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Contains graphic details of substance abuse and suicide 'Round and round and round, why oh why must I keep doing the same things? Making the same mistakes, will I ever learn?' Josh thought to himself as he stood waiting for his dealer.
Every day now for what had seemed an eternity, Josh had the exact same routine, he would wake out of bed around mid-day in absolute agony, every bone in his body screaming in pain, and he couldn't help but feel like a man twice his age, then he'll take a hit of what was left from yesterday's stuff to get himself perked up, along with a black coffee with no sugar because he didn't even bother to buy the simple things in life, he was lucky if maybe there was a couple of slice of toast he could eat, dry of course as he didnt have any butter, he would not even bother to wash himself, he'd put on the same dirty clothes that he'd been wearing since 2004, and his toothbrush? Well he'd used that to clean hard to get places when he was high.
His house was a myriad of junk everywhere and nothing much of any value, old newspapers, fag ends, tin cans etc, he'd spend half his morning rummaging through the junk, trying to find something worth selling to get money to score before the rattling began.
Dear reader if you have never experienced a rattle believe me, you really don't want to, your body overheats so you sweat buckets to cool down, your sweat lies on you as you cool and you start to get chills, so you wrap yourself up, but then the cycle repeats, along with this you get terrible cramps unlike anything you've ever felt in your life, it feels like Mike Tyson is punching you with steel gloves on in the guts and on the top of the head, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, in the worst cases your mind starts to play tricks on you, and you have horrid hallucinations, ranging from insects crawling all over you or even under your skin, to dead family members sitting looking at you with conviction, and following you around everywhere you look, in mirrors, doorways, sitting in rocking chairs, even when you close your eyes you still hallucinate, no my dearest friends a rattle is not a nice or pleasant experience, and not something I recommend.
Anyway back to Josh's daily routine, so if he manages to find something to sell, next it's off to the pawn shop with it, where he gets a measly fraction of whatever the items true value is, £8 for something which maybe cost him £80, next he goes to his 'spot' a patch of ground, where he sits begging with his can in hand, he will sit on the cold hard ground from around 1pm til about 9pm, 8 hours, just to make the other £12 to finally have his £20 drug money, people will mostly walk past and ignore him, some will slander him or call him names, some people will even go so far as to attack him, inside he doesn't want to do this, he despises having to sit there every day grinding day after day after day to get money, just to take his 'medicine' he feels embarrassed, ashamed, dirty, like he doesn't care anymore about his life, just another piece of junk sitting in the gutter, then he will go to the phone box and it will be out of order, so he will go to the next one which will swallow some of his money, finally after ringing umpteen times his dealer answers, he is to to go to a 'spot' a certain meeting place of his dealers choosing.
So now here he is standing waiting in the freezing cold, he can feel his rattle coming on, cmon D, he doesn't even know the dealers name, only an initial, he doesn't really care, all he wants is what D has, finally he sees headlights, at last, he rushes over and jumps in the passenger side.
"D I'm sorry I'm a pound short, the fucking phone box swallowed my change first time around" Josh said
"Cmon Josh you've did this all week, 10 days at a quid short is a tenner you know, I got my own overheads to pay off" D said.
"Actually you know what, nah fam I ent doing it for 19, get out my car"
"Cmon D please, please, I'm absolutely begging you, I've sat there all fucking day grinding this, please D" Josh pleaded
"NAH FAM GET OUT MY FUCKING CAR BEFORE I DRAG YOU OUT AN KICK THE UTTER SHIT OUT YOU"
Josh was terrified as he opened the passenger door he made a lunge for the bag in the dealers hand and bolted at top speed with the dealers full parcel, away he went through all the woods and lanes, he didn't dare look back he just kept sprinting and sprinting as fast as his legs would carry him.
By now D was probably ringing round his whole crew, letting them know a dirty scummy little junkie called josh had robbed him, he would tell other users too if they give him a kicking and get back his stuff they could have a freebie, nowhere was safe for him anymore.
After running for what seemed like eternity he finally found a nice quiet spot, he took the parcel out and counted, 17 bags of gear and 12 pieces of crack, oh you beauty! Fuck it, he thought, I'm dead anyway, as he cooked it all up into his syringe he took one last look around and said goodbye cruel world, he put the pin in his arm and injected the concoction, he felt a lovely surge of pure ecstacy as the drugs coarsed through his veins, finally he had broken the cycle, not how he had ever dreamed or imagined but hey, he was out, and he was moving on!
Police tape surrounded the field the next day, the body of a young male in his 30s had been found by a local dog walker, he still had a needle in his arm so police weren't treating the death as suspicious at the moment.
"Bloody shame," the woman who had found him said to the officers, "for the past week I've walked past this lad and saw him, today I was gonna see if he wanted to come work on my farm, I've got plenty money so I was gonna help him, me an my husband do all sorts of work in the community with vulnerable people and I could tell by looking at him he really wanted to change,"
"Yeah this is it, some people really are just victims of circumstance, it's such a shame that we as human beings treat our fellow human beings so cruelly but hey, such is life" the officer said.
"I actually know him, this is Josh mcdaniels my nephew," another officer said.
"Why didn't you try to help him?" The woman asked.
"We did, on numerous occasions, we tried our best, the little piece of shit stole our kids Christmas presents and everything, just desserts if you ask me" he replied
Yeah, it's a dark and cruel world we live in, and people hold grudges or wrong others, sunday will always blend into Monday, will we ever experience the 8th day?
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Any feedback is highly appreciated, I do have some xperience myself as a former drug addict and I'm now in a much better place in my life, I am in the middle of writing other stories too so please watch this space
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Amazing story Kevin. True and so sad in today's world.
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That's the catch, isn't it? You might want to change, but *it* won't let you. You know the things you do are bad, and they bother you, and you want to be the kind of person that doesn't do them - but you first have to avoid those rattles.
A terrible place to be trapped in.
The story has a sad ending, but we understand why Josh did it. He knew exactly what he was doing, and stealing from his dealer was basically a death sentence - and yet he did it anyway. Powerless, perhaps, to stop himself.
Critique-wise, there were some minor issues with formatting, spelling, and punctuation that another round of editing should pick up. Small things, like a missing comma and period in 'grinding this, please D" Josh pleaded', or losing capitalization in "little junkie called josh had robbed him".
Not egregious things, but there's enough of them they're noticeable and they knock us out of the story.
It's interesting to see other people's POV near the end. His uncle is callous, but there's clearly an ugly history there. But the woman? Frankly I don't believe her. She claims she was *just* about to help, and then she's quick to go into a spiel about her and her husband being good people. Seems like she's just using the opportunity to build herself up - but that's just one take.
I also like the title, the idea of this 8th day somewhere beyond the week. That's neat to think about.
Thanks for sharing!
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Thank you so so much for your valuable input! Yeah punctuation etc isn't my strong suit, I've only recently been picking up bits here and there, so used to texting now in the 21st century, I'm surprised I haven't put a lol or a btw in there haha,
Exactly right that's the catch 99.9% of addicts really don't enjoy being addicts and I put that number incase there's some little 0.01% numpty out there who thinks it's the best thing since sliced bread haha, and it does hook you, as soon as I saw the theme was breaking the cycle I knew it had to be a story about drugs I'd do, the story was sad and that's what I was going for, a wake up call, but josh was happy, and in the end it was his way of life and the drugs killing him, and all these procrastinators who say 'I WAS going to help him and we are good people,' using a past tense was exactly my point there.. and naysayers like the cop who was related and still couldn't see the humanity because Josh (capped it just for you) had mistreated him, there are thousands upon thousands of people out there right now, going through exactly this, I wanted to reach out and open some eyes, I mean, alot of them do put themselves there and make life worse for themselves and could fight a bit harder, alot of them are horrid, alot of them are bullies, and scumbags, and 2faced, and rats, I know, I've dealt with them all my days, but there are some out there crying out, some that would love a shot at life, I've often thought, if I ever made it big, I'd buy an island, somewhere out in the tropics, it'd have sorta prison rooms, for rehab, I'd hold interviews and hand pick the real ones I thought wanted it, I wouldn't tell them what they were in for, but when they got there they'd be locked in a plain room for a month, left to rattle, bare walls is best, helps with the hallucinations, that's why prisons work well at rehabilitating people, it's when they get out to nothing they fall bk into it, but if they got out to paradise and work etc, and no possibility of drugs anywhere, well that would change anyone. I wish I could make my dream a reality, I'd love to turn people's lives around, first though, I'm concentrating on me, I'm working hard on my other material, I think I have some interesting stories to tell, keep an eye open, I'm actually working on six or seven different stories from differing genres but I'm gonna try and entertwine them all, sorta like the marvel universe haha, I highly appreciate all your valuable feedback and I promise one day to sit and go through it with a fine tooth comb and fix all the punctuation and stuff, mostly it's bad habits through texting as I said b4 haha, see wat I did there, did it agen, an agen, n agen.. Its like 1984, my favourite book of all time, Orwell was a genius, unbelievable the predictions he made that are still coming true, and now they have a mind reading machine, thoughtcrime, definetly an inspiration to me. I hope you become a friend in future, take care and God bless 😊
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