Jerking awake from the freedom of sleep, my body screamed out in freezing pain.

I thought maybe
Evelyn threw a water on me when. She's done that, on occasion. Just for fun. Sometimes, I'm not
real sure if she's on my side or the junk's.

My eyes opened in total darkness. For a moment I panicked. I thought I was blind, I thought that
finally I had bought some shit that had really fucked me up, that had wrecked me within an inch of
my life and brought me back a broken man. It was a stupid thought, I realized; I never pay for any of
it, not even the really good prime junk.

The window was open. Wide open, letting in the gray winter and chilling the sweat my body pushed
from every pore until my body hairs were brittle with frost. Did I open the window? Did Becca leave
the window open? Probably. She probably thinks I am not doing a good enough job in this
destruction of myself.

I rose to shut the window, shuffling from the bed to the window and back to the bed with the quilt
pulled against my huddled body and the cold bare floor screaming obscenitites at my feet. My leg
muscles were cramped and directionless and I wondered it there was any blood pumping through
them at all. I wondered when was the last time I had left the bed on my own.

I laid back into the stiff bed, the blankets twisting around my limbs so that none of my naked flesh
was exposed to the pungent apartment air. I could feel the first clouds of self-pity begin to fill with
the cold winds of sobreity. My chest heaved to catch its breath and my hands began to shake, just
timidly at first though I knew the quivering would grow more violent until I was practically throwing
my body around in convulsions and she would have to come in and hold me down and put that first
needle in me.

Where the hell was she?

Yeah, so, that's how my days go anymore. Wake up late in the afternoon and wallow until I couldn't
stand living anymore, then I would start in on the junk, filling my veins with poison and magic over
and over again until I had no choice but to succumb to the mind-numbing void that burns and claims
me as its own.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a junkie. I know how it might look, to someone looking in from the
outside, as though I have a problem, but I don't. I've seen people that make what I do seem like only
a weekend habit. I've seen people sell their bodies and their lives for the fire to burn their veins. I've
seen people kill for it and I've seen people killed for it. I've seen people crumble into rambling
nothingness as they still clutched the needle in their arm. I'm not a junkie. I'm using the junk. Maybe
not as much as the junk's using me, but I'm standing my own ground.

Against the shakes and the tears and the sobbing, I clench my eyes tight until I hear the skin of my
face crack beneath the tension, wishing that the black would come and swallow me up and make
everything go away. The black is the promised land, whispered about in awe behind the dumpsters
below, but you can't just get up and go. It comes for you, devouring you. But the black won't come
for me until the junk burns me mercilessly.

I've been doing this for weeks. Months, maybe; I don't know. Memories have become a confusing
thing. Dust in the eye that I am continuously trying to work out. It's stained black-and-white
photographs that make no sense. Memories don't matter, what happened before doesn't matter. If
it ever did.

That's what I keep telling myself.

I've thought about stopping this pursuit, of leaving behind this pilgrimage, of quitting this madness.
I've thought about letting go of this sickness, of divorcing myself from the junk, but it would be too
painful a separation. The two of us are so in love that to think of spending any time apart rips my
heart to pieces. I am in love with the needle, in love with the poison. In love with the pain. Only
when you totally love can you at all hate. As much as I despise what the junk does to me and how it
tears at my loosening grip, I cannot imagine my life without her. I can no longer remember how I
lived before this started. Till death do us part... never in the past have these words held so much
strength, so much truth. I chide myself for thoughts of quitting; how could I dare think of leaving my
love? Do I think anyone will ever love me again as she loves me?

Becca holds the syringe in her thin fingers, her thumb pressed readily on the piston; the silver needle
hangs in the air, catching the last twinge of sunlight that somehow has found its way into the room.
The belt is strapped to my arm so tight the skin is pinched red and white. I'm waiting for the cold
flood to shake my veins.

"Don't you think you ought to stop?" she says suddenly, her eyes still focused on the needle. She
never looks at my face when she's shooting me up.

I turn my head toward her, my eyes sweating with each blink. What kind of question is that? I have
no answer for her. I cannot tell her why; I cannot make her understand. There is no understanding. I
don't understand myself.

"I don't want to," I simply say, my words slurring together because my tongue is dry and swollen
behind my lips.

"You're killing yourself," she tells me, but still she takes my wrist, turning it to expose the inside of
my arm. She does good at this sticking, as if maybe, in her previous life, she was trained to save lives
instead.

"I know," I whisper, laying back and smiling weakly. "That's what I want."

The needle sets in my arm, its tiny head dug beneath my pale skin. She sits in silence, whether to
torture me or in disbelief I do not know. I think of raising my head and catching her eye, but why
bother? I know the look on her face; it's the same look she wears when she comes in every evening.
Of pity and sorrow. It would get to me, at the beginning, to see her look at me like that, to see her
thinking I was throwing away my life. But I am a tolerable man, and she knows she cannot save me.
She knows that this pursuit of the black is my only salvation.

I inhale as I feel the drug enter me, my body growing cold with anticipation. I shiver slightly, waiting
for the rush to hit me. Sometimes, it takes two minutes for the drug to burn me, sometimes two
hours. It all depends. Through my blue lips, I whisper thank you.

I wait and wait....

And wait.

There is no burning, no flowers swimming to meet my eyes, no black rising to swallow me. I don't
feel a thing, not even the numbness. Nothing. It's not to say that the drug is dead, that there is no
high-rise ride here, but that I cannot feel any of it. Or I feel so much that my senses are
overwhelmed. And I know. This is the ride that crashes. This is when I die. When I die? I suddenly
forget why I even wanted to die. I try to say something to her, a cry for help maybe, but my tongue is
pressed against the roof of my mouth and refuses me service.

From somewhere, I can feel her laying beside me, pressing her lithe body against me, as if to shield
me. She wears an almost non-existent silky thing, as usual. Still trying to tempt me away from this
path of self-destruction though she knows I cannot be stirred. Sometimes I wish I could take that
road instead, to take her hand and fall into dances of such sweet decadence. If only the decision had
been mine to make; her presence at least is my warming comfort. But just as soon as I feel her next
to me, it all begins to fade, to turn into something else.

A small pounding opens its way into my ears, sounding like a rushing river making its way over a
thousand-foot cliff. The ecstatic feeling of pins being pushed into my every nerve sends a quiver
through my body and I become aware of her hand on my bare chest. I feel the sting of sweat roll into
my eyes and I taste bile rise against the back of my throat.

"hnuuuh!--" my voice finds its way past my lips, though as nothing more than a whisper, and I dig my
fingertips into the bedsheet as my body convulses. Red dots of pain explode in my vision as my neck
twists against the pillow. My chest feels as though ready to explode, the blood burning to a boil as it
races through those hidden chambers and valves of my darkened heart.

The air presses down on top of me, holding me against the bed. Then it's Becca, her hands clenching
my arms, her hips resting over mine as she kneels over me, shouting words that don't make it to my
ears, words that are lost beneath the roar and the rush of blood that's filling my head, as though a
dam's water tumbles over its keep. I shake my head savagely to quiet the noise.

In the corner nearest me, in those shadows that refuse to go away even in the brightest of daylight,
a figure emerges that I see clearly even through the blurry haze that covers my eyes. Death, no
doubt, coming forth to accept me into the eternal black. There are no black robes for this Death, no
celestial posture, no glaring white grin glowing from beneath the shadows of a hood. No, this Death
is familiar, always there when I close my eyes. A young woman standing almost defiantly, her
choppily-dyed hair surrounding her pale face almost like a hood itself, her large eyes piercing the air
between her and I, and a sigh escapes my heart.

She turns her frowning smile toward me and, though I know why she is here, the air all around her
feels electrified, as if radiating pure happiness and sorrow. I stare at her knowingly, tears burning
their salt into my cheeks. An image flashes through my mind, of a black river rising up to swallow
me, and I push the memory away. I try to say something, anything; I try to say I'm sorry, but the
words are lodged somewhere in my chest, echoing in my soundless sobs.

From under everything, I can still dimly feel the warmth of Becca still above me, her hold loosening
and her words gentle now, though still silent behind the calamity filling my ears.
I stare towards Death, silently pleading with her, inviting her. Wordless, she remains still, gazing at
me with that sorrow in her eyes. Instead of coming to me, instead of wrapping me up in her arms
one final time, she moves back, letting the black swallow her until all that is left are the empty
shadows.

I reach for her, crying out, partially tearing myself free from underneath Becca, calling out that name
which I've tried so hard to bury. I strain for the corner, for the black. My eyes blur with tears and
sweat and I cannot see in front of me, but I know she's gone. The ache for her that trembles inside
me remains, but she is gone.

My lungs burn, a sweet fire with every breath. Becca's arms wrap tightly around my neck, holding
me to her. She's sobbing, crying my name and damning me as teardrops fall onto my skin. I can feel
my own tears dry as they slide across my cheeks. And I wonder why. Why I'm still alive. Why I've
been left to live.

Is it that I am not ready? That I have not suffered enough? Every day my pain and my guilt swallows
me, and I try to drown it all out with the poison, try to escape it. Instead of living and atoning for
being left behind while she went ahead into the black, I have only dug into this destruction. I cannot
find the forgiveness for her death, not in a needle, not in myself, yet all I have done is run from the
chance for redemption.

I turn against Becca, my muscles ripping with the movement. She is still crying, her face buried
against my neck. She looks up at me, her eyes red and teary. I brush her hair from her face and I
smile, feeling a strength returning to me that I have not felt in too long. A determination that I
thought was dead.

"Shh, now," I say, kissing her gently, feeling her tears seep into my lips. "Don't worry, sweet. It's all
right.

"The black is gone now."