Victim of Drug Lords

Disclaimer: Talk of drug abuse.

He clutched onto his mother’s arm tightly and staggered out the sliding panels. His mother seemed to be sighing and kept casting her amber eyes downward, as if embarrassed. 

“Jason, I’m telling you that it happened.”

“Don’t be daft mother, of course, it didn’t,” he said with a short, almost-nervous chuckle. He stole a sideways glance at his mum, only to be met with lowered eyes. Jason’s dirty blond hair whipped around his ears in the wind. It hadn’t been cut in a while and he desperately needed one.

“Jason, I need you to remember what happened the night you were admitted,” his mother said hurriedly.

They had almost reached the sleek black car by now - one that was completely unfamiliar to Jason. 

“Mum, I really don’t remember and I don’t want to.”

On the contrary, Jason could remember parts of the night that he was admitted into St. Clark’s Hospital, but he certainly wasn’t about to tell his mother that. Broken shards of alcohol bottles scatter the floor, bright, fluorescent lights dance across Jason’s eyes. 

These flashbacks were all too familiar to Jason - he had woken up hungover one too many times in his life for them not to be. No, it had been the pills that turned the situation sour. He only remembered the cheers around him, edging him on… Now that he thinks of it, the feeling was quite wonderful… he looked around wildly as if expecting pills to appear in the parking lot.

“Jason, honey, what were you thinking about?” she murmured softly, as if able to see through his helpless eyes. 

“Just the car.”

Her eyes grew wide; a bubbly look arose to her face.

 “You remember the car?” she exclaimed, now clutching onto Jason’s face with a red hand. Her nose looked as if on the verge of growing stalactites, the London, icy wind whipping her caramel-hair around her shoulders. 

Jason shrugged, shrinking away from her cold hand. After being hospitalized for this long, human contact seemed alien to him. 

“Just thought it looked familiar, that’s all.”

His mother nodded as if acknowledging his distastefulness at her touch. She managed to cover up the hurt in her eyes with a glance upward, at the sky. She quickly told herself that he needed time, of course, he wouldn’t be the same loving child after this traumatic experience. She was lying to herself. But she needed to know what had happened. All she knew was that he hadn’t been home, and when she woke up the next day and his bed was empty, the hospital had called her. 

She managed to pull herself out of her reverie before he noticed anything. 

She turned the keys in the ignition and used the loud rumble as a cover to sniffle a stray tear back up. She started reversing out of the parking lot when Jason suddenly yelped.

“What?!” his mother cried out, stopping the car abruptly with a disgruntled look clouding her soft features.

“I’m not wearing my seat belt.” 

His mother looked baffled for a moment. 

“I don’t remember how,” Jason muttered, not making eye contact.

“Oh for god's sake -” his mum reached over and buckled him in. 

She wasn’t mad, really, it was just so strange that she had no clue how to act around this new Jason. She briefly thought of how different everything would now be - before reminding herself of her emotional state - and decided not to. Her eyes trained on the road, she kept her mind on the task at hand for the time being. 

Jason, on the other hand, was allowing his mind to wander freely, stealing the occasional glance toward his mother. 

He felt guilty, of course he felt guilty, but there was this dark pit of resentment towards his mum that he was unable to explain. Maybe it was him, or even his imagination, but she seemed off.

“Honey, I just have to stop off at a friends’ house to drop some taster cupcakes off.” 

She owned a cupcake business on the edge of town - a successful one at that too.

Now looking out the window, Jason gave a curt nod, not turning around.

The sleek, black car turned sharply into the friends’ driveway in a lovely, bucolic setting. It was a two-storey brick house, slathered in white paint and large windows adorning the front. Curtains served as a block so passers-by would be unable to look inwards. Rose bushes enclosed the low gate that led up to the house.

Jason’s mother put the car in park and climbed out, taking the bright-colored cupcakes with her. Jason turned around for a split second to look at his mother. The cupcakes caught his eye, reminding him of the multi-coloured disco lights at the party. He looked away stiffly.

The door slammed shut and the overwhelming heat from the golden rays of sunlight settled over Jason like a thick, woolen blanket. He shivered and curled up on the seat. The silence was comforting.

Meanwhile, Jason’s mother had rung the doorbell of the house. Three times. She counted down in her head. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1-

“Hello Barbara,” a deep voice said. 

Standing in the doorway, was a tall, bulky man. His unshaven face causing the mere dichotomy between Barbara’s (or Jason’s mother’s) smooth, round face and his, rather-wrinkly looking one, to become more apparent by the second. However, he didn’t appear to be old - just poorly taken care of. 

Barbara gave him a dirty look and pushed through him and into the house. She now stood in a room or junkyard - it was impossible to tell. She dropped the cupcakes on the floor indifferently. There was only one lamp with lace trimmings turned on, the room relying on this one dim source of light to be illuminated. Rubbish was strewn across the floor, empty cans of soda and cartons of milk. Barbara wrinkled her nose at the mess. 

“What, too low-class for your liking?” he inquired with raised eyebrows.

She proceeded to ignore him with a haughty tilt of her head. “Let’s get down to business Tom,” she said, arms crossed on her chest.

“Barbara, I couldn’t give him any heavier ones, okay?” he said with downcast eyes, “the teens at the party were already looking at me funny as it was. Lucky I only popped him a few pills.”

Barbara opened her mouth to interject, but he interrupted her. 

“Before you ask, I was wearing a mask, and half of them were too high to see my face anyway.”

“Ok,” she nodded slowly, “Look, Tom, we agreed on a price, only if you could put him in a coma for three months, and you achieved only one of those months. He wasn't supposed to wake up today! How the hell will I take him home with all the drug shipments lying around?” 

Her amber eyes blazed alive like fire, she had been subconsciously walking closer to him as steady as possible with her red stilettos upon rubbish. 

Tom sighs and pulls something out of his pocket. “I gave him five Barbara. FIVE! The kid must be crazy to be able to handle all of that.”

In the dim light, the pills were indiscernible to Barbara. 

“Tom, which ones did you give him?”

Tom walked over to the curtain and pulled one of the curtains right back. He blinked in the sunlight as if he had never seen natural light before.

“Ah, that’s much better,” he grunted.

Meanwhile, out of the house, Jason was getting rather hot in the car. His mother had also been gone for an awful lot of time for just dropping off cupcakes. He tried to pull open the door but it was locked. 

Weird he thought.

He reached over and unlocked the door from the driver's side. He climbed out carefully, the soft patch of grass beneath him easing his landing. He shielded his eyes from the bright sun and noticed the pulled back curtain on the ground floor.

Quickly assessing the weird events on his mother's part throughout the day so far, he decided to just take a peek before ringing the doorbell. 

Jason crept stealthily up the path and through the low gate. He positioned himself in a way that his body would be invisible to anyone in the home by the other drawn curtain, so he was able to lean a little to the right and see what was going on.

  I must look very strange to any passers-by he thought to himself, stifling a nervous giggle. 

He tended to laugh when he was nervous. It had gotten him into heaps of trouble during test-taking at school. But Jason couldn’t care less about school and their stupid, restrictive rules. 

Balancing mainly on his right foot, he leaned a little to the right. His eyes were met with quite a scene. But Jason was blind to all when he saw it. 

The pills. 

The pure white and streaks of childish yellow throughout the little pill. His memories rushed back in a torrent, and as he looked at the man, the more familiar the face became. He was the guy who popped the pills for him and then dragged him out of the party. 

He watched through the clear glass as his mother paid the man.