There was once a young man and a young woman. Together they walked through the gray, ruined streets of a Queens, New York ghetto. Their hair was fair and eyes the color of cobalt crystal. Their faces, however, were faded and scratched, bruised and beaten. Their clothes reflected homelessness, lack of necessity, and punishment (as if the holes had been self-inflicted). The night sky held darkness, but the street lights (although some had been broken), gave enough light to guide the pair’s way through the dirty sidewalks.
The girl held the boy’s right shoulder up, attempting to guide him in his stagger. The boy, his face was especially pale and flowing down his emaciated legs were little rivers of dark red liquid. He whimpered softly, working with all his might (and his left arm) to stop the blood from escaping his thigh. The girl’s eye makeup had been running down her face since it happened. “We need to find somewhere to hide. We need to stop the fucking blood. You’re leaving a blood trail.”
“Fuck no,” the boy said desperately, “We’re almost there.”
The girl stopped moving. She paused, “You can’t be serious. You can’t be fucking serious. You’re bleeding Danny, and you’re bleeding because you needed it again.” She went to push him down, to physically stop him, but knew they were following the blood trail.
Danny smiled a contorted, twisted smile and continued staggering, holding his thigh. “It’ll be fine once I get it.” The streets were cold that night and the sounds of car alarms and horns could be heard all around him as he felt himself fading away. The girl’s eyes began to well with tears “Baby, no.” But the boy continued looking downwards at the cracks in the sidewalk, the overflowing trashcans, and the fluttering streetlights. She grabbed his arm and they continued on.
-
The girl pulled the boy towards an almost invisible black door hidden away in an alleyway. She pounded on it, screaming for the creature behind the door to open it. The boy falls gently to the ground, unable to walk anymore. A click, and suddenly an old woman opens the door a crack, “Back for more, I see, my babies?” The girl shutters and slowly nods her head, “For him, not for me.” The woman retreats back inside and leaves the door open.
The girl grabs the boy and drags him inside – he is almost unconscious “Sara…” he whimpers.
And inside it is dark and cold and damp and a wave of smells flow that are so disgusting that the girl and the boy have to hold their nose to keep themselves from vomiting. The woman peers over from her kitchen. “What will it be, babies? I hear the veins are ripe today.” She cackles at her own joke.
“Sara, just get me a little bit. Just go get it and we can leave” the boy whispers. Sara walks over to the kitchen table and picks up a tiny bag filled with white tiny white rocks. “How much?”
The old woman giggles slightly as she walks to inspect the baggie. She wears a blue floral moomoo. She wears a baseball cap with the initials NY on the front. She is covered in lesions. “Oh, oh, I guess eighty.”
A shot rings out. Suddenly, the old woman falls to the ground. Sara inspects herself – she is covered in blood. The hag is missing an eyeball. Blood seeps from the hole onto the floor onto her dress onto her hat. There is blood spatter all over the kitche cabinets. There is a distinct smell of gunpowder.
“DANNY WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?” Sara screams. She feels her head lighten. Her eyes roll into the back of her head. She falls to the floor, on top of the woman. She is now covered in blood, the blood of the woman. The blood of the old woman with all the lesions all over her body.
Danny cries out. “What the fuck is wrong with me?” he drops the small revolver to the ground and suddenly feels himself unable to move. He gently settles down on the shag carpet floor and closes his eyes to sleep.
Twenty minutes Sara wakes up to a pounding on the door “Open up, babies.”
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