25th December 2021, Saturday
Afternoon

At least I'm not shooting three grams daily like I used to. Those were fucked up days.

If I could I know would.

At least I'm down to a gram.

Jasper felt vomit rise to back of his throat and he retched as a man passed him eating a hot dog, mustard oozing out of his mouth and spewing down his chin, making Jasper's stomach do flips as a shiver of repulsion shot down his spine.

How can you eat?! How can you actually eat?! That's so fucking gross-how can you do that to yourself and not want to throw up?!

"Sir."

I shoulda fucking jumped last night instead of overdosing and getting woken up by mask wearing bitches throwing their bottles at me and calling me a junkie.

"Sir!"

Jasper suddenly became aware of the bobbed blonde and freckle faced nurse cloaked in a white lab coat and a pristine slate grey pair of trousers and black flats, she stood in front of him and eyed his wavering body with worry, his eyes were hidden behind a plastic pair of black sunglasses.

"Yeah?" Jasper asked, swaying and barely able to keep himself upright, tilting his head down to look at her, her brows creased and her expression a conflicted mixture of concern and disdain.

"Do you need anything?" the nurse questioned.

"Nope," Jasper said cheerily, a sudden sloppy grin spreading across his face as the nurse quickly moved past him, shoes clicking as she done so.

Fuck, I was supposed to ask about addiction treatment. If I wasn't high I would remember shit like that.

So much for fucking sobriety. First I went through all my heroin last night, now all my crystal and ketamine this morning.

Fuck.

I don't want to live this way but I don't know how else to live. I don't know how to survive with drugs.

Jasper rolled his eyes at the irony of the situation, barely feeling the energy and thoughtfulness of the high, chewing the inside of his cheek as he stumbled into the waiting room for the heart ward, sobering his slack grin to a solemn expression as he saw a tired mother with sleepless bags under her eyes and frazzled brown hair tied up in a messy ponytail, she was sat alone on a row of red chair, rocking a tiny baby to sleep in her arms.

Jasper sat beside her, rubbing his face and dragging his hands down his cheeks, he let out a weary sigh as he rested his head against the wall, shutting his eyes and tucking a stray strand of greasy hair behind his ear.

He looked at the woman besides him, her thin brows furrowed and eyelids beginning to curtain over her hazel eyes, her cheeks were tear stained, her whole body was dropping as she tiredly rocked her baby which was swaddled in a fluffy blue blanket, her pale and dry lips were pursed as she sniffed, rubbing sleep from her eyes. 

"Are you okay?" Jasper inquired, the woman looked up in a daze, her eyes slowly focusing as she traced the flat voice to the skinny man wearing mismatched clothes besides her.

Somehow seeing her sadness made him forget his own sadness.

The woman grimaced, putting her baby in its carrier before going back to Jasper, forcing a watery smile to her face as she pinched the bridge of her nose.

"My dad is in surgery for his heart, it's been touch and go the past few weeks," she admitted, her eyes welling with tears as her lip trembled as she put her baby in its black carrier by her feet.

"How's the outlook?" Jasper asked, knitting his eyebrows as he watched her intently.

"Not so good, it's a thirty percent survival rate," she answered, averting her gaze and wiping carefully at her eyes so as to make sure she didn't smear her mascara, "I just can't imagine my baby growing up without his grandfather," she choked out, continuing to wipe at her welling tears.

"It'll make them stronger, he'll always be there for them in spirit," Jasper said, smiling warmly but weakly at the softly crying woman.

"I'm not so good with colour coordination, thanks for nothing university art degree, my girlfriend is the one who usually picks out what I wear," Jasper admitted bashfully, a lump forming in his throat as he chewed anxiously on his lip.

"She's...she's actually the reason I'm here, she had a heart attack and she's in a critical condition," he continued, tears welling in his red eyes as he mentally put himself back on the bridge to tap into his sadness so as to seem as genuine as possible.

He immediately felt to distract the woman from his spilling tears as shame and guilt rose up in him-he could no longer tell if it was fake or genuine.

"You have a cute baby, what's you're name?" Jasper asked, his voice cracking.

"I'm Meg and this is Ron," she answered with a watery smile, looking to the rosy faced baby asleep at her feet.

"Me and m-my girlfriend were planning to have kids before the heart attack, now I just want her healthy, t-that's all I want," Jasper choked out, the woman immediately embraced him in a deep and encapsulating hug.

After half an hour of tears, hugging, lying and manipulation the woman had fallen asleep and the rest of the hospital room was either asleep as well or had taken the discharged patients of the heart ward back home.

Jasper looked over to the woman, moving his head forward to see her eyes were lightly closed and her lips slightly parted as she snored quietly-fast asleep.

Perfect.

This was the moment Jasper had been waiting for.

Jasper's eyes moved down to black bag she had by her feet along with her baby carriers, her babies fast asleep with rosy cheeks and chubby bodies.

I wonder how much I could get if I steal those babies and blackmail her for money.

Silly idea.

He chuckled at the unserious thought, took a quick glance up to her sleeping again before lowering his hands to slowly tug open the zip closing the bag, he peered inside and amongst other unimportant items her purse stood out like a sore thumb.

He picked it up, opening it up and sliding out £360 worth of pristine notes, he rubbed the paper up and down with his thumbs, a grin splitting his face as he began to smell the heroin and the ketamine and the meth he could buy with it.

The heroin, the ketamine and the meth he was going to buy with it.

26th December 2021
Afternoon

Jasper groaned as his stiff eyelids creaked open, the crisp sunshine needling his eyes as he put his hands to a cold floor and pushed upwards, his eyes adjusting to the murky view of a damp alleyway.

Above him was the drained yellow sun barely peeking out from behind a spattering of wispy dull clouds.

Sun's up-time to shoot up.

His left hand reached for his left pocket, fingers falling across the smooth surface of plastic, he pulled the plastic out of his corduroy pockets and saw he had a gram and a half of crystal meth, one and a half gram of heroin and two grams of ketamine as well as a cigarette pack that had only four cigarettes left. He searched his right pocket and found a lighter, a spoon, a capped needle and at least £200 in notes and change.

His hand fell across the smooth plastic of a quarter empty water bottle by his disheveled side.

No cotton. Fuck.

...fuck it, this'll be a one off.

He tapped out every shard of crystal onto the spoon along with a roughly guessed gram of ketamine before letting just enough water drip out to dissolve the drugs in before cooking it till it was prime for injection.

This is my last time for sure.

This is my last time because I know I'm an addict and I know this is no way to live.

This is my last time because it's either get clean or die.

I want to live because I know I can do something with my life, I want to die proud.

I want to live because dying to this disease is losing. I fucking hate losing, I'm going to win this one day.

Today.

Today is the day.

Jasper popped the cap off his needle before plunging it into the concoction, his eyes ravenous.

Right after I shoot this.

Once he had sucked up every atom of the mixture into the needle he slipped off his shoe and peeled of his socks, the sore veins in his abscess riddled feet bulging from years of abuse-he was thankful his trousers hid the decaying trainwrecks of a pair of legs that were marbled with deep purples and jaundice yellows.

He poked the needle into a prominent vein, drawing back and seeing wisps of blood mix with the scummy liquid before pulling down on the plunger and flooding his body with the drugs.

He put his sock and shoe back on before putting the cap back on his needle and putting his paraphernalia away in his pocket as a warm tingle began to surge through his veins, nerves prickling as his brain felt jolted in an endless euphoric way.

He clambered to his feet, his fingers brushing against a sharp source of pain on his neck that left his fingertips wet and teeth gritted in a twisted snarl.

"What the fuck?" Jasper muttered groggily under his breath as he gently pressed his finger against the pain again-the harder he pressed the more yellows liquid spewed onto his fingers and he realised it was pus bursting from a weeping sore.

"Fuck, was that always there?" Jasper asked himself as he sighed wearily, rubbing his sweat beaded face as his eye twitched.

I thought those would've all been gone by now considering before this week I hadn't shot up in a month.

He stumbled out of the dark reclusion of his alleyway and into the streets packed with clean-cut city workers in fancy suits on their lunch breaks, Jasper ambling between them in stained and baggy black cargo trousers and a loose and oversized pink corduroy that sagged at his shoulders, his greasy dark brown hair hanging in long strands like a raggedy mop, a thick layer of messy stubble on his unshaven and guilt ridden face.

"Get clean or die," he mumbled to himself as his limbs trembled, the rhythm of the words drumming firmly into his head, hastily scratching at his scalp, yellowed nails clawing painfully across his skull.

Why'd I have to go and fucking shoot up? I didn't have to. I shouldn't of.

Why do I lie to myself?

And why do I believe my lies?

Get clean or die. I can't stand living like this-I'm a disgusting and pathetic junkie. I deserve sobriety or death. Nothing else.

His eyelids drooped halfway over his glassy bloodshot eyes, his head lolling loosely on his bony shoulders as his nose started to run and cracked lips and gums began to bleed which he licked at with his dry tongue as he limped aimlessly around the city, his weak and marbled legs trembling under his skeletal frame.

Time passed away and as Jasper fought to ignore the stabbing pains in his chest he spotted a pillar under a leaking gutter full of rusty water amongst a drab windswept marketplace manned by half-stoned black Rastafarians with deep set scowls and half-drunk and tweaking skinheads with a cold and psychotic gaze.

Jasper leaned against the pillar as sweat dripped down his face and made his shirt stick to his bony back, shakily pulling a cigarette out of his pack and sticking it between his teeth before he reached into his other pocket, pushing away his lighter and needle, and pulling out his lighter and lighting his cigarette.

He stood chain smoking for ten minutes, scratching at crawling and sweating skin and getting random cold chills and sharp body pains, too despondent to care for the paranoid thoughts of the merchants rushing at him, clawing his eyes out as they tore open his ribcage and ate his internal organs as he bled to death. Beyond the smokescreen of his cigarettes nothing seemed to exist, all his senses were numbed to the smoke till the heavy smacking of old trainers against concrete broke through the smoke as he crushed his last cigarette underfoot.

"Hey mister," a young blonde woman, no older than eighteen, asked through plump lips coated in dark purple lipstick, she wore fishnet tights over pale thighs and a short plaid skirt alongside a low cut tank top and a dusty black leather jacket, against the dim glow of the sun the silver piercings in her sharp clavicles shone dully.

"If you could show me where to buy meth or horse I'd be willing to give you some money for it," she said, her lips curling upward into a sly and sickly sweet smirk as her long black eyelashes fluttered, Jasper's muddy brown ones simply stared blankly at her own with dilated black hole pupil as he tried to think about what to do, say and think.

Within the blond woman's pale blue eyes Jasper saw his own reflection.

I look like that fucking bastard Jack who used to sell me an eighth of shitty shit weed for £65. Till my parent's busted me and fucking burnt my leg with scolding hot water.

Fuck...I still hate that guy and its been almost five years since I've contacted him. I wanna kill him.

The seething rage boiled just under his translucent skin pissed him off enough to make not looking like Jack a main motivation to get clean-rather than the fact he knew he'd be dead within a month if he didn't get clean.

Wait...why is this girl here? Oh fuck right, I remember now.

"Yeah-go down that alley with me and I'll show you where to get some meth," Jasper said as he scratched the side of his neck, nodding to an squalid alleyway behind a stall of bongs, rolling paper and lighters.

"Okay," the girl said, taking out a wad of notes from her jacket with one hand and applying another coat of dark purple lipstick with the other as the two slunk away into the darkness, where nobody would see them.

A few minutes later, after some bartering, the girl left with half a gram of crystal meth and Jasper had an extra £60 in his pocket, bringing his total wealth up to £375, he left a few minutes after her once he'd snorted a bump of ketamine to continue to wander the city streets, heading back away from the less rougher areas after picking up a fresh pack of cigarettes and toward the fancier areas full of frivolous shops and vapid people even more frivolous.

As he passed a quiet and sparsely populated train station he heard someone calling out with the word 'hey', Jasper looked over his shoulder and saw a boy with pastel violet hair swept across his face and piercing emerald eyes standing underneath a glowing orange and black screen of train times.

"You talking to me?" Jasper asked with a gruff as he took out his water bottle, unscrewing the lid and pouring all three quarters of it ravenously down his dry throat before he licked at the trickles that tried to run down his chin, watching the boy with a slightly creased brow of concern, eyeing the designer jumper he was wearing.

Did someone run away because mummy and daddy didn't buy them the latest Porsche?

"Yeah," the boy murmured through his loop pierced lips, his pale skin catching the orange glow of the train times as he awkwardly swished his feet, brushing the hair from his eyes.

"Where's the best place to stay around here?" the boy questioned as he tugged the strap of his backpack tighter.

"The homeless shelter," Jasper answered with a grunt as he took out a lighter and a cigarette, it clicked dryly as he tried to lit it.

"Where is it?" the boy asked as the flame caught the cigarette, he took a deep drag down into his blackened and scorched lungs before exhaling a long stream of smoke.

"Down on Harley Street which is a ten minute walk from here...but its overcrowded, I couldn't get in there..." Jasper huffed as he took another inhale of his cigarette, burning it down, before he tapped out the flaky ashes.

"Oh," the boy muttered with dejection, his gaze falling to his dirty black converses.

"I mean, you'll probably be viewed as vulnerable due to your age, or something, so they might make an exception for you, I dunno," he mumbled monotonously as he rolled his eyes apathetically, his shoulder shrugging.

"Give it a shot...if they don't accept you then I'd say hang around in lit areas outside big shop chains-stay away from alleys, those places aren't safe, full of addicts and psychos," Jasper said with a giggle as a meagre smirk gave his expression a sinister edge.

Addicts and psychos like me.

"Haven't you got family?" Jasper inquired, inhaling from his cigarette.

"They'd just give me back to my parents," the boy mumbled, pulling anxiously at his baggy sleeve which Jasper was sure covered self inflicted scars.

"Fair enough...what are your parents like?" Jasper questioned as he blew out a long puff of smoke.

"Abusive. My dad beats me up 'cause he thinks I'm a fag, it's why I'm out here-nobody believes he beats me because he buys me nice clothes and shit to make up for what a cunt he is," the boy snapped, his embittered gaze becoming ferocious as he looked Jasper dead in the eyes.

Oh...I guess the latest Porsche is the least of your worries.

"Your dad is a repressed arsehole of a faggoty cunt. I had my mum burn my leg with scolding hot water when she found out I smoked pot, then both my parents disowned me-parents suck," Jasper explained with a sigh as he dropped his half smoked cigarette and crushed it under his shoe, squishing out every last ember.

"They really do-have you got any pot on you?" the boy questioned, his moping demeanour lighting up at the mention of marijuana.

"No," Jasper sneered, feeling the spot in his foot where he had injected twitch.

No, that was my last time. I have to get clean today. I can't keep saying tomorrow because tomorrow never comes. Today is my day.

Because nothing else exists but today. Because the past is a missed opportunity and the future is an excuse.

"What if the homeless shelter is full?" the boy asked, brows knitting together as his lip pursed in fret.

"Then sleep in the nice streets, sleep by the fancy perfume shops and panhandle," Jasper answered bluntly as he took another drag of his cigarette.

"What's panhandling?" the boy asked as he ran his hair through his violet hair, ruffling it.

"Standing there with a cup and asking for money, you might even get adopted by millionaires and have them make a movie about your life, just make your hair curly and get a scruffy dog first," Jasper spat, his voice oozing with sarcasm and disdain for the boy.

Get a dog like Cutie, one who you can hug while you cry into his mangy fur withdrawal pains while you both lie in squalor.

"How much do you get?" the boy asked bluntly.

"I get about £15 every five hours, but you'd get more but if you pull a cute puppy outta your backpack you'll probably get about £30 every four hours if you push the whole abused and confused teen pity party."

"That much? Shit that's almost minimum wage!" the boy exclaimed cheerily, a grin splitting his clear skin.

"Yeah, well people who work minimum wage get treated with respect. Homeless don't. We're subhuman degenerates in the eyes of society-so don't think your thousand pound jumper won't get pissed on while some drunks kick in your head for a laugh," Jasper spat, the corners of his lips twitching in an envenomed snarl which seemed almost feral in nature, his dark eyes burning with a seething intensity which made the boy take a step back from the scowling skeletal figure in front of him.

Jasper sighed, rolling his eyes and huffing at the pointlessness of his rage that wouldn't ever change a damn thing in a million lifetimes.

I guess I've always been absolutely powerless.

Just a scared, little, spineless kid in the corner crying for help because they can't help themselves.

"I gotta get going. Happy trails mate," Jasper spoke lowly, digging his hands into his pockets as he shuffled away, feeling his skin crawl with a sharp and familiar coldness as he skunk away into an alleyway and hunched over besides a skip as he cooked and shot up his gram and a half of heroin and gram of ketamine before ambling out of the alleyway once he'd thrown away his needle because it was too blunt to use again, his pupils smaller than pinheads as his head lolled lazily as he grinned sloppily, his heavy eyelids beginning to curtain. 

He rubbed the side of his cold face as his head lolled, nails peeling off the scabs on his face as his heart beat became fainter and fainter, his scattered mind fogging as he staggered aimlessly through the city, vision blurring and black dots swimming across his unfocused view of shop lights and passing people.

His lips darkened to a blue tint and his skin became a drained ghoulish tone as his half closed eyes rolled back and forth in his head, exposing the whites then having his pinhead pupils catch a brief glimpse of the spiralling street before they disappeared again, he felt a sudden burning in the back of his throat and he collapsed to his knees as vomit projected from his parched throat till only stringy jaundice bile mixed with thick blotches of dark red blood spewed out in revolting chunks.

He stood up, wiping his stained chin of bile and blood as sweat continued to pour from all his pores, his body began to shake and convulse manically, his eyes rolling back and mouth beginning to froth as he staggered away from his emptied stomach contents, the muscles in his heart locking up as he felt a crushing yet detached pain in his stiffened chest.

He was too high to notice his skinny legs buckling, the cracked concrete of the pavement rushing upward to greet his face and breaking his nose in a massive burst of blood, too high to notice the people shaking him and trying to try and wake him up, too high to notice the ambulance sirens and too high to notice the paramedics whisking him away to a hospital as they shoved an IV drip into his neck after seeing all other veins were unusable and desperate to stabilise him despite the fact that if the IV needle broke off into his bloodstream the needle would go to his heart and tear it to shreds in less than a minute.

He was too high to notice as doctors fretted over him, speaking about seizures, dehydration and overdoses.

(Sorry if that ending seemed a little rushed but I wanted to update this story as soon as possible, plus I guess the lack of details show how Jasper was too off his head, hope the chapter was good! Oh and WacksterJackster I hope you appreciate all the inside jokes in this 😂😂😂)