Feeling lousy, I trudged my way back through the lowstreets. Some place dark sounded nice right about now, somewhere I could stick my head and fall asleep for a long while.

  My anger subsided in the silence of the night, strangled by the need for my next fix and my desire to keep from using. Staying mad at Tito didn’t seem to make much sense, anyways. What was I going to do? Cry to the police? Sir, the bad men stole my drugs.

  This harsh business preyed upon the weak and so did I. Those in pain were my best customers, and those already lost to it were leeches to pick off my skin. It didn't matter how good a customer they were or how chummy we pretended to be together, once the money dried up so did my supply. No sympathy. No hard feelings.

  What was I, then? Worse than the fucking gangers and gangsters and worse than the midtowner normals who looked down on all of us. They were all right. I was just a low-end drug peddler. A supplier high on my supply. A slinger.

  It was temporary, though; all of the bullshit, all of the scrounging around, all of the taking advantage of others, it was just temporary… until I got my shit together.

  Two mil. It was all I needed. Then, I'd be gone. I'd split this town like a check with a bad date.

  There was one good thing still going for me. That fat one and a half million from the bank robbery was still safely stashed away, untouched since… the incident. Even after all this time I’d left it alone. Though, everyday a part of me argued to take what was left and just go. But, for some reason it felt wrong. The money felt stained. In blood.

  Not to mention, I was so close to my goal. Half a million seemed so attainable now. There weren’t many second chances in this city. When one came along, you learned to grasp onto it like a life preserver in the middle of the ocean. Or maybe that’s just what I told myself to feel better.

  But when I got that extra half a million, there’d be no excuses left. I’d pack my shit and head out– no. I’d just pick up and go. Leave everything behind.

  However, that time felt like an impossibly long way off. In on hand liquid assets and cold cash, I had shit. I just couldn't help myself. When I’d make a little cash, three days later I’d wake up with nothing left.

  But I wasn't a junkie. Sure, just to make it through the first few sales I’d take a hit but then I was good without it after a while. Sometimes, I needed help, that’s all. All that would end when business was settled anyways.

  Speaking of which, slinging was still a business and I had to get back to it.

  Tallying up my product told me that I had half the DuckStep and Zentiaf than the average take, thanks to Tito and the boys, and a little more than half of the synthetic snow. The dealers had given me a normal portion of Nilone but that was the hardest to sell. Because of its addictive nature, normal customers didn’t want it. I had to go to hospitals to pawn it off onto debtor patients who couldn't afford prescribed painkillers.

  They had given me the right amount of Siterol, though. I never asked for a lot in the first place; just enough to wean myself off after a sticky situation needed its effects. Siterol was the drug that amped your senses. It was highly effective and useful if a tight spot came around but one use left you with a bad addiction. And the more a user takes it, the quicker that users becomes tolerant to its effects. This meant larger doses were needed every time to get the same effect. It was a slippery slope to junkyhood.

  Besides, it was not a good idea to sell anything too addictive. Serious addicts were rough customers.

  Tito didn't care if I sold any of this shit or not. Like me, as long as he had the money, it was no skin off his ass whether I sold it or used it.

  Speaking of money, my bag of narcotics usually costed me fifty K, no matter what was inside. I could flip it for seventy-five to one hundred easily.

  For rent, I needed twelve K a month. Food costs were low: probably five thousand. I didn't eat much. After seventeen K in expenses and fifty for a bag, I'd have…

  The numbers quit in my head... I tried to roll through the cost and profit again, but my brain wouldn't let me.

  Maybe I felt guilty about all of the pills I used. That hurt my profit pretty bad, I imagined. Maybe it was better not to know. Besides, that would tell me how long until I got my two million. I'm sure the numbers would depress me.

  Regardless of that all, it was back to business… And the first order of business to conduct was to get rid of the Mezedone. If I trashed it, I’d lose out on fifty K altogether, so there was no choice but to sell it. Luckily, some old “friends” came to mind.

  South LowDowns, Sector six, streetside. Palm Springs, I think it was called at one time, though, now, I don't think anyone outside knew its name.

  Palm Springs was a forgotten sprawl of tired city blocks where the buildings were only three or four stories tall. Plenty of empty parking garages, unused lots, and forgotten sports courts sat abandoned for decades while small tenement buildings remained perpetually half filled.

  It was a lonely sector, a forgotten part of the city, one place of many for the poorest in LowDowns. Its citizens were exhausted, the jobs were scarce, and the traffic low. I don't know why it was the way it was. Before my time, I guess.

  After a long train ride Palm Springs crept up through the windows. My legs shook with the needles in hand. Each stray sound or running stranger caused an increase in my heart rate; I was ready to be rid of them. I didn't need cops profiling me this hot. When the warm air outside hit me, a brief moment of relief washed over me. The needles would be gone soon.

  Below where two railroads crossed on suspended bridges, there was an underpass that had a large drainage sewer underneath it. Neither cars used the underpass nor the city used the drainage way. Instead, vagrants and homeless gathered in the long dark tunnels, waiting out the smoggy heat topside.

  Venturing across a flat concrete space, past low stone barricades covered in old protest graffiti, I reached an area near the mouth of the tunnels. It looked like a baseball diamond, though it wasn't, where the grass was dead and bits of trash clung to piles of dirt. Trains passed by every few minutes on both tiers of the railroad, adding just a bit of life back into the place.

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  More graffiti covered the empty tunnel openings but the purpose of the writing was less honorable. The rest of the space was wide and bare, a bit eerie looking, like the world had ended.

  A pair of vehicle seats had been ripped out of a dead car and dropped in the center of the field. Between them, a makeshift trash fire spewed black smoke in a long straight line. A pot was boiling over the sick flames.

  As I approached, a dirty man in a tank top and a deep green beanie measured me up while he cooked a can of beans hanging from a fishing line.

  "What's up?" He asked, his voice like gravel. He was wary but friendly enough, oddly. The man hunched over the fire, tending to his beans like they were bait. His dark skin was spattered with round circles of blood where veins had popped under the flesh.

  "I'm looking for Rico and Hardy," I said, making sure to meet his eye to look both tough and uncaring.

  "Okay, young fella. Just sit here for a minute. I'll go get em," he muttered as he struggled off the seat. "Watch my beans!" He shouted, walking away. I ignored him, instead reaching for a cigarette.

  After he disappeared I took his place.

  With my head drooped back against the leather cushion, cigarette burning in my mouth, I watched the murky orange sky with my attitude in shambles. The sun struggled through the murk despite there being no clouds. A plane flew overhead. It was a tiny dot in the sky.

  Just another day…

  I lifted my head when I heard two men approaching.

  Both men were dressed in ragged outfits, mismatched clothes pocked by trash fire soot and fraying holes. One was in a neon jumper covered in biker grease. The other wore a faded sweater and ragged brown pants. He was the more haggard of the two.

  "Dreamer?" Rico asked. He was the one in the neon jumper. I stood up to meet them.

  "Rico. Hardy," I nodded at each name, speaking through my cigarette.

  "My god. How long's it been Hardy, huh? You stopped coming around for a while. We missed ya." Hardy didn't say anything. He just scratched his grisly beard, well past shadowed. His eyes were red.

  "Yeah, I've been busy," I said, wanting to skip the small talk.

  "So, what brings you back here? You… dealing again?" He asked with intense curiosity. I looked around the area, scanning the place absently but not really looking for anything. I just couldn't look at these guys. They were pathetic. And it made me feel pathetic.

  "Yeah. Just a small time hit. Some very nasty guys pushed some needles on me that I didn't want."

  "Oh, well…" Rico looked at Hardy with needing eyes. "Sure. We could take a look."

  "I'm selling wholesale."

  "Yeah? Got a sample?"

  "Don't worry about it. It's good."

  "Oh? How do we kno–"

  "It's good," I interrupted calmly, nodding at them like they should know, "Comes from Little Tokyo." The man started rubbing his neck, as if he was fighting off a swarm of ticks.

  "Well, sure, what're you asking for em? How many you got?"

  "I got eight vials and four needles." Mez heads always hung out in places like this, decrepit alleys, forgotten infrastructure, places dark and hopeless, twenty or thirty at a time. Whether it was chance or strategy, I couldn’t say, but independently they didn’t have a minneat to their name. However, together, a group of mezzers could scrounge up some pretty decent scratch on a good day.

  It was never good money, though. How could anyone expect it to be?

  Groups like this usually had bag men. They'd take up orders, gather together what scraps their junkie group had, and split the big take up between them all. It was common for the bag men just to steal everything, but the addicts did it anyway. It was the only way to get a hit.

  The needles easily costed fifty thousand but there was no way that was happening. I only needed twenty-five K to break even.

  "I'll give you the whole thing for forty-five," I said.

  "Forty-five? Oh," Rico said as if thinking about it. They had the money. This deal was the only reason why they kept any money in the first place.

  Rico looked over at Hardy. "What do you think, Hardy?" Hardy hadn't said a word since, hadn't barely moved. But now he spoke.

  "You can get all that for thirty thousand at the clinic." I gave him a flat look. The clinic. A drug factory here in the slums, no doubt, some new makeshift that just popped up. Or they were lying.

  "Oh, well. If it's thirty, it's thirty," Rico said, nervous I'd leave with the stuff. I rolled my eyes and took out the needles and vials from my pockets. I had separated them earlier. Whatever.

  I wasn't gonna argue with needle pushers. I gave them the drugs when they handed off the money, my stink eye hard on Hardy. He didn't seem to mind it.

  They were both too busy drooling over the stuff in their hands, like they were handling diamonds or something. Meanwhile, I counted the dirty bills. Thirty Thousand. I slipped it into my jacket pocket. Fifteen thousand less than what I wanted. Try not to drool all over it.

  Instead of sharing that sentiment, I said nothing, turned, and walked away. They didn't even notice I'd left.

  I boarded the next train feeling even more miserable. The whole deal left me feeling… nasty. I needed a shower now. Somehow, this kind of drug pushing was just pure evil.

  Thirty thousand. That's the real evil.

  Now that the Mezedone was gone, it was business as usual, just like the nine-to-five normal’s jobs– or, rather round-the-clock worker warriors these days. They clocked in and never clocked out these days, I heard. But they had a perfect routine, and so was mine. Now that the terrible part was over, I could focus on the bad part.

  I lit up another cigarette. I'd probably go through the whole pack today. The cigarette end glowed hotly, the fire burning slowly up the shaft, smoke twirling like hot mist over my eyes.

  Another train ride, this time on the K-186. The car was dark but light flashed in through the windows every so often.

  Bills traded hands. Bag of pills. 500

  K-190 to Southboard station.

  The slums and alleys were misty. In an abandoned house, I slipped through a backdoor and gave the squatters some doses. They argued. I insisted. They refused. I dropped my price. 300.

  That happened a couple more times.

  I'm hungry. My feet hurt.

  Another train, L - 5, subsurface. A white, beautiful train. The city was blue and dazzling. I was alone, enjoying a cigarette.

  500

  500

  450

  400

  Legs aching, I rested on the K-600. Playing with my revolver, I fingered the plastic handle, thick, red and translucent. I could see the palm of my hand through it. In a bout of morbid curiosity, I looked down the barrel to try and see the bullet in the chamber.

  More hands touching. More bills.

  So tired. The sun was going down.

  A couple of partiers were going to a rave. High marks. They haggled me down from 900 to 700. Left feeling shitty.

  On the K-115, I finally felt like I was alone. Even when I waded through my next clients that feeling never went away.

  Exhausted, I rode the 116 back home.

  When I was well and sure safe back in my neighborhood, I pulled out the wad of cash and counted it. To break even I needed… ten thousand. Eleven thousand and five fifty. The number was disheartening. Barely a profit.

  I was shit at this. I always had been. And at this rate I would be doing it forever.