The Many Forms of I

Heroin

Hey guys, so this is pretty short this time!

Human beings always choose what is worst for them.

It was what had been running through my mind as I walked, bundled up, down Sixth Street.

It was what had killed my Uncle Tom. He had been the perfect policeman, always inspiring others. Then he had died of an overdose of heroin.

Evil always pops up where you least expect it, I thought unhappily. Uncle Tom had been a paragon. It must have been one of those no-good kids perpetually hanging around him, who had started him on the evil habit.

My phone rang, a cheery Christmas jingle, jolting me out of my gloomy thoughts.

“Hey, darling.” It was my boyfriend Mike. “You up for dinner at Maud’s tonight?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“See you.” He hung up.

I trotted over to Fifth Avenue and stopped in front of Maud’s Diner, known for its beef goulash that could knock a strongman flat on his back. Before I entered, I paused and looked up at the stars.

I’m sorry, Papa, I said to myself quietly. My father had been an officer at the Narcotics Bureau. He had died of grief soon after Uncle Tom died. He had blamed himself for not recognising the signs of drug abuse – the haunted expression, the shaking of his fingers when he picked up his coffee cup, the eyes that had flickered and eventually gone out.

Mike was waiting for me in one of the booths by the window. He smiled at me and kissed my forehead. We talked for a moment or two, carefully avoiding the sensitive topic of his job. The date had gone on for barely a minute, and already I felt a vague sense of impatience. Mike noticed my agitation, and put an arm around me.

“Hungry, huh?” he cooed. I nodded, trying to hide my discomfort. It was not food I wanted.

Human beings always choose what is worst for them. For some reason, the sentence kept running through my mine.

Mike gave me a knowing smile, and ordered a salad and hamburger. I tried my best to refrain from reminding him, yet again, that I hated hamburgers. He never listened anyway.

There was silence for a moment, while we ate our food, then Mike spoke. “Have you been thinking about your Uncle Tom recently?”

My widened eyes said everything – shock that he dared to bring up what was an insanely sensitive topic for me, and bitterness at how he flippantly threw the words out as if Tom’s death hardly mattered. Seeing my expression, he laughed coarsely and told me a joke – which I had already heard before – about his colleague “making the rounds” and losing the “goods” to an old homeless beggar.

Suddenly, it occurred to me that Mike had to be the most mundane, boring person I had ever met. I shifted, eager to leave the stuffy diner, eager to go home and sleep, eager to leave Mike’s overbearing presence.

As if sensing my restlessness, Mike dropped a packet with the familiar white label into my fingers, his hand hovering tautly over them – and for a moment, I was reminded of the claws of an eagle. Guilty exhilaration flooded through me, and I coloured furiously.

Human beings always choose what is worst for them…

When I was done, I cleaned up the leftover white powder from the seat, and tore the label into little pieces, separating the letters carefully, so that no one could discover the original word. Then I dropped them onto the floor, and kicked them under the seat.

Later, when the old cleaner swept under the seat by the window, he wondered hazily why there were little pieces of paper lying placidly on the floor. He picked them up. An ‘H’, an ‘E’, an ‘R’ – and an ‘I’, ‘O’ and ‘N’.

Shaking his head, he wondered what the words spelt. Then he tossed them into the dustbin.

This is less supernatural than the others, so yeah...