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"Special Ecstaweedocaine"
You’re standing there with a revolver pointed at some poor shmuck’s head, yelling at him to hurry up and give you everything he’s got in his wallet. Have you ever, even for just a moment, think about why you’re doing what you’re doing or even how you got there? I’m sure at one point the thought had crossed your mind, maybe before or maybe after. But in the heat of the moment you just know you’re doing what you’re doing because you feel like you have to do it.
My name is Alimar Danczyk and right now I’m holding an old revolver to some poor Hispanic day laborer’s head, demanding every single bill in his wallet. The thought is constantly tugging at my brain, tearing me apart on the inside, nagging me to stop while I’m ahead. But I got to get my fix taken care of and at this point this is the only way.
But the question that gets to me the most is how did I get here, how did I let myself regress so far to this point? I guess it’d be cliché and easy to blame society, blame peer pressure, blame my parents even, but not to blame myself. Fact of the matter is: it is entirely my own damn fault. I’m here because I took myself here, not because society and my parents failed me and certainly not because I succumbed to peer pressure. That’d just be a crock of shit.
The cycle first began a few months ago back in my crappy little apartment off Hammond Street, down near the slums of Lassiter City in what is ironically called the “Safe District”. I was studying for my French exam and found myself completely unable to focus whatsoever. My best friend, roommate, and usual drug dealer, Warhol, was trying to concoct something in his portable meth lab to help make something for me to concentrate. Whatever it was, it smelled like shit cooking in a kettle with a side of butter and rubber thrown in just to make it as putrid as possible.
Warhol was a crazy guy. He was into making newer and better drugs at all time with his little mobile meth lab. He also tried everything he made, which fried his brains just a little bit. He also loved to do a ton of acid and was always into making things shaped like tabs of acid because, as he put it: “Why the fuck not?” As for the name Warhol, his parents are both from Sweden and were absolutely in love with THE Andy Warhol so much that they named their son Warhol.
“Yo, Warhol, can you cook up your nasty shit later, I’m trying to fucking study Français!” I yelled at him.
“Chill man, a’ight? I’m fuckin’ tryin’ to make sumfin for you to focus.”
“Well do it faster, okay? This shit stinks worse than meth.”
“Man, ya gotta fuckin’ chill! It’s almost done cookin’, a’ight.”
“Well, merde, that’s just wonderful. How much fucking longer?” I barked, feeling like I was about to throw up everything I’d ever eaten in the past few months.
“Five minutes, tops.” he barked back at me.
Five minutes seems like a long time when your roommate is cooking something that smells as atrocious as the shit he was making. Every part of my very being was crying out in utter disgust and disdain for what he was making. It felt as if my stomach was trying to strangle itself with my intestines while trying to eagerly bludgeon itself to death with the other surrounding organs. I kept gagging and trying to find a way to prevent it by sticking my nose in a pile of incense sticks or putting my head out the window. It felt rather futile, like trying to take candy from a fat kid.
“A’ight, it’s done, ya fuckin’ child.” Warhol said with a grin.
The smell still lingered despite him being “done” with cooking his crazy shit. This only infuriated me as it kept me from being able to keep a clean head to study with.
“It still smells horrible, man.” I grimaced.
“Jez gotta wait and open the windows, dumbass.” he replied.
I certainly had no qualms with opening the windows, though it was a little difficult since we had bars on our windows and some of the windows were tapered to stay shut, so I could only manage a few of our windows open. Better than none, I figured. The smell, however, didn’t dissipate fast enough, but the wrenching feeling in my gut to relieve myself orally all over the couch did.
Once I felt able enough, I made my way to Warhol’s little portable meth lab to see what exactly he had made with all his supplies and cooking tools while he was tinkering with his creation. He proudly produced what looked like a regular tab of acid. It was rather plain colored, though. A kind of red and yellow checkered look on each side of it.
“…it looks like a tab of acid, man.” I blurted.
“I know! It only looks like it. Shit’s got the go of speed, but I dunno much else about it. My knowledge of chemistry is only so good. I’m jez happy that it came out a’ight.”
I snatched it out of his hand and looked it over curiously. Then I looked at him and chuckled. A Warhol creation… I thought before I quickly slipped the entire tab onto my tongue, not giving Warhol any time to react.
“Whoa, shit man! Wait a sec!” he yelled as my tongue coiled into my mouth.
I simply grinned at Warhol, my arms crossing each other as I looked him in the eyes. He gave me a dirty look, his dirty blonde brows furrowing angrily. I laughed a little bit and took a step back to avoid any possible swings that may end up going my way. He took a step forward, his fist balling up with a glimmer of unadulterated anger.
“You fucker! I wanted to try some!” he growled, acting like he was about to lunge at me.
I felt panic then, thinking that this 6’4” blonde body builder was about to take me down and defriend me with his fists across my face. I instinctly drew my arms up to block and took a breath of anticipation at the oncoming onslaught. Instead I felt him punch my arm with a chuckle.
“You think I only made one, man? Fuckin’ idiot!” he roared with laughter.
I dropped my guard and felt a little light-headed for a moment, exhaling with a slightly uneasy chuckle. I peered over and caught glimpse of a small book of these acid-looking tabs. All set up on blotter sheets, ready to be picked and tried. He pulled a tab off and put it on his tongue, laughing obnoxiously before his tongue retreated into his mouth.
“Cheers, fuckface.” he bellowed heartily.
We both ended up waiting about half an hour before the experimental drug even kicked in at all. But my god, man, once it did it kicked in hardcore. First I felt really relaxed, like I just took an amazing shit or something and then I felt renewed. I wanted to get up and get moving. Then that’s when I think it really kicked in. I felt as if time had slowed down, but I had sped up. It was rather interesting, really. Whenever I moved, lights seemed to stream because of how fast I was going and when I read it seemed like the words in the book were running together, yet I comprehended it all. To me this was a great drug to help me focus. I not only was doing the studying, but I wanted to do it. No, scratch that, I NEEDED to do it.
Warhol was having a hell of a time too. He was rearranging everything in the apartment and when he was satisfied he dusted, vacuumed, and even polished the coffee table. Afterwards he went out to go to his girlfriend’s for what he calls a night of “hot vanilla coffee.” Which meant the place was mine while he nailed his Nairobi imported girlfriend at her apartment. Which also meant I could sneak a couple of more tabs from the book. Definitely a win-win for me.
I eventually lost track of the time after a couple of more of the wonder drug. The last time I had looked at a clock was at 5:00 pm and I could tell that had been several hours before, but my body didn’t feel the wear of the time. In fact, I felt just as energetic as before. Studying was done and now I felt restless and the will to do more. So I called up Monique at her place.
“Moniquewhat’sgoingon?” I eagerly blurted out when she picked up.
“Whoa, whoa, holy shit hold on. The fuck you said?”
“I…said…Monique…what’s going…on?” I repeated as slowly as I could bring myself to go.
“Uh…nothing. Finished studying for the exam. You okay?”
“HolyshitI’mdoingfuckingawesome…er…yeah… I’m doing…awesome.”
“What are you on?”
“Some…shit that…Warhol made. Helps…me concen…trate…and makes me gogogogogogogogo!”
“Uh huh…so you called me to tell me that?”
“No no no! I wanted to…hang out…and…thought…you’d wanna…try some.”
She paused for a moment, contemplating trying this crazy concoction before responding “Sure thing. Guess we’ll do the usual and go to the mall?”
“Soundsgood!” I said excitedly, unaware I’d gone back to fusing my sentence together.
“See ya then.”
“Alright…later!”
I put the phone away into my pocket and grabbed a sheet from the book and charged out, almost running into the door. I got a few steps out and realized I didn’t have my keys, so I ran in, grabbed them and my wallet, and locked the place up and headed for Monique’s, taking my wimpy Prius up the slums and into the nicer part of the city to hit up her place.
The thing about Monique living in the nicer part of Lassiter City is that her parents are rich. Insanely rich. Her mother was born to a prominent family from the Bay Area in northern California and her father was a rich oil tycoon originally from Saudi Arabia. He took his fortune and moved to the States to live as comfortably as he could and ended up meeting her mother. They combined fortunes and let her live where she wanted and go to the school she wanted. So her school and rent are completely covered by mom and dad, but she’s not quite a stuck-up pretentious bitch like most rich girls seem to be. She’s somewhat down-to-earth, but she does have her moments where she’s unbearable, which is when we go clothes shopping together.
Yes, I would go with her to help her get a straight guy’s opinion without the benefit of getting to even feel her up. But the reason she’s unbearable then is because she used to be fat. Really, really fat. We’re talking medical oddity fat here. But she lost all the weight by good old diet, exercise, and some bulimia thrown into the mix. So since she used to be so gigantic and then suddenly lost the weight, she has a good deal of loose skin. This does not bode over well since she won’t let mom and dad pay for cosmetic surgery, saying she wants to turn the skin into muscle on her own. Well, she’s not done that and every time we go shopping for clothes she picks out clothes that show off the fact she has a good deal of loose skin and when you point it out, she flips a switch and goes apeshit on you, complete with throwing shoes, displays, and even a mannequin at one time. Yes, a mannequin used to display clothes. The sales clerk who got in the way sued, but lost the suit since her parents could afford the best lawyers.
All that aside, I love Monique to death. She’s funny, smart, in the same classes as I am, and has a somewhat bright outlook on life. She also does a plethora of drugs with me and usually hooks me up with E.
As I made my way up into her apartment, I tried to prepare myself for another attempt at getting somewhere with her. I figured the way this wonder drug was making me work, she’d probably dig it and be alright with it. Or maybe not. It was pretty hard to tell because I didn’t now whether or not it’d work the same way on her as it did me. At the very least I just wanted some company that was going to be as fucked up as me.
Knock! Knock!
“Just a minute!” Monique yelled, getting her things together loudly behind the paper thing door.
“It’s the candy man!” I yelled back, finding myself almost unable to form my sentence so clearly pronounced for her slow ears.
She answered the door with a grin, her ebony hair pulled back in a ponytail with a few stray strands over her forehead, her body in a more modest attire of a Muqati at-Tawid metal band t-shirt and loose cut blue jeans. She did a spin for me and struck a very horrible, mock model pose, whispering “How do I look, sailor?”
“Youlooklike…you…look like a…normal person.” I said, trying to bite my tongue.
“Oh fuck you and just hand over the goods.” she replied in mock disgust.
I pulled out the page and gave her two tabs, letting her know she ought to take both to make the effects really kick in. She gave me a look as if to say “I know what I’m doing, asshole,” and put the tabs onto her tongue with a slight disgusted sound.
“This stuff tastes terrible.”
“Yeah, Warhol is…going to have to…fix the taste for sure.”
“Ugh, yeah.” she muttered, closing and locking the door behind her.
We hopped into my car, my ass moving at light speed while her ass moved at the speed of a tortoise with bad knees, the entire time I was trying to explain that it takes about half an hour for the drug to kick in and what it did for me so she’d be somewhat ready for anything that may or may not happen. She waved me off and we drove off to the Cheshire Mall to go meander around and enjoy our semi-tweaked out ride.
Once the drug hit her, she had a slightly different reaction, or so she says. At first she felt like she had been turned into dead weight, like she couldn’t move or anything. She kept trying to talk, but her mouth wouldn’t move and her arms wouldn’t lift. Then she felt the same thing I did: time felt like it slowed down while she sped up. At that point we were both laughing and having a damn good time. In fact, by the time we got to the mall we felt somewhat worn down from the ride and were just recovering from a very infectious manic laughing fit.
We “terrorized” the mall for a few hours, though it certainly felt like a few minutes to us. We jumped in and out of Hollister, the both of us flirting with the gay guys there with me being a bit more successful and setting them up for heartache by revealing I’m straight. Then we swung into Hot Topic to tease one of our friends, Hector, for working there. We zipped on by the Dead Sea Salt kiosk to go to the Wetzel’s Pretzels to hold up the line there, acting very indecisive and upset that they wanted us to move on. By then the mall was closing and Monique suggested we go back to her place because she felt the urge to study more and told me she wanted a study partner.
So we made it back to her place and started making some noise getting in, laughing and giggling about how much we enjoyed our wonder drug’s effects on us. One of my first thoughts when we got into her apartment was how much I wanted to rearrange the place. A weird desire, sure, but I felt like I needed to do something. She was cool with it so we ended up making the place more Feng Shui or some shit. Once we were satisfied, we went and studied some of our French and got that underway. Luckily for me she had the same feeling I had when I studied earlier, seeing the words run together and all that.
Then I tried to make my move and was met with defeat. She gave me the whole spiel about only wanting to be friends and how she’s trying to be an independent woman and blah blah blah bullshit. You know the typical crap a person will feed you, right? I felt a bit put off by it, so I told her I felt like I was going to probably crash soon and went back to my place. She bought into it and saw me off to the door and told me to call her later.
I felt a surge of anger rise in me when I got into my car and took it out on my dashboard with my fists, yelling unintelligible nothings about how much I hated that shit and how I just wanted a chance like any other guy. I knew she was putting me off and I fucking hated it. So much for the wonder drug being a complete wonder.
I ended up detouring to a local club and took a few more tabs to make sure I kept going just long enough to enjoy the place and then get home to crash and sleep long enough for me to be fresh for classes. The club itself was rather big in size and easily fit about 1500 or so people. It was a tacky building on the outside, though. It was covered in a very hideous yellow paint over brick and mortar with a lime green roof. It also boasted ugly pinks, violets, and blues dotted about to make it more appealing to the deadheads who liked to come here to see the pretty colors.
So I went in, danced a bit, hit on a few of the pretty girls at the bar, charged a little bit for the excess tabs I had to put some cash in my pocket, and then headed back to my apartment. Getting home was probably the best part of the day because I could feel the drug wearing off and I knew the crash was imminent. It was a different kind of crash than what I was used to, though. It didn’t slowly end or anything. I literally flopped down onto my bed, pulled the pillow under my head, and then I was out and didn’t wake up until late morning. I already could tell I found myself something to be hooked on.
The next couple of months went by exactly like this. I’d get home from classes, study, take the drug, study more, go out, come back and pass the fuck out. But I was starting to develop a tolerance and rather fast, so I was needing to take more and more and more and more. Of course, I paid Warhol handsomely for supplies and all so that I could keep indulging my habit. He was fine with it at first, but began to worry about me, saying I was going to turn into a nasty tweaker well on my way to robbing little old ladies for some quick cash to take get my fix. I laughed and told him that wasn’t going to happen. Then one day Warhol grew a pair of balls and told me “no.”
“What the fuck do you mean you’re not giving me more, man? The fuck?”
“You heard me, man. I ain’t gonna let you become some fuckin’ addict, a’ight? I jez can’t man!”
“Since when did you give a fuck about your customers becoming addicts? YOU PEDDLE METH AND CRACK FOR A GODDAMN LIVING!”
“Man, they’re fuckin’ druggies. They ain’t you! You’re my fucking friend, man. I don’t want to see you turn into one of ‘em.”
“Wow, a dealer with a conscience. That’s unheard of. I’m fucking going to pay you DOUBLE what I already pay you and then you can just make it and have extra.”
“That ain’t gonna be how it goes, man. I jez can’t do this to you.”
“Then fuck you.” I yelled, grabbing a quick page of the drug, which we’d called Ecstaweedocaine to be funny at one point, and bolted out the door.
I could tell Warhol was upset, but it didn’t matter to me. I got the stuff and I was going to go find someone who could replicate it and make more for me. I was going to go see Hector and give him a sample.
Hector was a pharmacist/chemist in training or something like that. His story changes all the time, but he claims he can tell you what’s in any drug given to him and that he can replicate it and make it even better. The best part is that he always told me that he’d give me a discount on any drug I wanted to have made for me and I knew he’d be very excited to recreate Ecstaweedocaine, especially since he knows he could make a killing off of it.
Once Hector got a hold of the stuff, he got very excited, singing my praises and telling me how I was going to get my first page for free. The only downside was that I had to wait a week for him to have it ready for me. I just had to hold out that long and try to convince Warhol to give me just enough to make shit last. But I needed it or else my grades would slip and if they slipped I’d never get to intern at the United Nations as an interpreter and then I’d have wasted my entire school career and I just could not let that happen.
I managed to smooth things over with Warhol long enough to wait for Hector’s rendition to come out. And when it did, it was far superior. He managed to make it taste like citrus and even found a way to make the strength amplified. In fact, it lasted longer and made me go longer. The only problem after the first page was the price for a book. It was about $150 for the book, $75 for half a book, and so on and so forth. He charged far more, but it was worth it. I couldn’t stop because I didn’t want to screw up in school.
A month later Monique and Warhol got together to try and set me up for rehab. I wouldn’t have any of it and left, telling both of them to fuck off and let me do my thing. Of course, Warhol was going to kick me out because I was unable to pay my rent and had gotten fired and Monique had stopped hanging out with me a few weeks after our first night with the stuff when it was created. They didn’t really give a shit and just wanted me to buy them some more. Or maybe they just wanted my money. Fuck if I can tell.
Eventually I was out of money and couldn’t do jackshit about it. I tried doing the prostitution thing, but I just couldn’t find any women interested and I nearly vomited when I tried to take some random guy’s cock into my mouth. Hector wouldn’t let me slide on any payments either, so I put up any cash I could to get a page or half a book. The only thing I still maintained was school and I had a damn good GPA to go with it, but it would slide when I wasn’t able to take the Ecstaweedocaine. So I had to keep it up or else it’d just end up bad.
During that time I surfed some couches, stayed at some homeless shelters, and tried to exist as best I could, but it was never easy. I kept being kicked out for my recreational uses and because I could never give my friends cash for gas money. Finally I realized something after I’d managed to get to winter break for school: I needed to do something and fast. I sort of stalked the Home Depots and other places where I knew the Hispanic day laborers would hang out to find some trabajo and just watched how often they were getting actual work. I figured I’d shadow them from a distance and see where they went to make sure I could figure out whom I’d be okay to stick up. I had seriously gotten to that point and felt no way out of it.
I found one who was a bit older, but seemed to get a lot of work. His name was Salvador and he was a stocky man, but was pushed around by the younger, less experienced workers. He didn’t seem to mind and so I knew that he’d be the easiest target. He did what he was told, didn’t complain, and got paid for it. That was reason enough.
I realized I couldn’t just try to stick him up without any sort of weapon, so I went out and hung out with Hector one night and stole his revolver when he was in the bathroom and took a couple of bullets, just to be safe. He didn’t seem to notice and he didn’t seem to care either. We were both too busy being fucked up and having a good time, which made it that much easier to get away with it. I just had to plan my night out to make sure I didn’t jump him when he didn’t have anything and picked a night when the lines of his pockets would be filled the most.
The night finally came on Friday the 13th, a rather cool, but still seasonably warm night for Lassiter City. I trailed Salvador and waited for him to go down his regular commute. Up Little Novogorod, a short turn through Chinatown, and finally a long dark alley to the apartments the illegals loved around Hammond Street, about the area I used to live in. I was worried, honestly, that he would stray and I’d get caught or worse.
My hand trembled throughout the whole time, my grip on the revolver strong and sweaty, my knuckles a hot white. I licked my lips, never letting him out of my sight, taking short strides to help keep my distance from him and the chance of being detected. Then the opportunity presented itself. I came up on him in the dark alley and hit him over the head, standing tall with my gun aimed at his head, my teeth bared and my breath hot.
“Give me your goddamn money.” I whispered as audibly as I could.
“¿Que?” he responded, rubbing the back of his head.
“Your money! ¡Di nero, pendejo!”
He started fumbling his wallet and I yelled at him to get me his money as fast as he could. He was genuinely afraid and I could see it in his eyes, but I didn’t care. I wanted his money for my fix and that’s what mattered. That’s when it hit me and I thought about what I was doing and how I got here. I let my grip slack a bit and that’s when he saw an opportunity of his own. He pulled out a switchblade and lunged into me with a devil’s fury, the blade twisting into my body as he put me down, my finger pulling the trigger, but missing him entirely. He was angry and stabbed me a few more times, yelling insults at me in Spanish before running off. It was then that I realized I had let myself fall so far and that, in the end, this is what I deserve.
As I lay there dying, I muttered to no one in particular or perhaps to everyone. I asked Warhol and Monique to forgive me for having been such an ass to them as of late and I apologized to Hector for stealing his gun, but most of all I said sorry to Salvador and myself. I had dragged the both of us into this deep, dark, twisted fate and I know that the sight of me with my stab wounds, blood coming from my mouth and wounds would haunt him forever and he’d probably never be the same. It’s a shame, really, I learned my lesson so late in life, but it’s expected, I guess. In the end we should try to be careful and listen to our friends. While there is nothing wrong with some pot and booze, we should steer clear from the hard shit that makes us do things like this. Most importantly we should try to be ourselves.
In the end I’m still sorry for everything.
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