Excerpt: The Regency

Room 630

He stared at himself in the mirror. He wished he even recognized the person staring back. The bags under his eyes were scarred on. His face was bleached white with a yellow tint like a coffee stain on the pages of a well-read book. He flicked his tongue over cracked lips and just continued to stare, appalled and drawn to the figure he saw in the mirror. It wasn’t him. No. He was looking at meth. Embodied.
He kicked at the toilet, searching for the stash he had thrown in the bathroom in one of his manic fits of rage. He couldn’t find it. Not for the life of him. Ronnie probably took it to that party. He never got girls unless he took drugs to the parties.
He ran a shaking hand through his hair. His hair was frayed and in patch, falling out on his pillow some mornings like he was a cancer patient. He was surprised locks of his hair still touched his shoulders. He kicked at the cabinets, opening them because they never truly closed properly. Nothing there but Draino. He didn’t feel suicidal yet, but he made a mental note.
It was only 11:05. The blaring red light of the alarm clock on the chipped nightstand was almost too much for his eyes. He scratched idly at his arm, pulling his shirtsleeve up to see if the cocaine shooting holes were still visible. He’d tried to hide that from the keen eyes of Ronnie. Ronnie said he didn’t want him doing that shit again. Like meth was a better death. Derek knew differently. He knew meth was only a faster way to die.
He hit the streets. Any drug dealer he could find was all out of meth. The addicts had come out early that night. He bought some coke rocks, deciding smoking would be an easier way to get his fix under the somewhat vigilante though slightly impaired watch of Ronnie.
The crack hit his lungs like wildfire. He had dismantled the camera in his room long before now, so he knew no cops would be storming this place anytime soon. He knew the secret to avoiding getting arrested in this town. Stay at a hotel as a permanent resident. He had enough money to drain. Ninety-five a night was like a movie rental fee. And the drug money? A breeze. He knew he could only shoot forty dollars worth of meth at a time and he could smoke around sixty dollars. It had once cost him more to buy a shirt.
In his mad desire to make his bones stop aching, he’d forgotten to get a comedown. Methadone. Alcohol (though the adverse affects the day after of a crack and Jack cocktail were not really worth it. He’d rather just take the jittery paranoia). Heroin. He’d never done too much heroin, but a speedball was a sure fire way to make sure he wasn’t kicking too hard.
He taped his window shut with a big roll of silver masking tape. He took his phone off the hook. He told the front desk to make sure no one came near his room. Said that he didn’t want anyone coming up the next day to change his sheets. The bellhop said he would tell the cleaning ladies, but there would be a ten dollar surcharge for the special request, despite the fact that he was a permanent resident of the hotel.
He paid it gladly. He didn’t want anyone peeking into his brain and seeing all his sins. He would repent. But he would not repent by force. He would not let them steal all the valuable world secrets trapped deep inside the bowels of his brain.
He rocked back and forth, prattling on to himself through chattering teeth about government conspiracies and the beauty of Ground Zero. He fell asleep at 10:00 the next morning. He slept like the dead.