Aching Steps Towards Survival [3/5] - Being Human - Annie/George/Mitchell
Part Two
iii. Mitchell
His skin was hot and cold at once, and the air was like thick water. Face pressed against the cracked tile floor, he could hardly breathe. His fingernails scratched along the tiles, but it didn't make the pain stop. Nothing would.
He thought of George, left abandoned in their home, and of how he hadn't seen Annie in weeks. George had cried when he left, red-cheeked tears against the pad of his thumb. Placing it against his cracked lips, Mitchell imagined that he could still taste the salt. With eyes closed, maybe he could pretend he had never left.
It didn't help.
"It isn't worth it." Lauren's teeth chattered as she sat propped against the toilet. Her eyes looked like bruises. "I want a hit, Mitchell. I want it to stop."
He wanted it too, with a dragging hook in his gut that he could barely resist. His nails scratched against the tiles again, as if he might be able to dig in and cling on. "We've got to get clean," he whispered, "for George."
For George.
It was the only thing that kept him going.
*
He didn't know when the knock on the door came, or when Herrick decided to storm to the rescue. It could have been a day; it felt like several years had been spent in this bathroom, jonsing and detoxing and dying, slowly.
Water trickled against his lips and he felt himself supported against a solid chest. "George," he mumbled, splashing water over his chin. The hands were too rough to be George's. There was no panicked heart beating against his ear.
"Shh," came a voice he knew. Elegant and regal, it was always in control. "Just drink."
He remembered too well how often George had looked after him in this state. The first time he'd got clean with George's help, he had cursed and swore at him, vowing to rip limb from limb if George wouldn't give him what he wanted. With his mind spinning, he had wanted to see blood, to tear flesh, to break apart whatever stood in his way.
George really was the strongest person he knew.
Cool water began to flood through him, and he then became aware of his clothes being shed, of insistent hands leading him to the shower. The water was lukewarm until hands fiddled with the dials: it heated up fast, warming his shivering body.
He opened his eyes as he began to feel alive once more. Side by side like a wise Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Herrick and Ivan waited for him. Lauren was floppy in Herrick's arms, hopefully unconscious, barely keeping on her feet; she wasn't supporting any of her own weight, but Herrick showed no signs of tiring of holding her.
He sighed like a disappointed father - and he was, in a way. Since he'd first taken Mitchell under his wing well over a decade ago, he'd been the only one to look out for him, the only one to watch over him. "Why do you insist on doing this to yourself, Mitchell?" he asked. His eyes twinkled with kind resignation.
The pounding of the shower helped to wake him up, but it didn't stop the pain in his limbs or the ache in his head. The bathroom light flickered overhead.
"We're going to clean all of this up," Herrick assured him. "You look hungry. We'll get you something nice to eat, hmm? Something warm?"
Mitchell's stomach was an ancient cave - he couldn't remember the last time he had filled it. Eating was less important than getting his fix - or, later, than getting clean. His mouth flooded.
"There's just one thing you need to do for us first," Ivan said. He withdrew his hand from his pocket: there was a capped syringe in his grasp.
Mitchell shook his head, sending the shower water flying from his curls, but he found it difficult to remember why he was supposed to say no. Ivan leaned past him, soaking his expensive suit sleeve as he turned the shower off. Resting against the tiles, Mitchell couldn't bring himself to protect his modesty, his genitals flaccid and small from ill health.
"Come on now; don't be stubborn. We'll get you healthy. If you still want to give up after that, then fine. We'll help you do it the right way."
He didn't know whether he could believe them: he doubted if either one of the pair knew anything about getting clean. Ivan passed a towel to him, and with weak hands he dried himself off and stepped out of the shower. Lauren was pushed inside in his wake, mumbling in her half-asleep state, and Herrick was left to handle her alone as Ivan led Mitchell out of the bathroom.
There were new, clean clothes waiting for him on the unmade double bed of the run-down Travel Inn suite they had paid for. Mitchell barely remembered checking in. The shirt was expensive and smelled like Egypt, one of Ivan's knock-offs. He rolled up the sleeves and tried to make it feel like his own. He didn't know who the jeans belonged to. He couldn't imagine any of Herrick's men wearing jeans. They didn't get days off.
With his hair in damp ringlets, he sat down on the bed and allowed Ivan to take his arm. The tie from Ivan's neck served as a tourniquet, and he no longer felt the prick of pain when the needle pierced his skin. His arm was covered in track marks already, small scars like foot-prints over his skin.
He rested against the bed, eyes closing as the rush hit him: it chased away the grey cotton wool in his brain and wrestled the ache from his limbs. For a while, for right now, he could feel normal again.
He didn't think of George as it chased all the hurt away. Falling further from salvation, for once he didn't want to think of him.
*
The high left a tide mark on his mind, but everything felt clearer afterwards. They left the shoddy hotel room behind and moved onto greener pastures, stopping at a fast food restaurant on the way to fill their empty stomachs. By the time they arrived at the old crematorium that acted as the base of Herrick's many operations, Mitchell was starting to think clearly again - and already wishing that he wasn't.
In the right light, on a cloudless day, if you looked out of a certain window you could see right across the city. Sitting on an old stool, staring, Mitchell dared to imagine that he could see George's office from here. George would be over-worked, as he was far too often; maybe Annie was trying to calm him down, and the pair of them were smiling together, laughing. Mitchell hoped, selfishly, that from time to time they might stare across the city and think of him too.
Easy footsteps, ambling, told him that Herrick was coming to sit beside him. "Ah, I recognise trouble," Herrick said, pointing out the pensive expression on Mitchell's face. "Penny for them?"
"I'm not sure they're worth that much," Mitchell said out of habit. He looked away from the window, back to the shrewd intelligence in Herrick's waiting gaze, and pulled himself together. "I still want to get clean."
Herrick shuffled and shifted as if it was impossible to make himself comfortable. "How many times have we been through this now?"
"Enough. This time it's for good. Has to be."
Herrick's smile twitched. There was something angry and bitter buried in his eyes. "Yes. I don't know how many more little relapses your missus will be able to take." Mitchell's jaw clenched. He didn't say anything in response, so Herrick only sighed. "Why not give up the pretence? Life would be so much easier if you'd stop fighting everything."
"I love him."
"That doesn't always mean you ought to be with him." Herrick's face was that of a kindly uncle. "People like him aren't like people like us. It's not fair to drag them in."
"Drag them down, you mean."
Herrick bowed his head in concession. "What if George wanted to try it out?"
The thought made Mitchell's stomach twist uncomfortably. "He wouldn't."
"Would you let him?" Herrick asked. He already knew the answer, of course. There had been a time, once, when Mitchell had believed that Herrick had the answer to every question imaginable.
"I'm getting clean," he repeated, because arguing with Herrick about George was a pointless exercise.
Herrick's response was to reach into his pocket and retrieve a baggy filled with white powder, a sight as sweet as icing sugar. "On the house," he said as he pressed the gift into Mitchell's limp palm.
Herrick's eyes were triumphant, now. He knew he had won. The bag in Mitchell's hand could last him for a week, at least, probably far more; giving it away, Herrick would be losing a hefty profit. To keep a lifer like Mitchell, maybe it was worth it.
Looking down at the gift, Mitchell gathered every scrap of strength that he had left - and he held his hand out. "Thank you," he said, "but I can't take this."
"Mitchell," Herrick sighed. His disappointment was like a spot-light. "You're being ridiculous."
That was probably true - so Mitchell only nodded. It made Herrick grumble unhappily.
"Okay then," Herrick said, eventually, with an expressive spread of his hands. "I won't try to talk you out of this. You run off and have your little experiment. I'll be right here when you want to come back."
That was the problem, wasn't it? Between them and their kind, creeping through the dark like wraiths, bridges were never burned. A relapse would always be welcomed with open arms, and the drugs embraced a returning friend with the passion of a long-distance lover. Not this time, Mitchell told himself. It was going to be different.
He nodded at Herrick and crossed the open space of the crematorium's floor, around uncarved tombstones and empty coffins, to where there were a rickety set of camp-beds. lying on her side with her eyes open, Lauren rested on one. Ivan sat on another, an old book open in his lap.
"Lauren," Mitchell said, squatting down in front of her. Her eyes, red-rimmed instead of black-lined, focused on him after a moment. "It's time to go."
She stared at him as if she didn't understand, but then her lips twitched and curled into an open smirk. "I'm staying here," she said.
"They're not going to help you." They were friends, but they were selfish ones. "You can't get clean near other addicts."
"I don't want to get 'clean'. There's nothing dirty about us." She sat upright, pushing herself up full and strong like a cobra preparing a strike. "We don't all have a little 'George' to preen for."
"You could." She could be so much more than what he had made her - but the sneer on her face said, I won't. "Come with me. We can still do this."
"'Together', right? I'm not buying it."
"Lauren - "
Shifting like an elegant, weary mountain, Ivan looked over the edge of his book. "I don't think she's interested," he said. It was okay for Ivan; it was easy. His Daisy was trapped in this world too, wild and laughing. He didn't have to escape it in her honour.
"Why don't I walk you to the door?" Ivan suggested, with the authority of a military general. He would never be Herrick's second-in-command, always wandering from place to place, but Ivan was commanding regardless of his station in life.
Mitchell felt the life seeping from him in defeat as he walked to the exit with Ivan's hand on his shoulder. "Why don't you come?" he asked in scrambling desperation. He needed to save someone, anyone. He couldn't do this alone.
"Good luck," Ivan said. Unlike Herrick, he seemed to mean it.
And then he was gone and Mitchell was outside and the dying afternoon sun shone, blinding his eyes. His feet fell on the pavement, one stumble after another.
He didn't know where he was going.
There was only one place left to go.
*
He sat on the edge of the fountain outside the tall, stretching building. When it was too hot and he began to sweat, he would dip his fingers into the water or splash it onto his face.
George would be working late tonight, but Mitchell didn't have too long to wait for his own intended quarry: at quarter past five, Annie bustled out of the building, clip-clopping in her short heels. He stood up to catch her attention, and saw the way that her hand tightened on the strap of her bag. "Annie," he said, because he didn't know how to say 'hello'.
"Mitchell?" She scurried forward. "What are you doing here?" She launched into his arms so he didn't have to answer, sliding his arms around her slim waist instead. His smile was lost in her hair: it had been so long since he had last been hugged. "We've been so worried," she muttered, with no indication that she planned to let him go any time soon.
"I had to be alone," he said, "for a while."
It wasn't true, but it would do for now.
"Please tell me you're going to see George," Annie said. She slid out of his grasp like river water. "He's been going mad."
There was very little that Mitchell wanted to do more than take the lift upstairs and hide in George's arms, stealing a kiss or maybe more, but he shook his head. "Not yet. I'm not ready." She frowned at him in understanding sympathy. "I need somewhere to stay."
"There's a free couch at mine." She didn't pause for a split-second before offering.
He didn't want to say 'yes', but he knew that this was what he had come here for. "Will that be okay?" Like a red flag in front of Owen's face, they might have been tempting fate.
Annie repositioned her handbag and nodded, as stubborn as he had ever seen her. "Owen and I had a chat. He knows he has to trust me now."
Mitchell still wasn't sure and definitely wasn't happy, but when he could feel old cravings itching through his limbs he knew he didn't have it in him to argue. "You're a good friend," he said, and she agreed with a bouncing smile.
Side by side, a healthy distance between them, they headed back to Annie's home, a little flat two bus rides away. Annie chattered and updated him on gossip about people he didn't know and would never meet; they didn't talk about anything important, anything real.
"Do you want some tea?" Annie offered as she led him inside, bumping the door with her shoulder before it would open. "Anything to eat? We're having lasagne for dinner. Sticking it straight in the oven." She fussed and flurried around him, until he wanted to grab her and say: it's okay; it's just me.
"Where's Owen?" he asked, poking through the relics of her life that were scattered around the kitchen. Pinned to the cork-board in the kitchen was a pair of medals from a local fun-run and a sheet of important phone numbers.
"He goes out with his mates on a Thursday," Annie said. "Won't be back for a bit."
They had a few hours reprieve, then, and the coward in Mitchell found himself incredibly grateful. His fingers tapped against the side of his leg. The thought of Herrick on the other side of town, waiting, sounded more and more inviting already.
"We should probably talk," Annie said, dinner in the oven. They had forty minutes to wait before they could eat.
She took him through to her small living room, and they sat together on the love-seat at opposite sides. "Sounds ominous," Mitchell said. His smile twitched with nerves.
"It sort of is," Annie agreed. "It's about George."
Always was, for him - for them.
"Is he alright?" Mitchell asked. There was a tint of panic in his voice, something that hadn't been there for a long time. His body was heavy with exhaustion and cramp, but if George needed him, if he could help, he would be there in an eye-blink.
"I don't know." Annie played with the corner of a cushion, twisting it around and around. "I don't think so. His mum came to see him."
A rock landed on Mitchell's chest. "I should have been there. What did she say? What was he like after?"
Drops of poison in George's ear - there was a reason that George had left his family behind. Mitchell hadn't known him there, but he wished that he had been there to cover George's ears with his hands and to tell him that, no, the whole world didn't think like that. He was perfect just the way he was.
"I was at my desk; I didn't hear anything." She seemed distressed by her lack of eavesdropping. "And they went out for dinner together a few days ago. Monday, I think. They're on the phone a lot."
"Really?"
"Yeah." She bunched the corner of the cushion into her hand and clung onto it until her hand shook. "He's leaving, you know. Going to London, not Essex, but it's close enough."
The words were like a foreign tongue. "What do you mean?"
"He says he's been here too long." Mitchell's heart started pounding; it sounded like an angry wasp, right next to his ears. "You've got to talk to him. He's got to stay."
Mitchell felt blind as he looked around at her neat living room, at the piles of celebrity magazines on the coffee table and the cheap clock that hung on the walls, busy counting away the seconds. It was difficult to imagine what his dull world would be like if he wasn't aiming for George, if he wasn't striving to be decent for him.
"Maybe he's right," he said, in a voice far too calm to be his own. "It might be better for him to go." Leaving Bristol would mean an escape for George, a way to get away from Mitchell and his messes. He would be a fool not to take that opportunity.
Annie prodded his side with a finger like a hot poker. "Don't you start," she warned him. "I will happily hit you if I have to."
He smiled: he didn't doubt her for a second.
"He can't go," he said. The stubborn thickness in his chest needed him to stay.
Annie reached across the gap on the sofa, her hand slipping into his waiting palm: it fit, perfectly. The weight held him down and chased the cravings from his blood - just for now. His head ached, but he didn't have to think about that, didn't have to think about George, didn't have to worry about his hard-won life falling away.
Using her hand, he pulled her towards him and leaned forward to meet her, noses bumping, then lips finding each other. Teeth clasped, and Mitchell placed his hand on the back of Annie's head - they glided smoothly together, the tender press and give of Annie's lips enough to assure Mitchell that maybe everything was going to work out.
Hands on his chest, Annie pushed him back and held him at bay, only withdrawing her arms when it was apparent that Mitchell wasn't going to leap on her again. Their aborted kiss had lasted less than a second.
"I think you're a little unsteady right now," Annie said, and Mitchell thought that 'unsteady' was an impressive euphemism for an entire world of broken sins. "Let's get you a glass of water, hm?"
He didn't argue. With the echo of her lip-gloss on his mouth, he didn't have the right to do so. She left him alone for a while and he grabbed a nap, hands pressed together beneath his head as he lay on the couch.
An hour passed, maybe, and when he woke up there was an argument going on in the kitchen. The house smelled like fake home-cooking and, standing up too fast, he was left light-headed. With instinctive heroism, he forgot that he was an addict and in a poor state, and chased the sound of shouting through the nearest door.
The little table was set for three with mismatched plates, and Owen leaned against the counter while Annie served the food, hot and dripping. A large blob of white sauce had dropped onto the counter already.
The argument stopped abruptly the second Mitchell entered.
"I can leave," he said, "if that would be easier."
"No, no, I want you here," Annie said, while Owen replied, "Yeah. Thanks, mate."
They paused and looked at each other, a sparking battle of wills. It ended with a roll of Owen's eyes and a knowing sneer: Mitchell wanted to say something, to defend Annie in any small way, but he had kissed her earlier tonight. Owen was right not to trust him, not for a split-second. He didn't even trust himself.
"You're pushing your luck," Owen said to one of them, but he backed down.
They had dinner together, and Mitchell tried not to think about white powder or syringes. His mouth was dry even as he chewed on chemical-rich food. The world was fading and he couldn't hear the stilted conversation going on around him.
"That was lovely," he said as he finished. "My compliments to the chef."
Annie shrugged and said, "I hardly did anything," but Mitchell could see the way she was smiling. The way it made him want to smile too told him that he had to get out of there.
"Mind if I take a bath?"
She didn't mind at all. It was a relief to be left alone, and stale air wheezed out of his chest as he slipped into the steaming water. He sank right down past chest-level, to the point where even his shoulders were engulfed with soapy water. His knees popped up like sunken battleships. There was a graze on his knee that he didn't remember getting, still red around the edges. Now that he knew it was there, it throbbed and stung.
Resting as well as he was able, he closed his eyes after checking that the door was locked, and reached beneath the surface of the water: he hadn't been erect in a long time, but with his cock at half-mast he couldn't help but wring out what little pleasure he could. Thinking of George (thinking of Annie: fuck him, he'd say to her, hands on her soft, small breasts; fuck her, he'd say to George, before kissing him and guiding him into her wet mound), he came in record time, jism floating in disinterest in the bath-water after a minute at most. With an unpleasant twist on his mouth, he felt dirtier when he emerged than when he'd got in. He took a shower straight afterwards in order to wash it all away, but it didn't help.
With dripping hair and damp skin beneath his borrowed clothes, Mitchell walked straight into a war-zone. In the hall outside the bedroom, there were bags and suitcases of stuff. Ears ringing, Mitchell tried to work out what on earth was going on.
"Grab a case," Annie said. Her shoulders were stiff and proud: she looked like a general going to war. "The taxi's going to be here any minute."
Mitchell did as he was told and picked up the heaviest set of hastily packed bags. Owen crowded in front of them on their way to the door. "Annie, you're staying right here," he ordered.
Mitchell looked down at Annie, at the determined set of her jaw, and was hit with an unexpected burst of pride, something warm and happy nestled in the centre of his chest. "I don't think she's staying, actually," he said, looking back up at Owen. He was happy to stare Owen down. After having a broken bottle waved in his face by a strung-out junkie, it was difficult to be intimidate by aggressive little boys. Maybe Owen could sense that - he backed off. With a sneer, he stepped to the side and allowed Mitchell to shepherd Annie through. Wasn't brave enough to try to stop them.
They didn't speak all the way into the taxi, and after Annie had given George's address a few moments of silence persisted. She stared out of the window as the city wheezed past, and Mitchell watched her, wishing he could be half as strong.
"Are you going to ask what all that was about?"
Mitchell's hair was still damp and it was slowly getting harder to focus on any of the worries of this mundane life. As time passed, the need for the drug that fuelled him reminded him again and again why he had left in the first place. He could barely hear a word she was saying. With a frown, he tried to focus. "Would you like me to ask? I won't pry if it's not my place." Some days, it took all of his strength to remember how to be human.
"He said you had to leave, that you were there for 'just one thing'..." Annie wrapped her arms around her stomach. "I'm tired of arguing with him."
Thinking of his juvenile self-fondling in their bathroom, and of the aborted, guilty kiss that he had pushed on Annie, he wondered if for once Owen had a point. It didn't matter: "You deserve better than him."
They both jerked to the side as the cabbie took a sharp left, held in place by their sturdy seat-belts.
"I just need a place to sleep," Annie said self-consciously. "Is it alright to stay at yours? Here I am just assuming - that's so rude, isn't it?"
"George whines, but he loves having you there," Mitchell assured her. "I'm not coming in with you. Not ready yet, to be honest."
He wasn't good enough, wasn't clean enough. In his mind, a crystal picture of the free bag that Herrick had offered was dangling in front of him. If he went back now, tonight, maybe he could get it back. He could get clean up right after that was used up. There was always 'tomorrow'.
Annie was frowning her disapproval in his direction. "You need to come back," she said. "Mitchell, please."
He smiled at her under the dim light in the taxi. when they reached the pink house that used to be his home, Annie paid the driver and Mitchell helped her to carry her stuff to the door. After knocking, he lingered at her side for a moment, and imagined what it might be like to stay - to be accepted, to be hugged and held. He wanted to hear George scolding him for leaving.
Yet his head ached. There couldn't be physical withdrawal symptoms, he hadn't gone long enough without a fix yet, but he could feel it like death closing in on him.
By the time George answered the door, Mitchell had faded gracefully into the night.
***
Part Four
iii. Mitchell
His skin was hot and cold at once, and the air was like thick water. Face pressed against the cracked tile floor, he could hardly breathe. His fingernails scratched along the tiles, but it didn't make the pain stop. Nothing would.
He thought of George, left abandoned in their home, and of how he hadn't seen Annie in weeks. George had cried when he left, red-cheeked tears against the pad of his thumb. Placing it against his cracked lips, Mitchell imagined that he could still taste the salt. With eyes closed, maybe he could pretend he had never left.
It didn't help.
"It isn't worth it." Lauren's teeth chattered as she sat propped against the toilet. Her eyes looked like bruises. "I want a hit, Mitchell. I want it to stop."
He wanted it too, with a dragging hook in his gut that he could barely resist. His nails scratched against the tiles again, as if he might be able to dig in and cling on. "We've got to get clean," he whispered, "for George."
For George.
It was the only thing that kept him going.
*
He didn't know when the knock on the door came, or when Herrick decided to storm to the rescue. It could have been a day; it felt like several years had been spent in this bathroom, jonsing and detoxing and dying, slowly.
Water trickled against his lips and he felt himself supported against a solid chest. "George," he mumbled, splashing water over his chin. The hands were too rough to be George's. There was no panicked heart beating against his ear.
"Shh," came a voice he knew. Elegant and regal, it was always in control. "Just drink."
He remembered too well how often George had looked after him in this state. The first time he'd got clean with George's help, he had cursed and swore at him, vowing to rip limb from limb if George wouldn't give him what he wanted. With his mind spinning, he had wanted to see blood, to tear flesh, to break apart whatever stood in his way.
George really was the strongest person he knew.
Cool water began to flood through him, and he then became aware of his clothes being shed, of insistent hands leading him to the shower. The water was lukewarm until hands fiddled with the dials: it heated up fast, warming his shivering body.
He opened his eyes as he began to feel alive once more. Side by side like a wise Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Herrick and Ivan waited for him. Lauren was floppy in Herrick's arms, hopefully unconscious, barely keeping on her feet; she wasn't supporting any of her own weight, but Herrick showed no signs of tiring of holding her.
He sighed like a disappointed father - and he was, in a way. Since he'd first taken Mitchell under his wing well over a decade ago, he'd been the only one to look out for him, the only one to watch over him. "Why do you insist on doing this to yourself, Mitchell?" he asked. His eyes twinkled with kind resignation.
The pounding of the shower helped to wake him up, but it didn't stop the pain in his limbs or the ache in his head. The bathroom light flickered overhead.
"We're going to clean all of this up," Herrick assured him. "You look hungry. We'll get you something nice to eat, hmm? Something warm?"
Mitchell's stomach was an ancient cave - he couldn't remember the last time he had filled it. Eating was less important than getting his fix - or, later, than getting clean. His mouth flooded.
"There's just one thing you need to do for us first," Ivan said. He withdrew his hand from his pocket: there was a capped syringe in his grasp.
Mitchell shook his head, sending the shower water flying from his curls, but he found it difficult to remember why he was supposed to say no. Ivan leaned past him, soaking his expensive suit sleeve as he turned the shower off. Resting against the tiles, Mitchell couldn't bring himself to protect his modesty, his genitals flaccid and small from ill health.
"Come on now; don't be stubborn. We'll get you healthy. If you still want to give up after that, then fine. We'll help you do it the right way."
He didn't know whether he could believe them: he doubted if either one of the pair knew anything about getting clean. Ivan passed a towel to him, and with weak hands he dried himself off and stepped out of the shower. Lauren was pushed inside in his wake, mumbling in her half-asleep state, and Herrick was left to handle her alone as Ivan led Mitchell out of the bathroom.
There were new, clean clothes waiting for him on the unmade double bed of the run-down Travel Inn suite they had paid for. Mitchell barely remembered checking in. The shirt was expensive and smelled like Egypt, one of Ivan's knock-offs. He rolled up the sleeves and tried to make it feel like his own. He didn't know who the jeans belonged to. He couldn't imagine any of Herrick's men wearing jeans. They didn't get days off.
With his hair in damp ringlets, he sat down on the bed and allowed Ivan to take his arm. The tie from Ivan's neck served as a tourniquet, and he no longer felt the prick of pain when the needle pierced his skin. His arm was covered in track marks already, small scars like foot-prints over his skin.
He rested against the bed, eyes closing as the rush hit him: it chased away the grey cotton wool in his brain and wrestled the ache from his limbs. For a while, for right now, he could feel normal again.
He didn't think of George as it chased all the hurt away. Falling further from salvation, for once he didn't want to think of him.
*
The high left a tide mark on his mind, but everything felt clearer afterwards. They left the shoddy hotel room behind and moved onto greener pastures, stopping at a fast food restaurant on the way to fill their empty stomachs. By the time they arrived at the old crematorium that acted as the base of Herrick's many operations, Mitchell was starting to think clearly again - and already wishing that he wasn't.
In the right light, on a cloudless day, if you looked out of a certain window you could see right across the city. Sitting on an old stool, staring, Mitchell dared to imagine that he could see George's office from here. George would be over-worked, as he was far too often; maybe Annie was trying to calm him down, and the pair of them were smiling together, laughing. Mitchell hoped, selfishly, that from time to time they might stare across the city and think of him too.
Easy footsteps, ambling, told him that Herrick was coming to sit beside him. "Ah, I recognise trouble," Herrick said, pointing out the pensive expression on Mitchell's face. "Penny for them?"
"I'm not sure they're worth that much," Mitchell said out of habit. He looked away from the window, back to the shrewd intelligence in Herrick's waiting gaze, and pulled himself together. "I still want to get clean."
Herrick shuffled and shifted as if it was impossible to make himself comfortable. "How many times have we been through this now?"
"Enough. This time it's for good. Has to be."
Herrick's smile twitched. There was something angry and bitter buried in his eyes. "Yes. I don't know how many more little relapses your missus will be able to take." Mitchell's jaw clenched. He didn't say anything in response, so Herrick only sighed. "Why not give up the pretence? Life would be so much easier if you'd stop fighting everything."
"I love him."
"That doesn't always mean you ought to be with him." Herrick's face was that of a kindly uncle. "People like him aren't like people like us. It's not fair to drag them in."
"Drag them down, you mean."
Herrick bowed his head in concession. "What if George wanted to try it out?"
The thought made Mitchell's stomach twist uncomfortably. "He wouldn't."
"Would you let him?" Herrick asked. He already knew the answer, of course. There had been a time, once, when Mitchell had believed that Herrick had the answer to every question imaginable.
"I'm getting clean," he repeated, because arguing with Herrick about George was a pointless exercise.
Herrick's response was to reach into his pocket and retrieve a baggy filled with white powder, a sight as sweet as icing sugar. "On the house," he said as he pressed the gift into Mitchell's limp palm.
Herrick's eyes were triumphant, now. He knew he had won. The bag in Mitchell's hand could last him for a week, at least, probably far more; giving it away, Herrick would be losing a hefty profit. To keep a lifer like Mitchell, maybe it was worth it.
Looking down at the gift, Mitchell gathered every scrap of strength that he had left - and he held his hand out. "Thank you," he said, "but I can't take this."
"Mitchell," Herrick sighed. His disappointment was like a spot-light. "You're being ridiculous."
That was probably true - so Mitchell only nodded. It made Herrick grumble unhappily.
"Okay then," Herrick said, eventually, with an expressive spread of his hands. "I won't try to talk you out of this. You run off and have your little experiment. I'll be right here when you want to come back."
That was the problem, wasn't it? Between them and their kind, creeping through the dark like wraiths, bridges were never burned. A relapse would always be welcomed with open arms, and the drugs embraced a returning friend with the passion of a long-distance lover. Not this time, Mitchell told himself. It was going to be different.
He nodded at Herrick and crossed the open space of the crematorium's floor, around uncarved tombstones and empty coffins, to where there were a rickety set of camp-beds. lying on her side with her eyes open, Lauren rested on one. Ivan sat on another, an old book open in his lap.
"Lauren," Mitchell said, squatting down in front of her. Her eyes, red-rimmed instead of black-lined, focused on him after a moment. "It's time to go."
She stared at him as if she didn't understand, but then her lips twitched and curled into an open smirk. "I'm staying here," she said.
"They're not going to help you." They were friends, but they were selfish ones. "You can't get clean near other addicts."
"I don't want to get 'clean'. There's nothing dirty about us." She sat upright, pushing herself up full and strong like a cobra preparing a strike. "We don't all have a little 'George' to preen for."
"You could." She could be so much more than what he had made her - but the sneer on her face said, I won't. "Come with me. We can still do this."
"'Together', right? I'm not buying it."
"Lauren - "
Shifting like an elegant, weary mountain, Ivan looked over the edge of his book. "I don't think she's interested," he said. It was okay for Ivan; it was easy. His Daisy was trapped in this world too, wild and laughing. He didn't have to escape it in her honour.
"Why don't I walk you to the door?" Ivan suggested, with the authority of a military general. He would never be Herrick's second-in-command, always wandering from place to place, but Ivan was commanding regardless of his station in life.
Mitchell felt the life seeping from him in defeat as he walked to the exit with Ivan's hand on his shoulder. "Why don't you come?" he asked in scrambling desperation. He needed to save someone, anyone. He couldn't do this alone.
"Good luck," Ivan said. Unlike Herrick, he seemed to mean it.
And then he was gone and Mitchell was outside and the dying afternoon sun shone, blinding his eyes. His feet fell on the pavement, one stumble after another.
He didn't know where he was going.
There was only one place left to go.
*
He sat on the edge of the fountain outside the tall, stretching building. When it was too hot and he began to sweat, he would dip his fingers into the water or splash it onto his face.
George would be working late tonight, but Mitchell didn't have too long to wait for his own intended quarry: at quarter past five, Annie bustled out of the building, clip-clopping in her short heels. He stood up to catch her attention, and saw the way that her hand tightened on the strap of her bag. "Annie," he said, because he didn't know how to say 'hello'.
"Mitchell?" She scurried forward. "What are you doing here?" She launched into his arms so he didn't have to answer, sliding his arms around her slim waist instead. His smile was lost in her hair: it had been so long since he had last been hugged. "We've been so worried," she muttered, with no indication that she planned to let him go any time soon.
"I had to be alone," he said, "for a while."
It wasn't true, but it would do for now.
"Please tell me you're going to see George," Annie said. She slid out of his grasp like river water. "He's been going mad."
There was very little that Mitchell wanted to do more than take the lift upstairs and hide in George's arms, stealing a kiss or maybe more, but he shook his head. "Not yet. I'm not ready." She frowned at him in understanding sympathy. "I need somewhere to stay."
"There's a free couch at mine." She didn't pause for a split-second before offering.
He didn't want to say 'yes', but he knew that this was what he had come here for. "Will that be okay?" Like a red flag in front of Owen's face, they might have been tempting fate.
Annie repositioned her handbag and nodded, as stubborn as he had ever seen her. "Owen and I had a chat. He knows he has to trust me now."
Mitchell still wasn't sure and definitely wasn't happy, but when he could feel old cravings itching through his limbs he knew he didn't have it in him to argue. "You're a good friend," he said, and she agreed with a bouncing smile.
Side by side, a healthy distance between them, they headed back to Annie's home, a little flat two bus rides away. Annie chattered and updated him on gossip about people he didn't know and would never meet; they didn't talk about anything important, anything real.
"Do you want some tea?" Annie offered as she led him inside, bumping the door with her shoulder before it would open. "Anything to eat? We're having lasagne for dinner. Sticking it straight in the oven." She fussed and flurried around him, until he wanted to grab her and say: it's okay; it's just me.
"Where's Owen?" he asked, poking through the relics of her life that were scattered around the kitchen. Pinned to the cork-board in the kitchen was a pair of medals from a local fun-run and a sheet of important phone numbers.
"He goes out with his mates on a Thursday," Annie said. "Won't be back for a bit."
They had a few hours reprieve, then, and the coward in Mitchell found himself incredibly grateful. His fingers tapped against the side of his leg. The thought of Herrick on the other side of town, waiting, sounded more and more inviting already.
"We should probably talk," Annie said, dinner in the oven. They had forty minutes to wait before they could eat.
She took him through to her small living room, and they sat together on the love-seat at opposite sides. "Sounds ominous," Mitchell said. His smile twitched with nerves.
"It sort of is," Annie agreed. "It's about George."
Always was, for him - for them.
"Is he alright?" Mitchell asked. There was a tint of panic in his voice, something that hadn't been there for a long time. His body was heavy with exhaustion and cramp, but if George needed him, if he could help, he would be there in an eye-blink.
"I don't know." Annie played with the corner of a cushion, twisting it around and around. "I don't think so. His mum came to see him."
A rock landed on Mitchell's chest. "I should have been there. What did she say? What was he like after?"
Drops of poison in George's ear - there was a reason that George had left his family behind. Mitchell hadn't known him there, but he wished that he had been there to cover George's ears with his hands and to tell him that, no, the whole world didn't think like that. He was perfect just the way he was.
"I was at my desk; I didn't hear anything." She seemed distressed by her lack of eavesdropping. "And they went out for dinner together a few days ago. Monday, I think. They're on the phone a lot."
"Really?"
"Yeah." She bunched the corner of the cushion into her hand and clung onto it until her hand shook. "He's leaving, you know. Going to London, not Essex, but it's close enough."
The words were like a foreign tongue. "What do you mean?"
"He says he's been here too long." Mitchell's heart started pounding; it sounded like an angry wasp, right next to his ears. "You've got to talk to him. He's got to stay."
Mitchell felt blind as he looked around at her neat living room, at the piles of celebrity magazines on the coffee table and the cheap clock that hung on the walls, busy counting away the seconds. It was difficult to imagine what his dull world would be like if he wasn't aiming for George, if he wasn't striving to be decent for him.
"Maybe he's right," he said, in a voice far too calm to be his own. "It might be better for him to go." Leaving Bristol would mean an escape for George, a way to get away from Mitchell and his messes. He would be a fool not to take that opportunity.
Annie prodded his side with a finger like a hot poker. "Don't you start," she warned him. "I will happily hit you if I have to."
He smiled: he didn't doubt her for a second.
"He can't go," he said. The stubborn thickness in his chest needed him to stay.
Annie reached across the gap on the sofa, her hand slipping into his waiting palm: it fit, perfectly. The weight held him down and chased the cravings from his blood - just for now. His head ached, but he didn't have to think about that, didn't have to think about George, didn't have to worry about his hard-won life falling away.
Using her hand, he pulled her towards him and leaned forward to meet her, noses bumping, then lips finding each other. Teeth clasped, and Mitchell placed his hand on the back of Annie's head - they glided smoothly together, the tender press and give of Annie's lips enough to assure Mitchell that maybe everything was going to work out.
Hands on his chest, Annie pushed him back and held him at bay, only withdrawing her arms when it was apparent that Mitchell wasn't going to leap on her again. Their aborted kiss had lasted less than a second.
"I think you're a little unsteady right now," Annie said, and Mitchell thought that 'unsteady' was an impressive euphemism for an entire world of broken sins. "Let's get you a glass of water, hm?"
He didn't argue. With the echo of her lip-gloss on his mouth, he didn't have the right to do so. She left him alone for a while and he grabbed a nap, hands pressed together beneath his head as he lay on the couch.
An hour passed, maybe, and when he woke up there was an argument going on in the kitchen. The house smelled like fake home-cooking and, standing up too fast, he was left light-headed. With instinctive heroism, he forgot that he was an addict and in a poor state, and chased the sound of shouting through the nearest door.
The little table was set for three with mismatched plates, and Owen leaned against the counter while Annie served the food, hot and dripping. A large blob of white sauce had dropped onto the counter already.
The argument stopped abruptly the second Mitchell entered.
"I can leave," he said, "if that would be easier."
"No, no, I want you here," Annie said, while Owen replied, "Yeah. Thanks, mate."
They paused and looked at each other, a sparking battle of wills. It ended with a roll of Owen's eyes and a knowing sneer: Mitchell wanted to say something, to defend Annie in any small way, but he had kissed her earlier tonight. Owen was right not to trust him, not for a split-second. He didn't even trust himself.
"You're pushing your luck," Owen said to one of them, but he backed down.
They had dinner together, and Mitchell tried not to think about white powder or syringes. His mouth was dry even as he chewed on chemical-rich food. The world was fading and he couldn't hear the stilted conversation going on around him.
"That was lovely," he said as he finished. "My compliments to the chef."
Annie shrugged and said, "I hardly did anything," but Mitchell could see the way she was smiling. The way it made him want to smile too told him that he had to get out of there.
"Mind if I take a bath?"
She didn't mind at all. It was a relief to be left alone, and stale air wheezed out of his chest as he slipped into the steaming water. He sank right down past chest-level, to the point where even his shoulders were engulfed with soapy water. His knees popped up like sunken battleships. There was a graze on his knee that he didn't remember getting, still red around the edges. Now that he knew it was there, it throbbed and stung.
Resting as well as he was able, he closed his eyes after checking that the door was locked, and reached beneath the surface of the water: he hadn't been erect in a long time, but with his cock at half-mast he couldn't help but wring out what little pleasure he could. Thinking of George (thinking of Annie: fuck him, he'd say to her, hands on her soft, small breasts; fuck her, he'd say to George, before kissing him and guiding him into her wet mound), he came in record time, jism floating in disinterest in the bath-water after a minute at most. With an unpleasant twist on his mouth, he felt dirtier when he emerged than when he'd got in. He took a shower straight afterwards in order to wash it all away, but it didn't help.
With dripping hair and damp skin beneath his borrowed clothes, Mitchell walked straight into a war-zone. In the hall outside the bedroom, there were bags and suitcases of stuff. Ears ringing, Mitchell tried to work out what on earth was going on.
"Grab a case," Annie said. Her shoulders were stiff and proud: she looked like a general going to war. "The taxi's going to be here any minute."
Mitchell did as he was told and picked up the heaviest set of hastily packed bags. Owen crowded in front of them on their way to the door. "Annie, you're staying right here," he ordered.
Mitchell looked down at Annie, at the determined set of her jaw, and was hit with an unexpected burst of pride, something warm and happy nestled in the centre of his chest. "I don't think she's staying, actually," he said, looking back up at Owen. He was happy to stare Owen down. After having a broken bottle waved in his face by a strung-out junkie, it was difficult to be intimidate by aggressive little boys. Maybe Owen could sense that - he backed off. With a sneer, he stepped to the side and allowed Mitchell to shepherd Annie through. Wasn't brave enough to try to stop them.
They didn't speak all the way into the taxi, and after Annie had given George's address a few moments of silence persisted. She stared out of the window as the city wheezed past, and Mitchell watched her, wishing he could be half as strong.
"Are you going to ask what all that was about?"
Mitchell's hair was still damp and it was slowly getting harder to focus on any of the worries of this mundane life. As time passed, the need for the drug that fuelled him reminded him again and again why he had left in the first place. He could barely hear a word she was saying. With a frown, he tried to focus. "Would you like me to ask? I won't pry if it's not my place." Some days, it took all of his strength to remember how to be human.
"He said you had to leave, that you were there for 'just one thing'..." Annie wrapped her arms around her stomach. "I'm tired of arguing with him."
Thinking of his juvenile self-fondling in their bathroom, and of the aborted, guilty kiss that he had pushed on Annie, he wondered if for once Owen had a point. It didn't matter: "You deserve better than him."
They both jerked to the side as the cabbie took a sharp left, held in place by their sturdy seat-belts.
"I just need a place to sleep," Annie said self-consciously. "Is it alright to stay at yours? Here I am just assuming - that's so rude, isn't it?"
"George whines, but he loves having you there," Mitchell assured her. "I'm not coming in with you. Not ready yet, to be honest."
He wasn't good enough, wasn't clean enough. In his mind, a crystal picture of the free bag that Herrick had offered was dangling in front of him. If he went back now, tonight, maybe he could get it back. He could get clean up right after that was used up. There was always 'tomorrow'.
Annie was frowning her disapproval in his direction. "You need to come back," she said. "Mitchell, please."
He smiled at her under the dim light in the taxi. when they reached the pink house that used to be his home, Annie paid the driver and Mitchell helped her to carry her stuff to the door. After knocking, he lingered at her side for a moment, and imagined what it might be like to stay - to be accepted, to be hugged and held. He wanted to hear George scolding him for leaving.
Yet his head ached. There couldn't be physical withdrawal symptoms, he hadn't gone long enough without a fix yet, but he could feel it like death closing in on him.
By the time George answered the door, Mitchell had faded gracefully into the night.
***
Part Four