Shit Happens

'Are you shittin' me, Faxman? How the fuck did you get a'hold'a 37,500 Dillies?' Gately stares at Fackelmann, shaking his massively square addict's head when he spies the plump lump in his crim- colleague, Fack's, bulging back pack. The product that pack packs glows kind of blue under its nondescript thin nylon translucence.

'Found 'em in the NA head, you big moron. What, you think I got any kinda dough to buy this amount of awesome shit?'

'Coulda robbed a drugstore,' Gately speculates, 'maybe intercepted a drug bust in progress...'

'That's a goddman lie.'
'...'
'I SAID, it's a goddamn....'

'Whatever,' Gately says in his most conciliatory tone. He does not like to argue. You don't survive the drug scene if you are contentious toward your supplier in any way. Gately is nothing if not contentious. He is way beyond mellow, and on the scale of non-confrontational attributes (if such a scale there even ever was) he would score kind of somewhere between laconically inept loser and Jaysus the Krispy Critter on a Cross. Gately is like Wonder Bread spread with a teensy bit of low cal dollar-store mayo, untoasted, pressed by fingertips until sippy and soft and yet still able to absorb without dripping all over everything in sight without a napkin, basically any old thing anyone puts on him. Or in him. He's a blank slate of an unwritten map still awaiting a visitation from the powerful entities that bestow beings with personality. Whatever. He takes up virtual and sort of abstract real-time space and that is enough for him, for now. Maybe even ever.

The two men glare at each other, then when the brushed-stainless steel elevator doors open and they see nobody inside, they make the short trip upward to their latest, illegally obtained luxury high-rise condo in downtown Boston. It's late but they're not so much tired as wired. Fack has indeed scored some serious shit and they are about to take the trip of their lives. It will not end well for Fackelmann, but that may be his Plan A: a heist of $250,000 blown on illegally obtained Dilaudin will surely land him in the clink, but if he can forestall that a while, well then, what a way to go.

'You got a key?' Gately eyes the door nervously, hoping there are no narcs patrolling or living on the floor.

'Relax, bro, I got the key code in my head.' Fackelmann punches in a few numbers and the door swings open. The living room, whose huge unshaded windows face north, is pretty much empty except for a large teleputer hanging on one wall. Fack has already sold the rental furniture he recently had gotten delivered under false credentials, the immediate illegal resale of which garnered not nearly enough cash to buy this current embarassment of riches -i.e., blues - Dilaudid - Gately knows, but he is not about to question his luck and get himself thrown out before the party begins. Fackelmann tosses the back pack in a corner and flips on the teleputer while Gately takes a look-see around the spacious apartment.

These two very bad bad boys situate themselves in one corner of the large empty room. The teleputer is programmed to display flames of all sorts, none of which can cook the product, but it really doesn't matter. Fack has dumped a mountain of blue Dilaudin capsules on the oak hardwood floor, just beyond the boundary of the tattered blanket he'd wrapped them in, which blanket now serves as their grassy picnic-like spot. Contrary to popular opinion, the Blue Mountain of Dilaudid was not the cookable powdery kind that can be injected, but the kind that must be inserted into the patient's rectum. It was ass-grade Blue. Both Fack and Gately stick it up their assholes as fast and as far up as they can, before the high wears off.  Once in a while they swallow some but you know what, it does not taste all that great. They loll around, high, low, high, low....they fart some capsules out, and sometimes thin warm, thin brown ooze will like ooze out onto the floor and make Rorschach-test patterns that they don't bother to try to interpret. The Dilaudin high is too quick to dissipate (hydromorphone, yes, the same stuff that gets non-addicts in trouble with some people's medicated pain management sanctioned by doctors who apparently do not know or care that Blue is not only as highly addictive as H but has a half-life high that deteriorates exponentially fast). And like that.

At some point maybe 40 some hours later, a small dent shows in the conical Blue Mountain of Dilaudid on the floor. Neither Fack nor Gately can realistically imagine getting through all of that high-quality substance before their respective maps totally pass  out or abscond into wraith-land. Gately is busy reminiscing about Pamela Hoffman-Jeep, his ex-girlfriend, the one who was always so wasted by alcohol that she was perpetually in need of manual transport. The poor girl could not even walk to the potty without assistance. Often she would be found lying in a pool of her own urine and feces, a sweet smile somewhat like a newborn infant's on her cherubic face. A pile of poop of a girlfriend. Shit happens.

And now here is Fax-man, two days later in a state of total deshabille, watching the teleputer reflect images over the oily Hydromorphone by-products emitted from his unaccountably priapic unit and nearby butt hole, all across the oak hardwood flooring in the illicitly obtained luxury condo. Try as Gately might, he can not rouse Fackelmann except to get a limpid cussing out of him...'Thas' a g'damn lie...' but it is more of a whimper than a castigation, as Fackelmann is really not altogether with it any more. In fact Gately thinks he ought to dial 911 except for the fact that he would be arrested for something his own self if he does. Where did Fack get all that shit anyway? Gately does not want to go to jail so he sits and watches as Fackelmann munches on peanut butter M & M's, which once masticated by Fack's nearly toothless jaws dribble down his chin. The brownish drool reminds Gately of diarrhea and before he knows it, Gately too has sympathetically crapped his pants, which substance added to the amber-hued piss that now threatens to permanently warp the wood flooring in the ilicitly obtained condo and makes Gately feel distinctly ill at ease. He tries to rise up to use the condo's bathroom but instead he merely slides in the slick slime slithering over the floorboards.

'Fucking awesome party. Way to go, Faxman.' Gately thinks, as he watches his partner in crime draw what will be his last breath.