational part of his brain talking, he told himself. Of course they understood. How else did he think they got their money, he scolded himself. He knew that going in. He saw the ( Read more... )

He fumbled his confidence right before the big interview, dropping it down the gutter outside the office building. Horrified, he watched the little pill capsule on its fob chain roll down the drain and disappear into the gutter below. "Should have gotten it on a chain around my neck like everyone else, should have--" his mind repeated the numb ( Read more... )

Sometimes gauntlets weren't enough, and the tentacles wrapped around and slid under, touching skin, suckering flesh with that sickening caress that had intoxicated thousands and killed hundreds. Some said why was it so bad, if fewer than one in a hundred died of it? That was lower than the rate at which alcohol complications killed people. The ( Read more... )