All Six

(Content warning: substance abuse [heavy], sexual assault [moderate], suicidality and HIV [minor] all discussed, mentioned or implied)

I am three minutes into Tuesday the 22nd and exactly where I’m not supposed to be.

When we walked out of the clinic on Monday evening, I was fine. You hugged me - hesitated - smiled, and bought me a coffee, ordered under a fake name like you always do. That day, you were an Aaron, and I burst out laughing behind you in the queue - it wasn’t you at all. I didn't want it, but it cost you a fiver, so you tried to choke it down. It was too sweet for you, because black coffee is the one thing in which you allow yourself an ounce of snobbery. It ended up in the bin anyways, so I insisted I'd pay your bus fare. We shared a fag while we waited. You smoked more of it. I think you were trying to kill the aftertaste of the sugar-free syrup.

You went home.

I went home. I fed Nutmeg, reheated the pizza in the fridge and sat down. I got halfway into a Grey’s Anatomy rerun when the power went out. It was brief, but it was silent and it was suffocating. My hands shook as I put the remote down. I was completely fucking lost.

By the time the room lit up again, I was in tears. My phone vibrated. My girlfriend. She sent over a string of emojis and all caps CONGRATULATIONS!!! on the news I’d asked you to break to her. I turned it off. She was excited, so excited. I should’ve been too. I shed the hoodie. I only have one left after we made a point to burn the ones you’ve seen me high in. It's from the concert we went to years ago, but the graphic was flaked and cracking so much you couldn't tell. The red and brown polka-dots up my forearm seemed to glow under the flickering light. I traced them with shaking fingers, trying to map out a route out of my head. Some hold memories. Some were just another Tuesday. My finger catches on the one with edges that bleed and feather like a star or a shitty tattoo. That was when Luke was in the hospital and we didn’t know if he’d make it through the night. I’d slunk into his bathroom while his sister lit a joint for you like it wasn’t his second attempt that week. I said I’d try and clean the bathroom up. When you realised I’d been gone for two hours you broke the door down. Jen cried the minute she saw me, but it might've been because I was nodding out, sitting in her brother's blood. You didn't react until you saw how small my pupils were.

Luke hasn’t spoken to me since. It’s fine. I always thought wrist-slashing was a childish fucking coping mechanism anyways.

I heard you two hooked up last week.

I imagined Viv would be blowing up my phone then, asking to do the same. Because, y’know, we can now. ‘Cause you’re clear and all.

She’d been waiting a year by then.

Despite it all, I couldn’t see it. I was negative and it was a fucking miracle. I prodded at the plaster on my right arm. I’d insisted they’d take from my right arm, and I think the nurse knew why. It was still tender. I peeled it off. I didn’t hurt as much as I’d hoped. I got up. I stared at Nutmeg. She was sleeping, curled under the table, ears twitching every so often. She was so soft and small and clueless. She refused to come near me when I was high. It was motivating at first, to do it for her, so she wouldn’t be afraid.

Eventually, it just did the opposite. I couldn’t stay clean for a day. You’d started smoking again. My own cat hated me. You took her in for a couple of months last year. Then what was the point?

I knew what the point was. The point was I was negative. I was negative, and it was a fucking victory. It was meant to help. To be another motivator. I wasn’t supposed to risk it again. But I knew the track marks would fade. The shaking would stop. I would be an ex-junkie and have nothing to show for it. No cautionary tale to another baby dyke who thought her dealer could save her. No discernible tragedy to stand up and recite like a testimony. Just me. Alone. Existing in a liminal vacuum of time and space and tangibility entirely dependent on my ability to remember. It’s not that I could forget how bad it was without having the PEP there to remind me. It’s that I wasn’t supposed to remember. I blacked it out, mind filing it under ‘traumatic event’ and pretending it never happened. And it was dangerous. I’ve had thirty-two relapses and three overdoses in the past two years because of it.

I don’t think it was meant to be my thirty-third.

I sat back down on the floor, thumbed through the contacts I told Viv I’d deleted. He hadn’t texted for months, but the name was still there. Jake (DONT ANSWER). Except I wasn’t answering. I was asking first. I told myself a lot of things as I drafted the first text. I’d ask, but I wouldn’t buy. I’d only cook it, not shoot it. Only shoot it, not finish the dose. Only finish it, but not enjoy it. In the end, I did all six. I didn’t want to. Not really. But I needed to feel something that wasn’t gratitude, or pressure, or fucking hope.

He arrived exactly twenty-eight minutes later, all grease and body spray. The deal was over quickly. He remembered me - then he lingered in the doorway. He asked if I was seeing anyone. I lied and said no, even though he knows Viv. You and her tried to track him down, scare him. It didn’t work. You almost got shot. I think I smiled. If I did it was at the thought of you, stalking Coventry with a kitchen knife because you loved me.

He gripped my shoulder like a handrail, stepping inside. I didn’t flinch. His hands were rough. I didn’t like it. I’d stopped liking things a while ago. But ‘no’ was a word for people who gave a fuck.

Or who were asked in the first place. So, I let him tip my head back and sink his teeth against my neck like sandpaper. He tasted like metal and synthetic mint. I counted tiles on the kitchen wall, then the divots in the popcorn ceiling and waited.

I stopped counting when he flinched. It was sudden. I didn't know why. I didn't bother to move in his second of stillness. Not anymore. It wouldn't have worked anyways. But I cared enough to glance over. Nutmeg’s eyes glinted in the dim light, she growled again, louder. He shifted like he was going to hit her. She hissed. I lifted my head. She lunged hard enough for blood to start dripping down his arm. He zipped up. Didn’t look at me. Left without another word. I don’t think he really wanted to go through with it either.

Nutmeg stayed next to me, watching me like she was waiting to see what I’d do next. I didn’t want to promise her anything. I’d give her a treat in the morning. If she’d let me. She blinked at me slowly, meowed and moved closer. Rubbed against my knee like none of it had happened.

I didn’t lift my hand to pet her back.

The Quality Street tin was still under my bed, the same place it’d been the last time I said never again. I didn’t think. My hands just remembered as they gently prised the purple lid open.

I emptied the gear into the spoon. Tapped in around 0.4ml of water from the bottle on the windowsill. Stirred it with the plunger until it clouded, turned to sludge. Flicked the dwindling lighter twice and held it under the bowl until it thinned. Never boiled. Just enough. Swirled it. Dropped in the cotton. Drew up 0.3ml. No air bubbles. Flicked. Flicked again. Panicked about knocking air back into the thing. Flicked a third time.

Tied off with a shoelace—teeth, one tug. Right arm, inside crease. Alcohol swab. Pumped my fist.

Vein rose. Bevel up. Angle low. Pierced. Flash of red. Drew back—blood.

Pushed it in. Slow and steady. Eleven seconds.

Pulled out. Tissue. Pressure. Untied. Sat back. Capped the barrel. Wiped the spoon. Packed everything back into the box, shoved it under the bed. Nutmeg mewed somewhere down the hall for me, her steps landing sideways while gravity turned and tilted. I shuffled over and shut the door with my foot. The corners of reality began to curl like burnt paper. I wasn't desperate. This wasn't a shaking, starving affair where I'd burnt myself or fucked up tying off five times or scrabbled under my skin with the needle point. It was perfect.

It's now six minutes into Tuesday and the walls are starting to hum. The ceiling's warped, sagging like it's been holding its breath too long and running out of steam. My chest is warm, not in a good way. Like something's pressing down, filling it with cotton and glass. Nutmeg’s scratching at the door again, but I can’t tell if she wants in or out. I don’t know if I locked it. I can’t remember if I meant to. I reach for my phone and stare at the screen like it might tell me something. Anything. News, a message, a reason.

It’s blank. I consider calling you, just to hear your voice. Just to lie. I prefer lying to you than Viv.

I don’t call either of you.

I come to with the sun dragging itself across the kitchen tiles. The light hurts. My mouth tastes like coins and old tinfoil. My cheek is stuck to the floor. My arm's sore. Not from the hit, from the way I slept on it, or maybe from the shaking. I push myself up slowly, like I don’t trust gravity to stay linear again.

The flat feels smaller than usual. Like I get to the kitchen in two steps, light from the windows finding my face like it had been hunting me since sunrise. It bites into my retinas.

Nutmeg’s on the counter again, staring down at me like she’s the one who pays rent. She doesn’t meow. Just watches. Like she knows I can’t do it again. Like she doesn’t believe me. I tell myself I’ll feed her later. I tell myself I’ll shower. I tell myself a lot of things as I pour a glass of water and try not to throw it up.

It is 9.12AM.

I sit at the table with the glass in my hand until it warms to the temperature of my skin. My mouth still tastes like metal. There’s a bruise rising near the crook of my elbow. I press it without thinking. I don't feel anything.

I don't hear the knock at the door, or register the lock turn. Nutmeg chirps. Viv hesitates, then sets her bag down. It thuds when it hits the floor. Nutmeg doesn't scarper like she does when my body makes the same sound.

"I was just coming to drop off your charger. You left it at mine."

I don't say anything. She sighs. She knows. She lifts the glass out of my trembling hand easily, sniffing it like she half expects vodka. She doesn't hide her surprise when it isn't. I told her I was getting better.

"Did he touch you again?"

"I let him." My mouth is dry. I don't take another sip, though. It’s too much movement. Too much vulnerability. She looks at me, correcting me silently, and I know she's tracking my gaze as I stare back at the floor.

"Did he-?"

"-Not rape." I cut her off. She’s forced the word onto me so many times it's lost any meaning, but it's still ugly. It presses and pinches like the too-small choker she got me when I first hit a month clean. That was years ago.

"So, assault then."

I don't say yes. I don't say no either. I guess that was the issue in the first place.

"This was supposed to be a celebration. You were clean. You were negative."

"The maybe of being positive was my last excuse. Then it was gone. It scared me."

"You’d rather ruin yourself than let one good thing happen to you." It’s not a question.

"No." I answer anyways. My voice cracks.

"This. This is the world's longest fucking suicide attempt."

"It's easier than having to stay clean and having to mean it."

Nutmeg jumps up onto the table beside me. Her fur brushes my wrist and I don’t flinch, but I don’t move either. Viv watches me like I’m evidence in a case she's been forced to prosecute.

"You were nearly out. Of everything. You were— are negative. And you traded it. For what?"

I hesitate. "To run."

She watches me. I suddenly become aware of the sticky, drying film of sweat on my skin.

"I don’t want to be your nurse, or your sponsor, or your fucking excuse. I just wanted to be someone you could come home to."

"I wanted that too."

"You wanted the idea of it. You wanted the version where you’re already better, and I don’t have to see you like this anymore."

"I am better. I'm not sick," I didn't think I had that disdain in me. I want to dwell on what it means. I don't.

"You're unwell." Her words are final. Delicate, but dense. They sink through the air like rocks in the ocean. Viv drops the charger onto the table. The clatter hurts my ears. She crosses the room. Opens the kitchen cabinet and tips a tin of food into Nutmeg's bowl like she can't trust me. She chips her red nails on the ring pull. She doesn't mourn for it. "Call me once you've stopped coming down."

She doesn't slam the door. She catches it before it closes, pulling it behind her, leaving me in careful, measured silence. It hurts.

Nutmeg jumps down. Pads across the lino like she owns the place. Maybe she does. She pauses, tail twitching, and looks up at me. I look back. She blinks. Meows. Eats. Walks away.

It is still Tuesday.

I am still here.