Everything to Nothing (34 page)

Spotting her
jeans on the other side of the room where Peter had thrown them,
she strode across to them and pulled her belt from the loops. She
slid down the living room wall so her back was resting against it.
Quickly she tightened the belt around her upper arm and slapped the
skin on her arm.

Due to Peter
doing it for her last night, she was not exactly sure what she was
doing, but as she slapped she saw a blue blood vessel slowly
protrude from her arm. Guessing this was the correct place, she
laid the syringe against her arm as Peter had done the previous
night and slid the needle into the vein. Pausing for a moment, she
studied the needle sticking out of her arm and she nearly did not
press the plunger. Then she got another sharp stomach cramp and
felt her skin still itching. So she pressed the plunger down, the
liquid shooting into her vein, into her body. Quickly the opiate
raced through her blood, crashing into her brain which released the
euphoric feeling into her body.

Her skin
increased in warmth and her body felt weighed down so it was no
surprise when she stopped leaning against the wall and her upper
body slumped to the floor. As her breathing deepened, through the
euphoric mist, she noticed that the cramps had gone, and
marvellously the itching had stopped. She descended into a
semi-conscious state and was only half aware when Peter came into
the room and shook her shoulder.

‘You okay?’

‘Oh God Peter,
that is the best feeling in the world.’ She closed her eyes again
and then quickly opened them again. ‘You should try some. Have some
with me, please.’

‘No Sarah, I’m
not going to. You enjoy yourself though; have as much as you
want.’

‘Okay, I
will.’

With that she
closed her eyes again and Peter returned to the settee and turned
on the television, simply ignoring Sarah as she was lost to her
drug induced ecstasy. After about half an hour he watched her
slowly push herself up into a sitting position. He noticed that her
recovery time was already shorter than last night and was
astonished about how quickly she had become addicted and how
quickly her tolerance seemed to be growing. He also thought that if
this was how quickly people became addicted to the drug then he was
going to make a lot of money selling it on the streets.

As he
considered this, he thought that he was treating Sarah a little
like a ‘guinea pig’. He was interested in the effects of the drug
and while he considered this some more he decided he would carry on
giving the drug to Sarah to satisfy his own professional curiosity.
Since she was rarely or possibly not all, going to be able to pay
for it with sex, then he would use her like a scientist would use a
rat: for his own experimentation. His final thought on this issue
was that it was a perfect idea.

Slowly he
watched her become more aware of her surroundings. While she was
coming round he had discreetly placed another syringe in her line
of vision and waited expectantly to see her reaction. He was quite
disappointed when she came over to him, ignoring the syringe, and
sat down next to him on the settee. She placed and arm around him,
and her head on one of his shoulders.

‘There’s some
more if you want it.’

‘I know. I’ll
have some later if that’s okay?’

‘Of course it
is. Do you feel up to some sex yet?’

‘No, I don’t.
Not at all.’

When she said
this he turned back to the television and was only aware of her
when she leant back into the settee. After an hour or so she stood
up to use the downstairs toilet and when she returned she slumped
against the wall again. Peter watched her as she fastened the belt
around her arm again and quickly injected the drug. Again, she
slumped to the floor and Peter returned his vision back to the
television. This process was repeated until the early hours until
he had had enough and went upstairs to his bed, alone. Sarah stayed
up throughout the night, regularly taking the heroin, not needing
or wanting to sleep.

When Peter
returned to the living room in the late morning he found her in
exactly the same place, slumped on the floor with a handful of
syringes around her. He walked over, checked she was still
breathing, which she was, and he noticed that there were no
syringes with heroin in them left for her to use in the living
room. He presumed that she would be asleep and was surprised that
when he gently shook her shoulder her eyes opened instantly.

‘Morning. Have
a good night?’ She nodded. ‘I need to go out. Do you want me to
drop you off?’ She nodded again. ‘Have you slept?’ She shook her
head slowly this time. ‘You should.’

‘I didn’t want
to. I wasn’t tired. Can I see you tonight?’

‘No. I’m busy
tonight.’

‘When
then?’

‘I don’t know.
Can I call you?’ She nodded. ‘Come on then, I need to go.’ He flung
one of her arms around his shoulders and helped her to stand. Then
he realised she was still naked. ‘Can you dress?’

She muttered a
yes and the first thing she did was release the belt that was still
fastened around her arm. Sarah then tried to pull on her jeans but
she ended up falling over twice before Peter intervened and helped
dress her.

Leaning heavily
on him, he led her out to the car and drove her quickly home. She
mumbled a thank you to him, fell out of the car, and then stumbled
her way to the door of her house. He watched her fumble for her
house keys, which she eventually found, open the door and staggered
into the house closing the door behind her.

Peter shook his
head and muttered, ‘Fucking druggie!’ He drove quickly away from
her house not giving her another thought.

*

Sarah managed
to stagger her way into the living room where her confused mind
slowly registered that her mum was actually eating food which was a
highly rare occurrence. She struggled to think of what could have
happened that would allow her mum to be able to afford food instead
of alcohol and slowly her mind remembered that it must be benefits
day.

Even though she
had not eaten for over twenty-four hours, she did not feel hungry
nor did she feel tired. So she slumped down into an armchair,
without her mum even acknowledging her, and watched some
television. Slowly her mind noticed that the red light, which meant
there was a message waiting, was flashing on the phone situated on
the table next to the chair. She leaned forward to play the message
but it was a few moments before she could remember the correct
button to press. Again, slowly it came back to her and she pressed
play.

“Hello. This is
a message for Sarah. It is Claire Wood from college, your English
tutor. I’m rather concerned that you have not been present in your
two examinations that have occurred in the last two days. I was
wondering whether you could give me a call as a matter of urgency
so we can discuss the situation. Thank you.”

Sarah leaned
back and sunk into the armchair again, not giving the message
another thought and she was certainly not contemplating calling her
tutor. For a few hours she sat without moving watching the
television until she got a sharp cramp in her stomach that made her
double up in pain. The cramps came and went for the rest of the
afternoon, and then, slowly but surely, the itching started
again.

Chapter 25

After she had
spent a couple of hours watching television, Sarah had gone to bed
in the vain hope that sleep would help her hide away from the
cramps and the incessant itching. But the sleep never came.
Instead, she lay on her bed staring at the ceiling, desperately
trying to ignore the feeling of her skin, but occasionally,
subconsciously, she vigorously scratched her arm with her long
nails. She scratched so hard that at one point she drew blood, and
at other times she broke a couple of her perfectly manicured nails.
As she contemplated the broken nails, she bit them off and spat
them out onto her bed.

She remained
like this for a few hours, closing her eyes now and then; desperate
for sleep to descend upon her, but again it did not. Once or twice
during these hours she made a dash for the toilet and spent some
time knelt before it until the waves of nausea abated, although she
never actually vomited. After one more run to the toilet she stayed
off her bed and rooted through her handbag for her mobile. The
battery was dead and she cursed because she was hoping that Peter
would have called her.

So Sarah
plugged the charger into the phone and, after a few moments wait,
turned on the phone. As it switched on she stared expectantly at
the screen and was disappointed that no missed calls messages
appeared and no text messages either. So she decided to call Peter
and see if she could see him that night.

*

After Peter had
dropped Sarah off at her house he had made his way back home and
had a relaxing day and afternoon watching television and playing
some computer games. Early in the evening he had started to prepare
for his night’s trade and he was looking forward to earning some
good cash by dealing his usual supply of Ecstasy and Cocaine, but
also hopefully selling some of the Heroin. He loaded one of the
suitcases with the drugs and carried this out to his car where he
placed the suitcase securely in the boot. It was earlier than he
usually set out, but he was eager and excited to start that night
so he drove into town to start dealing, going via the garage to
park his car.

As he walked
from the garage into the town centre, his mobile rang and he looked
at the screen. On seeing it was Sarah he rejected her call and went
into the first of many bars he would attend that night. At first he
was disappointed. His usual clientele did not seem interested in
the Heroin; they all just stuck with their usual orders. Yet in
another bar, one customer bought a prepared syringe from him and
disappeared into the toilets and staggered out some time later and
gave a thumbs-up to his friends who promptly approached Peter to
purchase some of the H.

Very quickly he
had sold all the prepared syringes, so he rooted through the
specially extended pockets of his pants and started to sell the
Heroin loose. So desperate were some of the people for a hit, they
used the syringes that had been used by their friends, clearly
oblivious, or they just simply did not care, about the chance of
passing diseases to each other.

All the time he
was in this bar, Peter was trying to be discrete, but his customers
were far from being discrete. They were openly passing the syringes
around right in front of the bar staff and some of them were even
cutting down the heroin on a table. When one of the drug users went
to a nearby store and came back into the bar with a roll of tin
foil presumably so he could chasing the dragon, Peter quickly
realised that it was getting far too hot for him in the bar so he
quickly left.

As he walked
down to the other side of town, as far as possible from the bar, he
could not believe how brazen and uncaring the users were, openly
sharing syringes and cutting the drug up on the tables. As he
walked he felt his phone vibrate and he got it from his inside
jacket pocket. On noticing it was Sarah, he again rejected her call
and carried on walking to the next bar again not giving her another
thought.

*

It was the
fifth time that she had tried to call him and it was the fifth time
her call got through to his answer phone. She had left a message
and hoped that he would call her back but he never did. As it
approached midnight the cramps, nausea and the itching were the
worst they had ever been. Sarah could barely think straight, all
her thoughts were consumed by the nausea, cramps and worst of all
the incessant, never ending itching. She scratched and scratched
and scratched but the itches did not fade away. Her arms were red,
bright red and bleeding where the skin had been broken.

Slumping onto
her bed, she tried to gather her thoughts and her thoughts all led
to the same conclusion – she had to see Peter, she had to have some
more drugs. Slowly deciding on a course of action, Sarah quickly
threw some clothes on and grabbed a jacket for the walk to Peter’s
house. After descending the stairs, she somehow remembered to look
in on her mum who was still sat in the chair, passed out with a
bottle of something in her hand.

She spotted her
mum’s purse on the table and with optimism rooted through it hoping
to find some cash so she could perhaps order a taxi to Peter’s
house. All she could find though was about fifty pence in change
which she quickly placed into the pocket of her jeans. While
cursing her mum for not having any money, she fastened up her
jacket then left her house and started the long walk to Peter’s
house.

*

While Sarah was
beginning her long walk, Peter was also walking back to his car to
place his earnings in his suitcase. He had sold up. All the drugs
he had brought with him from his house had been sold so quickly he
was shocked. He was tempted to return home and get some more, but
he looked at the pile of cash that he accumulated and decided to
instead peel some notes off the pile and go and have a good time
and see if he could get lucky with a lady.

As he walked
into a bar he was quickly approached by people wanting a drug but
Peter stated he was sold out for tonight. He noted the look of
disappointment on their faces and he made a mental note to bring
more drugs out with him next time so he could of course make more
money. When he approached the bar he noticed a blonde on the other
side of the bar and he was happy when she turned around and he
recognised her. Just like Sarah, she was getting quite a good
reputation recently for being easy and Peter was also pleased to
note that she seemed to be quite drunk already. So he ordered
himself a beer and then walked round to her and whispered a joke
into her ear. She burst out laughing and as confidently and as easy
as that he had her attention.