Crystal White (fiction)
I am moving, but my body is fettered with chains. I am walking slowly, as if through water, limbs weighed down with chemical lust. I’m pushing down the dark stretch of Central Ave, past the empty, barred windows of liquor stores and black alleys reeking of urine and decay. Echoes of sirens wail in the distance, like someone screaming out for help, but no one is there to answer. I am alone, and the streets are empty. Four million people are sleeping in this city tonight. My body is exhausted, but still it moves. It moves with the aimless energy of the condemned; an impotent reflex to stave off the mounting sense of desperation. It moves to keep from feeling, to keep from wanting, to stop the skin from crawling and the muscles from itching and the mind from eating itself apart. I was turning and shuddering in bed like a body possessed, heart beating like a jackhammer and breath coming heavy and fast. Then, nothing left but to pace back and forth along the creaking floorboards, a feral animal in a one-bedroom cage, sucking down the last of the unfiltered reds and trying hard not to think. I fled the apartment when the walls began pulling in tighter around me; out the door and into the cool night air. I walked alone for hours-first, with the sole intent of avoiding that street, then with the sole intent of finding it.
I am breathing, but I have no air. I am suffocating slowly in my own stale atmosphere, drowning in carbon dioxide. I’m living from gram to gram, pushing the limits of tolerance, chasing white dragons into barren lands of death. When I close my eyes, I can still feel the harsh white smoke burning into my lungs, dissolving into every blood vessel, spreading like fire through the tangled network of arteries and veins, searing black all the tissue straight through to the brain. And when I feel myself exhaling, the wisps and tendrils melting silently into the air is the last of my resistance, now nothing more than the bitter taste of ash, like burnt plastic, on my tongue. I’d count it out slowly: fifteen seconds to lift-off. And then suddenly it hits, the rush pounding through my body with the raw energy of life itself, and I’m bursting white-hot across the sky again, bounding through the atmosphere and spreading warm and liquid-thin over the earth. I can feel the gentle slip of the clutch and the roar of the engine as my mind downshifts into third, then nothing but the heavy pull of acceleration pressing me hard against my seat. I’m forty stories tall and growing all the time, I’m overflowing with radiance and branching like lightening in every direction. The hours pass like faceless seconds, a half-dozen at a time, and I’m running on meltdown, hurtling down the tracks like a runaway train; jaws grinding my teeth to dust and nails bitten down to the quick.
Now, the self-torture of memories is all I have left; incessant little bits of agony to play across the mind, scraping nerves raw like a rusty blade, wires frayed and sparkling, alight with wild blue arcs of electricity, restlessly searching for someplace to strike. I grit my teeth and walk faster, fists of bald iron in my worn jacket pockets. I feel primed and ready to explode-a corpse of brittle glass, a Molotov cocktail, crowned with yellow fire and sailing through the night. Nothing to lose now-no more job, no more family, no more friends to bleed dry. I'm all out of promises to break. The last of the money is gone and the finale is looming like an oncoming semi; it’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the sudden stop at the end. The pawn shops are all closed now, and I have nothing left to sell. I’m headed back to where it all began; that filthy brownstone on 115th, the color of dust and coagulated blood, wrapped in ghetto on all sides and hemorrhaging with reckless despair. I have no more fear of this place. I am numb with loathing-for myself, for this city, for that godforsaken house, and for everyone who has ever had to make this trip with nothing left to do but beg.
I’m thinking of that night, when James first brought me here, watching him hand the wadded pile of twenties to a dark figure through the open crack of the door, the soft greasy-brown skin of his hand. I remember the smell, that powerful stench of human putrefaction sweeping out through the doorway, hitting me heavy like a blow to the head; the quiet murmur of voices from the darkness inside, the distance sound of a dog barking through the desolate night. I was anxious, shifting aimlessly, furtive glances down the empty street, bouncing on my heels to fend off the winter cold. And then the little bag, passed from hand to hand to pocket, fast and quiet; such a small, innocuous thing. I remember walking back that night, and all the nights since, that long walk burned clean into my mind. Three years now shouldn’t seem so long; three years gone shouldn’t seem so heavy, so old and weary and gray. But my footsteps are lost in a haze of exhaust fumes, vapor trails of ice, the wreckage of crash and burn. Even now, there is nothing beyond the hunger, no purpose or reason to anything. There’s only me and the endless necessity, face to face and fist to fist, and I’ve given up wondering which one of us will win.
I am breathing, but I have no air. I am suffocating slowly in my own stale atmosphere, drowning in carbon dioxide. I’m living from gram to gram, pushing the limits of tolerance, chasing white dragons into barren lands of death. When I close my eyes, I can still feel the harsh white smoke burning into my lungs, dissolving into every blood vessel, spreading like fire through the tangled network of arteries and veins, searing black all the tissue straight through to the brain. And when I feel myself exhaling, the wisps and tendrils melting silently into the air is the last of my resistance, now nothing more than the bitter taste of ash, like burnt plastic, on my tongue. I’d count it out slowly: fifteen seconds to lift-off. And then suddenly it hits, the rush pounding through my body with the raw energy of life itself, and I’m bursting white-hot across the sky again, bounding through the atmosphere and spreading warm and liquid-thin over the earth. I can feel the gentle slip of the clutch and the roar of the engine as my mind downshifts into third, then nothing but the heavy pull of acceleration pressing me hard against my seat. I’m forty stories tall and growing all the time, I’m overflowing with radiance and branching like lightening in every direction. The hours pass like faceless seconds, a half-dozen at a time, and I’m running on meltdown, hurtling down the tracks like a runaway train; jaws grinding my teeth to dust and nails bitten down to the quick.
Now, the self-torture of memories is all I have left; incessant little bits of agony to play across the mind, scraping nerves raw like a rusty blade, wires frayed and sparkling, alight with wild blue arcs of electricity, restlessly searching for someplace to strike. I grit my teeth and walk faster, fists of bald iron in my worn jacket pockets. I feel primed and ready to explode-a corpse of brittle glass, a Molotov cocktail, crowned with yellow fire and sailing through the night. Nothing to lose now-no more job, no more family, no more friends to bleed dry. I'm all out of promises to break. The last of the money is gone and the finale is looming like an oncoming semi; it’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the sudden stop at the end. The pawn shops are all closed now, and I have nothing left to sell. I’m headed back to where it all began; that filthy brownstone on 115th, the color of dust and coagulated blood, wrapped in ghetto on all sides and hemorrhaging with reckless despair. I have no more fear of this place. I am numb with loathing-for myself, for this city, for that godforsaken house, and for everyone who has ever had to make this trip with nothing left to do but beg.
I’m thinking of that night, when James first brought me here, watching him hand the wadded pile of twenties to a dark figure through the open crack of the door, the soft greasy-brown skin of his hand. I remember the smell, that powerful stench of human putrefaction sweeping out through the doorway, hitting me heavy like a blow to the head; the quiet murmur of voices from the darkness inside, the distance sound of a dog barking through the desolate night. I was anxious, shifting aimlessly, furtive glances down the empty street, bouncing on my heels to fend off the winter cold. And then the little bag, passed from hand to hand to pocket, fast and quiet; such a small, innocuous thing. I remember walking back that night, and all the nights since, that long walk burned clean into my mind. Three years now shouldn’t seem so long; three years gone shouldn’t seem so heavy, so old and weary and gray. But my footsteps are lost in a haze of exhaust fumes, vapor trails of ice, the wreckage of crash and burn. Even now, there is nothing beyond the hunger, no purpose or reason to anything. There’s only me and the endless necessity, face to face and fist to fist, and I’ve given up wondering which one of us will win.