20th December 2021, Monday
Morning

Icy rain drops flowed into one another as they trickled down the eroding scars between dull red bricks, the crumbling walls were damp and through the lonely hallways painted with graffiti a cold chill blew through, creating a solemn whistle not unlike a siren song.

The unforgiving sharpness of the biting rush of wintry air was not unwelcome by some of those who were awakened by it to realise last night's dose of their drug of choice had not been a fatal overdose.

Lying on the cold and hard concrete, broken pieces of tile and glass piercing his skin, one man in the far corner of a former operating theatre shuddered as the wind blew against the sore cracks in his dry lips, his eyelids peeled back to reveal a soulless pair of hazel eyes surrounded by pitch black shadows, his vision focused and he gripped his sides tighter, between his bony fingers his ribs jutted out clearly in the dim light where the fabric of his red jumper was torn, with his numbed hands and frostbitten fingers he dragged his knees closer to his bare chest to try and keep his frail and emaciated body from freezing to death.

His spirit wanted to leave yet for some unknown reason his failing body clung to his pathetic life.

The long abandoned skeleton of a hospital in which the junkies resided was situated under a grey sky which was raining small bullets of rain from near black clouds that blanketed the sky, around the derelict hospital were wasting piles of rubble and decaying council flats inhabited by human scum and filth who the rest of the world had turned their back on.

The man slowly reached down to his feet with a low groan, his aching bones cracking and lethargic veins stinging dully as he done so, he rubbed his feet which were clad in the raggedy fabric he'd torn off of his filthy jeans to use as makeshift socks once his toes had started to go numbed and turn purple and blue. He hadn't seen the skin of his feet in about three days and was terrified to look, he merely gave a feeble wiggle of his toes to confirm they were still attached, he'd shot up heroin and crystal meth into them enough times to expect gangrene to have made them start to rot.

The heavy folds of his baggy jeans encapsulated his scrawny legs, between the rips in the patchwork jeans his mottled purple and yellow bruises were exposed. He pulled his hands away from his swaddled feet and grimaced painfully, a weary sigh escaping his lips as he slowly rolled himself out his back.

His bloodshot eyes were half glazed over, unfocused and disengaged, dark eyelids were draped over his eyes like heavy curtains as he looked up to the ceiling-the ceiling was made of dull tiles, any paint long since peeled off, where tiles were missing wires hung limply with spiderwebs spun between them, blistering in the chilling breeze, hoards of dead and dying flies trapped within them.

He groped in his jean pockets for his quarter gram of double bagged crystal meth, the cracked skin of his blood encrusted fingertips brushed against the smooth surface of the plastic layers and a broad grin spread across his pinched face, his aching muscles immediately relaxing in bliss as he sighed in relief, his childlike excitement fuelling him to push himself up into a sitting position as if he was weightless, he held the bag above his lap as he eagerly fiddled with the bag, hands shaking, pulling out his crystallised happiness and crushing it between his rough fingers and then lifting it to his left nostril, pinning the other nostril shut with his right thumb as he snorted up his gram's worth of crystal meth.

The man threw his head back as the rush hit him, nose tickling, first a slight tingling sensation crawling up to his brain which went in a flash from buzzing to electrified all at once, a sloppy grin splitting his face as he groaned almost erotically, his heart began to thrash manically in his ribcage, his eyes rolling back into his skull and exposing their whites as he started shuddering in pure, limitless ecstasy.

Then his brain started to work at a million miles an hour, neurones blasting impulses as the grey colours of the walls began to vibrate intensely, as his body filled with boundless amounts of hyperactive and electric energy he hastily leaped to his feet, heart hammering wildly, the insane and unnerving grin still plastered to his gaunt face, his manic red eyes bulged out immensely from his pale and scabby face, with his greasy strands of thin brown hair that fell down to just past his shoulder blades thrashed about frenzied as he started jumping up at the spiderwebs, his loose red and frayed sleeves rolling down to the base of his arm, swiping them downs and causing their smooth silk to stick to his trembling fingers and arms as the carcasses of dead flies dropped onto the floor as well as his face and shoulders in a shower that refreshed his body, he blinked out a dying fly which was then trampled under his bony feet.

Once he was done obsessing over the hanging cobwebs, grinding his jaw and clawing at his itching nose, his skeletal figure rushed out of the deserted operating theatre and bounded down the dull grey concrete, the stretched fabric of his jumper flopping behind him and jeans flailing as he run exuberantly down the crumbling hallways, lanky legs barely able to carry his starved frame.

As he was about to pass a limp figure crumpled across soggy scraps of cardboard, a twiggy arm stretched out toward a crinkled piece of tinfoil, he stopped suddenly in his tracks, gaze fixated on the pale purple face framed by a greasy mop of black hair that had a stringy trail of yellow bile trickling out of his blue lips.

"Dean! Dean! It's Jasper! Get up and snort up!" Jasper yelled in the man's face, beads of sweat forming on his forehead as he crouched in front of the lifeless body, then he suddenly bolted upright, whipping his head back and holding the sides of his face, digging his nails into temples and thumb into his jaw as he screamed a woohoo from the energy, legs and arms quaking terrifically before buckling, he dropped to his gangly knees before collapsing across the body's chest in a crumpled heap, laughing hysterically as sweat rolled down in fat drops his forehead.

"Goddamning fuck this is incredible! I haven't done crystal in nearly two months! God!" Jasper exclaimed, pupils dilated, the twisted grin spreading wider and fully exposing his yellowing teeth, his cheeks dented with dimples, he screwed his eyes shut-wrinkling his face.

"Fuck!" he screamed, breathing so incredibly hard and fast, his husky voice booming down the hallways-ripping into the ears of the other homeless who were passed out besides empty bottles of vodka or dirty needles and empty plastic bags.

His eyes snapped open, he rolled over and pushed himself up so he was looking down to Dean's cold face, a drop of Jasper's sweat fell onto his cheek as Jasper began shaking a limp Dean by his shoulders and slapping him around the face to try and get him to wake up.

"Oh well, win some, lose some, right?" Jasper exclaimed through an outburst of laughter once he realised Dean was dead.

As a trickle of bright red blood began to flow from Jasper's numbed nose he pried the piss-stained shoes from Dean's cold feet which were swathed in pungently moulding winter socks, before pushing his own feet into them before falling into his back, giggling excitedly as he stared at up at the decaying ceiling, scratching obsessively at his face till his skin broke and blood seeped out.

"I am God, a God of death and gore and shit-I'm the God of Chaos, like Eris, but I'm superhuman, I'm an alien," Jasper muttered to himself, the giggling grin still stuck to his pasty face, before he began to ramble incoherently to himself.

Half an hour later, once the rush had faded to a light headed and tingling buzz of electric euphoria, Jasper sat up and began to painfully limp his way to the local hospital that was actually functioning as a hospital and not a makeshift homeless shelter, his body shaking, nose running and pupils massive like black holes hidden behind a plastic pair of large black sunglasses he'd kept in his trouser pocket.

It had been just over a month since he'd tried donating plasma, mainly because he'd started to develop nasty looking cellulitis on his neck and some abscesses on his hands due to mainlining with dirty needles for around four months. It had been two weeks since he mainlined, which had caused the swollen and inflamed skin to clear up.

His palms were clammy as the heavy pieces of bricks tied to his waist and ankles with yellow crime scene tape dug into his thin skin, bruising him, he walked into the hospital, quickly upturning his collars to cover the red and inflamed cellulitis and dark red scabs on his neck, standing out like a dirty sore thumb against the sterile and polished whiteness of the hospital as weary mothers pulled their exuberant children away from him, glaring at him with disdain.

He walked up to the receptionist, who told him to take a seat and wait for a nurse to take him to be weighed before he could donate plasma in exchange for £30.

"Long morning?" Jasper asked as a stumpy nurse with long red hair tied up in a frazzled bun and pale and plumped lips approached him, under her striking emerald eyes were dark purple bags of exhaustion, she'd been his nurse during his plasma donations for the most recent five times he'd donated.

"Yeah," the nurse sighed through a tired laugh, "the other Sophie in AE had to treat a guy who'd tried to kill himself by slashing his wrists, blood everywhere," she continued.

"Monday's suck."

"Oh I know the other Sophie-tall with a blonde bob, right?" Jasper asked as they walked down the hallway, side by side.

"That's the one, tall and sassy-I'm the short and sassy one," the nurse giggled as she took a turn down a hallway, Jasper followed behind her with anticipation.

"What's with the shades?" Sophie asked.

"Oh, I've been told my eyes are light sensitive so I should wear my sunglasses to protect them from UV light," Jasper explained cheerily, almost high enough to believe his own lie as Sophie pushed open a white door to a small and square room which had a desk and a computer in one corner and a scale in another.

"Step on the scale for me," Sophie instructed softly, Jasper grimaced, his shrivelled heart pounding in his chest as he gingerly placed the bottom of his right shoe on the scale, as if it was a land mine.

"And the other one."

"One hundred and eight pounds...you're twenty five pounds underweight, Jasper," Sophie spoke, her brow creasing in concern as she ran her tongue across her crimson coated plump lips to wet them, as she done so pieces of bricks tied to yellow crime scene tape fell loose from Jasper's layers of clothing and crumbled to the floor.

She gasped as the scale shot down to read ninety seven pounds.

"Oh my fucking God!" she screamed, blood running cold, horrified as her eyes bulged and jaw dropped, immediately she put her hands to her cheeks to try and recuperate herself.

"Thirty six pounds underweight...how is that even possible?" Sophie whispered to herself as she looked at the bony eye who's eye sockets and cheekbone protruded blatantly, casting deep shadows on his colourless face.

"I didn't run over any gypsy ladies and get cursed by their fathers," Jasper joked lightly, sniggering awkwardly as he fumbled with his skinny fingers.

"What?" Sophie asked quietly, still in shock, her eyes wide as she stared at the scale in total disbelief.

"Never mind," Jasper mumbled, the nurse blinked and rubbed her forehead.

"Have you tried the charity shop-for buying shoes?" the nurse asked, her gaze falling to Jasper's feet which were swaddled in tattered leather shoes.

"I'm not allowed in there..." Jasper mumbled, his head dropped low, casting black shadows to cover where his sunken in eyes rested.

"I tried to take a scarf from them," he explained, shame lining his dejected voice.

"Can I take a look at your feet?"

Jasper nodded, placing himself onto the plastic seat of the blue chair beside the scale.

Maybe they'd find out he had gangrene and would put him on dilaudid or morphine and he could get high for free.

The nurse searched through the drawers above a metal sink and pulled out a pair of surgical gloves before returning to Jasper, crouching beside him and waiting with a forced smile as he pulled off his pungent shoes, carefully placing them on the floor.

He grimaced as he started to slowly unwrap his makeshift socks, picking away at the strands as he unraveled the layers to reveal his feet, his curled up toes were slightly swollen and red and his feet were speckled in dirt, he averted his gaze as Sophie touched his feet, holding them gently as she examined them carefully.

"It's...it's actually not that bad, Jasper," Sophie stated, a faintly hopeful smile on her face as she looked at the deeply wrinkled soles of his thick skinned feet, the balls of his feet were blanketed in yellow blisters, his toenails were in good condition-albeit encrusted in dirt, which she chipped away.

"You've got some bad blisters and mild case of trench foot-but it's nowhere near as bad as it could be."

"This is nothing short of a miracle, really," Sophie spoke.

"I'll have to break and drain your blisters and put some talcum powder and plasters on your feet, I can get you some shoes and shoes from lost property too...I think there's a pair that's about to be thrown out, been there for about six months and nobody has claimed them, I can get you those after we sort out your feet," Sophie explained cheerily.

"But Jasper," she stated, her voice dropping an octave to a low yet sympathetic whisper, "I know you're injecting drugs, I saw the marks on your feet, you won't be allegeable to donate plasma for quite some time now," Sophie continued, looking at a lowly Jasper with extreme worry, brows puckering.

"Please, just stop using, it's not a life worth living. It's not a life at all."

"I can stop when I want," Jasper replied with a dismissive gruff, his harsh voice cold against her warm sympathy.

Sophie left to collect the shoes and socks from lost property, when she returned with them, a pair of dull white trainers, greyed over time, and a thick pair of raggedy brown winter socks, she washed his feet in lukewarm water before drying them and applying talcum powder, causing Jasper to wince, she then used needles to break Jasper's blisters and drained them before plastering and then bandaging them.

"Okay, all over, you can put the new shoes and socks on now, see if they fit," Sophie said monotonously.

Jasper put them on, mumbling a quick conformation that they fitted before muttering an abrupt thank you, as he was about to slink out Sophie pushed a leaflet about drug addiction into his hand, he accepted it with a roll of his eyes before leaving, throwing the leaflet into the bin right outside the door.

Jasper left the hospital, meandering down the streets as he pulled out a half empty and battered cigarette pack from his trouser packet, sliding out a slightly crooked cigarette and putting it in his mouth as he searched his pockets for his lighter, leaning against a dull red brick wall and trying to ignore the stinging pains in his stomach.

"Hey, mate."

"Hey," Jasper replied wearily, looking up from the cigarette hanging from his lips to see a bug eyed and freckle faced teenaged boy with fashionably disheveled peroxide blonde hair clothed in a baggy black shirt on top of a long sleeved white shirt, coupled with a baggy pair of black cargo trousers and well polished combat boots.

A smell of cheap aftershave and sweat emanated from his scrawny frame.

"How you doing?" the boy questioned, a small and nervous smile tugging at the corners of his plump and dark lips.

"What do you want?" Jasper huffed sardonically, pulling his unlit cigarette from his lip and holding it by his side between his cracked and scabby fingers.

"Do you know where the buy stuff? The good stuff?" the boy inquired, his voice dropping to a whisper as he watched Jasper with darting azure blue eyes.

"Charity shop is down the road and take a left, it's got good stuff," Jasper answered dryly, blatantly knowing what he meant by 'good stuff', the boy laughed anxiously.

"No, drugs, do y'know where to buy them?" the boy hushed.

"Maybe I do, maybe I don't-what kind?" Jasper questioned, taking out his cigarette pack and putting his cigarette back inside it, he held his cigarette pack by his side.

"Smack, ice, ket or crack."

Christ, this kid is no older than sixteen. What the hell kind of sixteen year old tries to score those drugs?

...well I did when I was sixteen. But all I could score was fucking overpriced shitty weed.

"I think some cash would help my memory," Jasper spoke in a low and slow drawl, his face stony and voice flat as the boy's face lit up in a broad smile. 

"How much?" the boy inquired.

"£50."

"Fuck off!" the boy exclaimed, his scruffy eyebrows launching upward in surprise as he scoffed in disbelief.

"£40 and I'll tell you then," Jasper said dryly, putting his cigarette pack back into his jean pocket.

"Okay," the young man replied with a begrudging sigh, digging his hands into his jacket pockets and pulling out two crumpled £20 notes tied together with a red elastic band, Jasper outstretched his swollen red hand and clutched the notes, his protruding knuckles turning pure white.

"Now tell me where to score," the boy demanded, his eyes dark and stormy as a sourness washed over his features.

"Fuck off," Jasper spat, his lips sneaking into a measly smirk as he fixated on the crinkled bills with ravenous lust, a dark and demonic flash in his cold eyes.

"Hey, you owe me!"

"What, are you gonna go the police and say someone screwed you over when you tried to buy heroin? Are you gonna say I stole that money, because you just handed me it willingly-kid, fuck off, you don't wanna get on my bad side," Jasper spat in a challenging and assertive tone, glaring daggers into the boy.

Jasper's narrowed eyes and scowling face softened momentarily as he ran his tongue over his lips and observed the child with a look of mild concern, his eyebrows creasing.

"Just go home," he stated slowly, emphasising each word with a flat and hard tone, almost parental, a faint trace of urgency to his weary eyes and weathered face.

"Fuck you! I'm taking my money back!" the boy raged, spittle flying from his lips and landing in droplets on Jasper's jumper, as he suddenly became animated-throwing a quick and hard punch toward Jasper.

As his fist impacted, smashing harshly into Jasper's delicate collarbone and immediately causing excruciating pain to shoot through Jasper's damaged nerves, Jasper swept his left foot forward, his emaciated calf knocking the boy off balance and sending him crashing to the floor.

As Jasper put his hand to where his collarbone ached horrifically, the crystal meth barely helping to numb the pain, clutching a scratchy handful of fraying fabric, gritting his teeth in a twisted snarl and wincing, he pulled a swell of saliva into the front of his mouth and then spat out a dry huff onto the grey and cracking pavement in front of the boy.

"Go home," Jasper snarled bitterly, his vision misty with painful tears as he weakly rubbed at his collarbone in a feeble attempt to soothe it, he then shuffled around and started to drag his feet along to one of his dealers, who was staying at a local motel due to police watching his house for suspicious activity.

Jasper stood awkwardly in front of a wooden motel door, fingering the money and loose change in his pocket, an acrid smell of burning and smoke hung in the stale air, leaning against the motel door to his left was a prostitute cloaked in a thick leopard skin coat under black lacy underwear, holding a cigarette with long fingers topped with zebra striped acrylic nails, she swished mouthwash in her mouth as she tossed a used condom to the floor by her nine inch heels.

A mulatto man in his mid thirties with wide set and bright hazel eyes, the greying black afro hair on his head shaved at the sides, deep stress lines etched onto his forehead and a well toned body cloaked in the darkness of the room opened the door Jasper had been knocking on.

"Oh hey J," Hayden said warmly, unchaining his motel room door and letting Jasper inside his dark room-all it contained was one single bed with old and stained flowery duvet covers and a small desk with drawers underneath besides that, which had a lit lamp which shone onto a grey safe, burnt tinfoil and a smouldering ashtray.

"Hi, Hayden," Jasper answered, his voice a mumbled slur, taking off his sunglasses to reveal his blown pupils as he sat on the corner of the bed, the acrid smell of ashes sticking to its covers.

"What'd you need?" Hayden asked as he closed his motel door, slotting the chain back into place to lock the door.

"A gram of H, China white if you can," Jasper said politely, his dry voice raspy from a parched throat, smiling patiently as he picked at the strands of fabric on the bottom of his baggy jumper.

"I can do better than that, I got some really pure shit direct from source-ninety seven percent pure," Hayden said, a broad grin splitting his face

"What's the price?" Jasper asked, swinging his legs and letting the bounce back against the end of the bed.

"Fifty, and even that's a reduced price for a loyal customer," Hayden said, raising an eyebrow as his lips curled upward into a smile.

"Forty five," Jasper said with a playful smirk.

"C'mon, don't push it J," Hayden stated firmly, the friendly smile weakening.

"Alright, sorry, I got the money right here," Jasper said, pulling out the wad of cash he'd got from the boy and handing it to Hayden before dropping a crumpled five pound note, four rusty one pound coins and two washed out silver fifty pence coins into Hayden's calloused hands, who then pocketed it into his brown leather wallet.

"I gotta shoot it up here again, I got friends who'd kill for this. Literally," Jasper said with an exasperated chuckled, rubbing the back of his cellulitis covered neck.

"Have you got a spoon and water too? I got the cotton," Jasper asked, pulling out a disintegrating wad of cotton which had grains of dirt caught up in its wisps.

"Yeah I'll get them, you need a needle too?" Hayden asked as he searched through his desk drawers, Jasper's brow was furrowed as he picked through his cotton wad to clean it-he hadn't injected anything for a week due to collapsed veins in his arms and legs and feet and hands and, whether they had recovered in the slightest or not, he needed that rush again.

Hopefully his veins would collapse, his blood would stop circulating, his heart would stop beating and finally he'd stop living.

Death was the only light he could see in his endlessly black tunnel.

He felt as if he was stuck at the bottom of a decaying well, blind in the dark, clawing at slippery walls till his fingers bled, desperate to escape yet he had been long forgotten and abandoned by everyone who's ever loved him. He saw drugs as throwing him down a rickety ladder, an escape from his self imposed hell which drugs had let him sink into in the first place, letting him escape the darkness with death.

"Yeah, you got one?" Jasper asked, looking over his shoulder to Hayden who was stooped over his desk, shifting through the drawer's contents, when he pulled out a plastic bagged gram of pure, powdered China white heroin Jasper's eyes bulged and he grinned ear to ear as Hayden handed him the gram of bagged bliss.

"Yeah...it's a little blunt," Hayden said, mumbling the last part of the sentence as he pulled out a black case, unzipping it and procuring a rusty needle from within it, Jasper's expression sobered.

Jasper knew what that meant. The needle had been used so many times by so many different people that it had become blunt. He was beyond caring.

He'd long ago learnt the hierarchy of junkies. There was the lowest level-the ones who smoked, the least dangerous way. The second level-the ones who snorted. The third level-the ones who injected with fresh needles. The forth level-the ones who injected with the same needle over and over till they physically couldn't. The final level-the one who injected in any way they could, anywhere they could. The ones who didn't give a fuck about catching HIV or hepatitis or tetanus or endocarditis or the plethora of fatal diseases caused by shooting.

"That's fine."

(I hope you guys liked this chapter, it's quite long I know and I don't plan to make all chapters this long but I had to get things set up and established in this, did any of you get that Stephen King Thinner reference Jasper made at the hospital? That is a good movie, I've never read the book though. I've read Misery and Hearts in Atlantis, I liked those. I'll ease up the descriptive detail of Jasper too-I just wanted to emphasis how much of mess he is to start with. Oh and when Jasper called himself Eris, Eris is the Greek Goddess of Chaos, Strife and Discord. Pretty cool shit honestly lol.

Anyway, as you can all probably tell, this isn't going to be a particularly happy story. It's the last instalment in a four parts series I've been working on, I'm not too sure why I started at the end but I was actually going to start on the third part but I thought that was too weird. I LOVE writing dark shit and this end instalment is the possibly darkest of the four part series. I've gotten the next twenty one chapters drafted and in various levels of completion, which takes the story up to late March 2022, but this story'll span one year and two months, till February 2023.

This stuff is kinda based on my life/personal experiences. Premises are similar but names, dates, locations and appearances are changed drastically-so there's quite a bit of imagination at work too. But things very similar to this did happen to me and it happens to a lot of people-whether it's street drug, alcohol, pill addiction, it happens.

Why is it set five years in the future? I dunno. It just is. I'm writing this to show what addiction can and does do to people, but also to show how people are much more than their addiction. People are people, not their addictions.

If you take away only one thing from this story take away this message: Drugs don't make you happy. They never will. They just fill a void. Then you become that void.

And don't think you have to be like Jasper-living in an abandoned hospital full of other addicts with rotten feet, collapsed veins, horrific cellulitis and severe muscle atrophy and nerve damage-before addiction is a problem. You could even be living a really nice life in a really nice place BUT if you are constantly thinking about getting high, or you ONLY hang out with people because of their drug connections, then you're addicted. You don't have to let it get to point as bad as Jasper's before it is an addiction.

Oh and btw I'm not a doctor, I just happen to know a lot about medical abnormalities because they are really interesting to me. I know I'm weird lol, and I don't study Greek Mythology either-I just remember the cool stuff from when I looked at Greek Mythology for school.

Before I forget to stop rambling remember to vote, comment and follow if you like the story! If you have any criticisms please let me know, I want to improve as a writer :) thanks!)