As Fate Would Have It Read online

  There had been some rocky times lately. Lots of fighting about stupid shit and it felt good to enjoy a nice meal together and then get close. It validated their connection and filled him with good memories, reminded him of how things were in the beginning and how they could be again if they took the time to understand each other.

  The food thing for instance – Liz wasn’t ready to give it up – he was (well not so much the food, but the killing). Whenever they ran low (every three or four months) their fighting reached an all-time high – until Montgomery went out and handled business. It was nice that they were about to make love, but if he allowed himself to dwell and put the pieces together, associating his fresh kill with her intense attraction, then all he would do was get mad and ruin their evening.

  This conversation, internal and external, wasn’t over. After each death, after each stock piling of flesh, Montgomery was ready to end it, but Liz always browbeat him into submission. Their differences needed to be settled sooner rather than later.

  But now?

  But not now.

  Not now.

  Now he had a raging boner and the chance to reestablish a bit of the intimacy that had been lost between them. He wasn’t going to fuck it up. Yet.

  Before Montgomery’s thoughts had a chance to derail desire completely, Liz came back into the room. Her mere presence zapped him out of it, electrifying his blood and setting him ablaze with lust. Shifting, he sat up slightly and prepared to welcome her back to bed.

  She had put on a little negligee that accentuated each and every part of her body perfectly. Montgomery’s head went swimmy with heat. His eyes tried to keep up:

  Curvaceous hips.

  Lacy underwear.

  Full breasts.

  Luscious lips.

  Cute nose.

  Angry eyes.

  Smooth shoulders.

  Angry eyes?

  Angry eyes?

  Blood-stained jacket clasped in her right hand, held out before her like a question.

  Oh shit.

  He had left the jacket in the bathroom sink. Big deal right? He was planning on giving it to her anyway. After he explained everything. Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day (maybe never?).

  “What the fuck is this?” Liz was seething.

  “Um,” Montgomery sat up. His erection began to wither.

  “No ‘Ums’ Montgomery, I asked you what the fuck this is?”

  “It’s a jacket.” Playing dumb would get him nowhere. He knew this, but still, what was he to say?

  Liz expected him to apprehend and accost a man. She was crazy jealous and didn’t like the idea of her man picking up a woman, even if it was solely for the meat they shared.

  “I know what it is, Montgomery,” tears threatened to quell her anger. Liz threw the jacket on the floor and then stormed out of the bedroom. Montgomery gave chase.

  “Liz, it was nothing. I did it for us!”

  She stopped at the end of the hallway and turned. “Did you fuck her?” Her eyes shimmed two fuming flames.

  “I refuse to dignify that.” It came out as lame as it sounded.

  “You promised. Montgomery! You said you wouldn’t kill anymore girls!”

  Montgomery raised his hand nervously, as if to silence her. The word ‘Kill’ instilled a particular bad taste in his mouth.

  Liz continued, “You swore to me!”

  “I know. I know. But it’s not like that. I’m not attracted to them–”

  “Them?” Liz narrowed her eyes. The decision had been made to only use males about four bodies ago. Over the two year period, Montgomery had killed two males, and unbeknownst to Liz, two females. Heather was the third female since their agreement.

  “Her. This one. Listen–”

  Liz ignored him and stomped past, back to the bedroom. Montgomery turned and followed, trying to explain, trying to apologize. She continued to ignore him, put on a robe, lay on the bed and then balled herself into the fetal position.

  “Liz, it has nothing to do with attraction, male, female, nothing. It’s purely sexual dimorphism. Women are smaller. That’s all. They’re easier. Do you know how awkward it is to pick up on a man? Do you remember what happened with Eric?”

  Eric was the last man that Montgomery had captured and cooked. He came over on the pretense that Montgomery had season tickets to an LA Kings game (Eric was Canadian, hence the interest in hockey). Stature wise, Montgomery had him beat all around - height, weight, mass, muscles, but man could that little fucker fight. Despite what he told Liz, Montgomery promised himself no more males. Not that he was a misogynist, frankly he didn’t care if he was eating male or female flesh and he didn’t get off on killing or raping or any of that psycho shit, but women, by design, by weight and height and muscle mass, were infinitely easier. It felt more natural and if things went screwy before the moment of truth (like with Eric), he had a much better chance of subduing a woman than he did a man. Liz failed to see the logic in this. She dwelt on the non-issue of sex and made things so much harder.

  In any case, Eric beat the crap out of him and almost escaped. Fortunately, he tripped over the coffee table and Montgomery was able to fight through the knot forming on his forehead and bash the asshole’s head in before he could recover.

  “We talked about this, Montgomery! You promised.”

  And he did.

  And he had no defense (that she would accept and understand).

  So he sat on the edge of the bed, put his head in his hands and wondered how long the idiot fighting was going to last this time around.

  II

  The Irresistible Urge

  It was the first thing Ashley thought about when she woke and the last thing she thought about when going to sleep.

  It dogged here during the in between hours too, flittering about her firing synapses like a bothersome brain gnat.

  It had gotten so anything else was merely a distraction.

  The heroin was king.

  It had to be dethroned.

  Last night she tried to make a stand. Her live-in boyfriend, Henry, and his drummer, Burrito (the stupidest nickname ever) protested, but Ashley held her ground. Burrito stormed off, looking to fix somewhere else, and Henry, ever supportive, tried his best to hang in with her.

  They made their decrees, went to bed early, made love and planned to sleep addiction off. Unfortunately, a year on the stuff didn’t make things that easy. Crumbling wills and creeping chills broke them. A couple of hours later (seven hours since their last fix) the itching set in. Like fiends they rushed to the kitchen to cook up.

  In the morning, Ashley awoke calm and even. She lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking things through. Last night’s heroin kept her straight, but she knew that if she didn’t fix soon the beast would be upon her. She had to be strong. She had to fight it. She and Henry had to do this together. Things had gotten way out of hand, but today was the day, or rather, tonight was the night. She had to work today and she needed a little taste to get her through, but tonight? Tonight was golden. She had the following two days off and Henry wasn’t due in the studio until the end of the week. Everything was perfect.

  “Henry?”

  Henry shifted, but refused to wake.

  Ashley shook him and repeated, “Henry?”

  Slurred with sleep, “Whhhaat?”

  “Tonight’s the night, Hen.”

  “Wha?” He rolled toward her, wrapped his long pale, tattooed arms around her midsection and pulled himself close. Nuzzling into her side he took in a deep breath, let it out, and then waited for her to reply.

  “Tonight we kick. For real.”

  He groaned out a non-reply and then rolled over onto his other side. Ashley got out of bed and repeated her pledge, “Tonight, Henry. Tonight.”

  Another groan.

  “I’m going to do a little before work. You do yours when you wake up. This evening we’ll have our last taste. Whatever is left afterwards we’re flushing and then tonight it’s cold tur
key, baby.”

  Henry remained silent. He wasn’t as adamant about quitting as she was. Ashley loved him to death, but despised his lack of foresight. If it felt good to ram his head into a wall over and over again, he probably would have done so until his head caved in and his brains smeared away. Oh well, that’s what she was for. They needed each other and it was her job to get them clean and back amongst the land of the living. Besides, it was her fault that they were addicted. This was her mess and she intended to clean it up, dragging Henry along whether he wanted it or not.

  Fresh out of the shower, Ashley sized herself up in the steamy bathroom mirror while getting dressed for work. Heroin was a freaking bear, but she still looked good, was still a “Hot Bitch” as Heather jokingly referred to her. No matter what her friend said, or Henry with his sweet compliments, it was impossible to deny that there were some definite signs of wear. She was twenty-three, but (in her opinion) she looked a little older. Her alabaster skin and punked up shock of shoulder length jet black hair kept her looking hip and young and all of that, but Ashley could see something disconcerting in and about the eyes. As if her youthful, vibrant frame, tight body, zero fat, decent rack, belied an ancient soul that had seen far more of the world than it should have.

  Wisdom perhaps, damaged goods more likely.

  Ashley finished getting dressed, which went quickly; she worked at a record store called CHAOS and was allowed to wear whatever she wanted. She didn’t think she could hack a corporate job or any career that required professional dress and she knew that she couldn’t work at CHAOS forever, but her meager income coupled with Henry’s was enough to get them by for now. She supposed she would worry about later, later. Although as of late, each passing day was beginning to dilute the ambivalence of youth. A sense of urgency was beginning to set in, hence the desire to kick, hence the college applications bookmarked as favorites on her laptop.

  Before she left for work she wolfed down a couple of dry English muffins and a glass of orange juice and then headed back to the bathroom for her daily fix.

  Intravenous drug use was anything but glamorous, nor was it punk rock as her fellow junkies believed, rather, it was fucking disgusting and if not for that incredible rush the moment the plunger was depressed and magic filled the veins there would be no excuse for it. Smoking, of course, was much easier, but the effect wasn’t as intense or long lasting and Ashley had a full day of work to trudge through. So a bit of heat, a loaded syringe, a pinch between her toes and she was off and flying, embarking on yet another day of minimum wage dreaming and selling records.

  So, how did it all come to this?

  She could remember her first time trying the shit.

  Last year, Henry’s punk band, The Jerkoffs, were playing an intense mini-tour – two weeks, fourteen venues, three states. Ashley was able to get the time off work to help drive and offer support and man the merchandise table. The gigs paid almost well enough to justify the absence from work and the exposure was crucial for the band. This was Henry’s full-time job and though at times he made next to nothing, there was a glimmering chance to make it big and live happily ever after and milk the American Dream for all it was worth. Ashley likened it to playing the lottery. Henry disagreed, vehemently so. Even if his band never made it, he assured Ashley he was networking and building a future in the industry one way or another.

  Ashley believed in him, but those college applications on her computer were getting harder and harder to ignore. She had seen plenty of aging, failed rock stars and their significant others hanging out at shows. They weren’t a pretty sight with their faded tattoos and tobacco stained teeth and unquenchable thirst for alcohol.

  After much planning, the tour was a go and fortunately for her, Henry, unlike the other idiots in his band, was happy to have Ashley along. He wasn’t a groupie type guy and after shows the two of them partied drunk and high and then crashed in some shitty hotel room (sex) or on some other band’s living room couch (no sex).

  Around the halfway point of the tour they met a bass player named Lux in San Francisco, who played badly in a crappy band called The Skullfucks. As charming as his band’s moniker was, Lux was much more interested in abusing drugs than he was at horribly trying to rip off The Ramones and he somehow talked her and Henry into doing a round of speedballs.

  Ashley was (up until that point) an alcohol and weed (sparingly) girl only. If she could go back in time and alter events somehow, maybe kick Lux in the teeth or probably just tell him to ‘Screw off,’ she would do it in a heartbeat, but time travel was impossible and there was no use in dwelling on the unfeasible. When Lux initially offered the speedballs Henry declined, but Ashley was bored and a bit punch drunk from the road so on an idiot whim she hailed Lux back and with a devil’s grin he ushered them into the tiny club bathroom and locked the door.

  The first time reshaped her world.

  It was impossible to tell what made her feel what, the heroin or the cocaine, but all she knew was that she felt a new kind of incredible. Priority and perspective shifted. A humming charm vibrated from the pit of her stomach outward, electric joy, like a prolonged orgasm but sexless, clean, centered higher and pumping pleasure at a more even keel. Henry echoed her delight and they stormed the night with wild abandon. From one party to the next, floating, racing, colors gone radioactive, all sound to music. In the wee hours they made love in the tour van, but it was as if they had been transported to another universe and their bodies transmogrified into live wires. Each thrust, grind, touch, sent shockwaves of bliss careening mad throughout their systems and filled their manufactured cosmos with ever-burning stars of sensuous sensation.

  From San Francisco they moved on to Oregon and away from hard drugs and glittery wannabes like Lux. The speedballs had Ashley and Henry sleeping most of the day, lulling in and out of restless slumber as the van jostled them along to the next venue. By show time, Henry was ready to shred and Ashley handled the merchandise table like normal. The intense high and easy come down earmarked the drugs within Ashley’s brain. Cocaine or heroin weren’t readily available in Oregon or at any of the other shows for the remaining six days of the tour, nor did she actively seek them out, but she wouldn’t have been opposed to trying either, separately or together, at some future date when the planets aligned and fate brought them her way.

  That date came a month or so after the tour. Burrito heard that a friend of a friend was selling heroin and asked Henry if they were interested. Like before, Henry declined, but when he brought word back to Ashley, she told him to set it up. They had a wonderful time the last go round and she was growing extremely bored with alcohol.

  Heroin by itself was entirely different from heroin coupled with cocaine. It was much mellower. Instead of the world whizzing by in trails of electric light, everything – time, space, emotion – just sort of undulated and folded in on itself. You felt like you were the center of the universe but didn’t give a fuck one way or another. An ambivalent sense of cool permeated. And again, like in San Francisco the experience culminated in an intense sexual bonding experience. She and Henry took one another into uncharted realms of ecstasy.

  The question presented itself: why wouldn’t they want to do this every day?

  Well, there was work and external relationships and the danger of overdosing or life ruining addiction.

  There was the expense (the shit wasn’t cheap).

  There were a million more reasons to stay away, but the feeling, the tremendous sense of worth, the endorphin overload, was like nothing on earth.

  Ashley understood the dangers but pressed on despite and when her best friend Heather wanted to try it with them on their fourth or fifth time out, she forbade her from doing so. She was better than all of this and Ashley refused to let her beautiful, intelligent, bright-futured friend take the risk of being dragged down.

  Her and Henry?

  They could take care of themselves. They were cut out for hard living and hard partying. Not Heather thoug
h.

  Ashley couldn’t wait to kick and reestablish their seriously neglected friendship.

  It was weird how fast it all happened. Before she could really take stock of their situation everything began spiraling out of control. Ashley and Henry began using every day. Back in San Francisco with Lux, and for the first couple of months at home, they emptied the heroin onto a piece of foil, lit it from beneath with a lighter and smoked the drugs through a straw or pen casing or rolled up match book. The head rush was instantaneous, but the H took a few minutes to kick in and really take effect. While buying more from Burritos’ contact, Ashley had witnessed a few other addicts shoot the shit into their veins. She had seen it done in movies and on TV and whenever she thought about heroin prior to trying it herself this was the picture that painted the backsides of her eyeballs. The idea repulsed her initially, junkie; slave to the needle, but after a few months on she became intrigued and told Henry she wanted to try it. He protested of course. It was bad enough they were already smoking it everyday and besides, he hated needles.

  “But you have like a million tattoos you big baby,” Ashley countered.

  She eventually broke him down and the heroin experience graduated from incredible to transcendent. The bite of the needle seemed to eroticize it, to make injection intimate. The surging chemicals intermingled with her blood, danced with her vitality and soothed the insides of her vein trails with zillions upon zillions of sweet kisses. Again, the act became absolutely transcendent.

  And it still was.

  But a year in Ashley felt sense starting to kick her into gear.

  What the fuck were they doing?

  What the fuck was she thinking?

  Her life just felt so incomplete and heroin seemed like something to spice it up, to break the monotony of work and sleep and mindless entertainment.

  Before H she often thought there had to be more, but day in and day out there simply wasn’t. Yes, she loved her man and her best friend and, save for the pay, she had the best job in the world, but it still felt like something was lacking. The heroin seemed to bandage that hole temporarily, yet Ashley could see that it was nothing but an empty solution. Even with heroin life still felt... lackluster.