Sunlight’s Still Just Radiation

📅 November, 2013

【ᴛᴡ ғᴏʀ ᴍᴇɴᴛɪᴏɴ ᴏғ ᴅʀᴜɢ ᴜsᴇ, sᴇx ᴡᴏʀᴋ, ᴀɴᴅ ᴠɪᴏʟᴇɴᴄᴇ】

Darkness had fallen over the city, early and cold, as winter tightened its grip. As the sickly yellow of the streetlights flickered on around him and his breath started to fog in the air, Chey was still struggling to adjust: The streets had still been warm enough at night for revealing clothing when he’d gotten that prostitution charge in October. Now, just a month later, three days straight in the 30’s felt jarring—and it wasn’t like the jail had offered him a free jacket on the way out the door. No, all they had on offer after 21 days was the smell of mildew on the clothes he’d been booked in and some sneering correctional officer to throw a departing barb of “Well, I hope you learned something.”

Chey had only narrowly resisted retorting with, “Yeah, I learned they send their ugliest cops to pose as Johns. Maybe that’ll be your next assignment, huh?”
Instead he’d kept his mouth shut, returned to his old haunt to see how much of his shit had been stolen in the meantime (most of it) and scraped together enough cash for the lowest quality bag he’d ever come across. A face-slap for the count, short legs, shit rush, but fuck—it was dope after three weeks without and it’d felt like heaven.

Now, a couple weeks on from there, though, ‘scraping’ was proving itself untenable: Cheap tricks and flying signs weren’t enough to keep him going. Chey leaned in the back shadows of a night-dark alleyway; smoking in a fruitless attempt to fight the feeling of withdrawal sinking its teeth in again. It itched at the back of his skull, too deep to scratch; as constant and irritating as an unswattable mosquito buzzing in his ear. 
He was left agitated and anxious, bouncing his leg and working his jaw, unable to keep still. His stress brought the ashes of the cigarette down to the filter too quickly, nearly burning his lips in the process. He threw the butt to the ground and rubbed his hands together. His fingerless gloves were fraying at the edges; the right-hand one was singed and reeked of cigarettes. They were useless against the cold. He kept them on anyway and tugged with twitchy fingers at their loose threads. 

He wasn’t shit out of luck; he had a stripping gig the next evening, and if he played his cards right he might be able to leverage something less legal and more profitable out of one of the patrons; the back rooms weren’t for broom storage and everyone walking in knew it. 
...But he couldn't stand to wait that long: He was jonesing, jonesing bad. His nose ran and he frustratedly swiped his sleeve across his face, forced to abandon his fidgeting. 
He’d have to hustle tonight, soon tonight; get some cash or some shit to pawn or manage to luck out and find a John who paid in dope, because fuck...he was desperate. 
He knew he’d look it, too, and hated that; hated knowing it, hated accepting it. Desperate people did desperate things and God, shitty people loved when you were desperate: Either they could pay you less or fuck you up more or both; they’d get away with it regardless. 
Chey wiped his nose again, scowling. Damn thing. Damn world.

A flicker of movement at the other end of the alley caught Chey’s eye and drew his attention from his bitterness: A figure had turned off the street into the alley and was walking towards him. In the dark he couldn’t tell much about them, but he could make out a collared shirt and something that was either a purse or a messenger bag; they quickly checked their smartphone at waist level, then tucked it away. Some normie taking a shortcut. A risky shortcut.

A tingle—or maybe it was a chill—ran up Chey’s spine. He was suddenly extremely aware of the knife clipped to his pocket; of his dark hoodie and his desperation and the fact that this random idiot had decided it was a good idea to take a nighttime alleyway shortcut in the South Bronx.
It would be easy.
It would be so fucking easy to do; they didn’t seem to have noticed him, they were walking towards him, away from the streetlights and possible white-knights.
It would be so easy to just pull his knife and take their shit. And then he could get dope tonight without some motherfucker touching him.

He listened to the footsteps growing nearer, chewing on his already-sore cheek, which had already suffered his evening of intensifying withdrawal and the way his jaw grew restless with it. Clamping his tongue between his teeth, having about decided to just fucking do it, Chey rested his hand on the butt of his knife. 

It was a good, menacing looking thing; all metal including the handle, with a spring-assisted opening function that made a solid swish-click sound which still carried all the threat of a switchblade to anyone in earshot. Sold as a ‘tactical rescue’ knife, it came with a glass-breaking point on the end of the handle which Chey could feel under his fingertips. It felt like good insurance that both ends were usable if things got messy.

An abrupt wave of cold washed over him, as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice water off the fire escape overhead and drenched him down to his soul.
𝘐𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘨𝘰𝘵 𝘮𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘺? 𝘕𝘰𝘸, 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴? he thought to himself; 𝘐𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 ‘𝘨𝘰𝘵 𝘮𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘺’ 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦, 𝘪𝘵 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘣𝘦 𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘣𝘭𝘶𝘥𝘨𝘦𝘰𝘯 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘶𝘵𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘬𝘯𝘪𝘧𝘦, 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘭?
He suddenly felt at odds with his own neurocircuitry and thrown entirely off-balance: Things ‘getting messy’ wasn’t an option. He wasn’t looking to hurt anyone, just...just to rob them.

Deeply unsettled, Chey took a sharp step out of the shadows, as though that could get him further from the darkness he’d just glimpsed inside himself, too. The woman walking down the alleyway was only a few feet away when he stepped into view and she visibly startled; fumbling her purse when she jumped and hastily scooping it back up. Her wide, nervous eyes met Chey’s, and for a couple heartbeats they just stared at one another.
“...Be careful,” he finally said, then walked past her, out of the alley and into the night.

A street and a half away, he slammed the glass-breaker on his knife into the window of a parked car that someone had left a couple crumpled bills in the center console and a bag on the backseat of; all out in plain view.
$15, cool, he thought rather numbly to himself, flicking through his loot five blocks on, the car alarm having fallen into the distance.

He’d be able to shoot up tonight.