Underbelly
an excerpt

The guy pulled out a gun from under his sweatshirt and pointed it at Jake’s head. Not one of the slumbering addicts even glanced over at the confrontation. Jake held his hands up and immediately apologized for his flip remark. The guy stormed off and did not seem to fully accept his apology.

Jake recognized the instant he saw the gun that this was more than just a place to get high and waste away. This was a business. Like any business, there exist security checkpoints to validate customers and friends. In hindsight, Jake realized showing up the way he did probably freaked the shit out of anyone invested in this venture.

Jake began to slowly pan the barn floor with his eyes. He saw trash mixed in with garbage surrounded by refuse. It was a heap of blight in the human form. He was staring at the worst-case scenario. He caught a glimpse of a couple fucking slowly in the corner underneath a bed sheet with dancing horses on it. To his left, there was a scraggly girl strumming a guitar and humming. She wasn’t pretending to know how to play - she was fully aware of her own cluelessness. She had nose rings in both nostrils and her hair was dreaded and matted down. She was paper thin and her face was gaunt and pimply. Her teeth were yellow and spaced apart. If there was a picture of what drugs could do to you that guidance counselors carried to scare young punks, it was of this girl.

All Jake could think about was if he made it here in time to save Cara. This could be her. This girl was every girl. Jake imagined her playing soccer when she was 12 and going to ballet when she was 10 and playing with dolls when she was 4 and being breast fed when she was an infant. Someone must have loved her deeply at some point in her life. And through her own haze, she lost sight of what mattered. She found something else. They all did. It was something that didn’t yell, was always around and treated them the waythey thought they wanted to be treated. There was no judgement with the addiction. There was no pain.