WHO: Adalbern Cruz & Joe King WHAT: Joe enters town WHEN: Wednesday 4th | early evening WHERE: Cold Creek Town Outskirts WARNINGS: Mentions of current hard drug use and brief prostitution STATUS: Open/Incomplete
It was like some kind of mundane but meaningful magic trick; Joe looked up from the road and then it was like he was seeing for the first time - Cold Creek. He couldn't believe that he'd made it, especially as he was shaking and nauseous with junk sickness. The small and sudden flare of relief and pride in getting to the place where his brother (and mother, but that was beside the point) could be was overcome when the constant sea of his shame and self-disgust swept back over him. It was always there like ink stains under his skin, in his very veins where the junk lived and poisoned him and fuelled him and comforted him all at the same time. He'd started to think about this though - what was the point when the drug he took to make it all go away didn't do its job anymore? He was just taking it now to separate him from anything real, because when he didn't take it he felt sick.
He was filthy from his long trek on foot - mostly on foot apart from where he'd sucked some guy off in return for a hitch - in jeans that were grimy even though he'd tried washing them in the sinks of public bathrooms, a long-sleeved jersey top with a hole in the hem and spatters of blood on the sleeve from where he'd been slapdash with the needle once or twice, his shoes grey and full of holes. His thick, dark hair was clumped and greasy from where he hadn't washed for a while, his face grubby. He had a slack backpack hung over one thin shoulder that carried all he had in the world to his name - a scant amount of clothes, a couple of knives and a gun with only two bullets that he'd taken from a house he'd squatted in once where things had gone bad. He had an old nail kit case that he'd stolen from a chemist shelf and this was his most precious and despised possession; he had a syringe, a couple of needles that he'd had to reuse and a string of rubber curled in the kit. His backpack held scraps of cotton wadding and metal bottle caps, a little bottle of rubbing alcohol that he used to clean the needles as best he could and the dark siren that he couldn't pull away from, his heroin.
He realised he didn't have a lot left when he pulled into the most out of the way alcove he could find to get the kit out with shaky hands and get the works out to shoot up. He had the smack out before he got the rig ready and it was a good thing too because he wouldn't have been able to stop himself, to pace himself, if he had the needle out and the tubing ready before cooking up. He had no idea where he could find any smack in this town, even if there was any smack in this town, and if this was his last lot he'd need to cut it with something to make it last longer.
At least until he found Josh.
He realised that he'd teared up and he scraped his arm over his eyes furiously, angry that he'd been brought to tears over something so pathetic as a low supply of heroin. He pulled himself together, put his kit back in his bag, hefted the strap over his shoulder and stepped back out onto the street just in time to collide with someone walking past.