Short Story Essay, Research Paper

Chapter 1

Whatever thought had just crossed my mind floated away as the sweet drugs took hold. The room I was in was small but held four people excluding my self. I was sitting on a chair next to the door. At my right, to the left, across a slightly stained sooty stretch of carpet sat Brandon on some kind of blue futon. Brandon had a marlboro tucked between his lips and he grinned with a sense of warmth and contentment. He wore a stripped sweater and blue jeans. Out of the whole lot I liked him the best. HE always was optimistic and did not have the level of arrogance and spite that the average drugie holds dear to him more than life itself. Behind Brandon, on a rougheld bed lay two people I did not fully trust. One of the two, Alex, was a girl who had given her life to drugs. Just gazing into her eyes I could see that she had lost all the simple pleasures she should have had at her delicate age of 15. Alex was dressed in the fashion of the time. Tear-away pants and a foot ball jersey that couldn t hide the fullness of her breasts or the shapeliness of her body. A pair of Nikes completed the ensemble. Her shoulder length hair framed a very attractive face; composed of big brown eyes hardened by the things I could see she had been through. Her perfectly shaped face ending with a pouty smile. It was to bad she had lost herself. Her head rested lightly on the second person, Jame s, lap. James was one of the people we might call lucky . He had a personality where most people just couldn t help but like him. I didn t know how old he was and even if I found out I would probably forget. I have never been one to be blinded by age. He sat now with short blond hair, wore baggy jeans, and a T-shirt. James was good to have around only when he was relaxed. If he got agitated he would single out some poor bastard and criticize everything they did. I heard something and look toward the direction from which the sound had come. Beno, our host for the evening, sat at his chair in front of me. A blunt in his outstretched hand. I took it and drew a heavy hit. I held the smoke in my lounges for a few seconds, and I could feel the high increasing as I exhaled. The blunt would eventually make it around and I would get to hit it a few more times. I could sense Beno looking at me, so I drew my eyes up and met his gaze. Beno was to me a twisted person. He had the leadership tactics of a dictator. He was tolerated, but not liked by most people. This was his house however so I nodded and flashed him a smile as if to say good weed . Beno accepted my smile and flashed me one of the same. The first of the weed had been good. We had started with the bong, then loaded my glass with more and passed that along. Now we where passing along the blunt of schwag. It was a pretty hefty blunt rolled from cigar leaf, so it was sufficient to smoke. I wouldn t touch the cheap stuff unless it had been rolled. It was not necessary to smoke as much as we had, but tonight had been somewhat of a binge. I looked up and Beno was almost done with his second pass at the blunt, and soon it would be my turn again. We where all so stoned that the room was quieter than death. In the silence my brain began to play tricks on me and the walls began to spin and breath. Beno passed me the blunt and after I had smoked on it a bit, I passed it to Brandon and lit up a cigarette. The silence in the room was beginning to disturb me so I stood up to put a CD on. The second I was on my feet I could tell I was very stoned. My vision was suddenly hazed with a blizzard of red dots. Rational thought began to vanish and I said something about being fucked up . When I looked down I realized I was at the CD player, so I bent down and put in a CD with some good bass. I stumbled back to my chair and sat down. At this point all I wanted to do was sit and enjoy the high and the music. The people around me began to talk and I would half listen; talking sometimes, but I didn t care much for whatever they were talking about. Nothing came out right when you were that stoned. Another thing you shouldn t do when heavily under the influence of drugs was get depressed. If you did you d have a bad trip or high and besides, the point of drugs was not to be depressed. The rest of the night was wasted in a similar fashion and when 10:00pm rolled by I decided to go home; after all I had school tomorrow. I shook some hands, made a deal for Beno to get me a quarter of the highs tomorrow, and took my leave.

I live pretty close to Benos. Just over a hill and down a short street lies my house. We lived in a pretty small development where most everyone I knew at least smoked pot. We would all take turns going to each others houses to smoke pot, or whatever else was on the docket that day. The fun thing about where I lived was that you never had to smoke with the same people twice in the same week. You could always go to someone else s house and have a new experience, with new people. The pot was beginning to wear off and I was almost home. I didn t like my home much. My parents would often tell me how they were keeping my option open by putting me into charter schools and requiring me to spend half my free-time at home. I have always been one to go around and do things, not sit on my ass at home. So me and my parents would often disagree with my choices. I loved my parents. We just didn t get along. As I entered my house I could hear my family going about their lives. Judging from the clattering of pots and the smell of cooking vegetables my mother was busy cooking in the kitchen. I did not see or hear my father anywhere; this was no surprise. My dad would often go away on business and I would not see him for days or weeks at a time. Without talking to anyone, I made my way down to my room. If I stopped and talked to my mother, she would ask questions that I did not want to answer and so I avoided all conversation. The basement was my domain. Here I felt at home and here I was often left alone. Everything I cared about was here. My drum set was standing in the living room surrounded by my guitarists, Chris, equipment. Drums and music were my only true love. The only things that I had not given up on; the only things I was proud of. My room was somewhat separated from the rest of the basement, down a short hall and past the washing machine and dryer. My room was simple and small. Posters of the bands that had shaped my life, Tool, Alice in Chains, Dream Theater, ect., where taped up on the wall. A small bed with no frame was in one corner and my cloths where strewn about the floor. A big ugly orange couch that my neighbor was going to throw away was on the opposite side of the room. I bent down put in a CD and lay on my couch. This was a ritual for me. I would sit back and almost meditate as I let the music fill my soul and my thoughts. The effect was equal to that of minor drugs. When I was playing the effect was heightened to the point of my best highs. In my trance I could vaguely hear my two younger brothers in the rooms around me. I could hear the tapping of a keyboard as my brother Justin played video games, as well as the vague voices of the Television. My youngest brother Weston was watching TV. Time seemed to ceases and I floated away in my thoughts, slowly as the tracks passed by they numbed even my thought and I drifted off to a more comfortable place. Suddenly the silence was deafening and I opened my eyes with a start; the CD had ended and it was time for me to get up. I slowly stood, stretched and let out a groan. I felt more relaxed, more at peace. I looked at the phone and my thought began to shift to my girlfriend Amber. I had met her at a seminar that my parents had sent me to. The seminar had been about finding who you really were and loving all those around you. Really good stuff until they sent you back out and you had to deal with the real world again. The world has a way of frustrating your inner Buddha. We had been intimidated by each other at first. Quick glances across the room, smiles, casual flirting, but soon it had developed into something much more physical. She had shoulder length brown hair and penetrating green eyes that changed shades depending on her mood. She was attractive, intelligent, spoke her mind, and didn t suffer fools easily. She was almost perfect in that depressed, angsting, Hollywood kind of way. We said we loved each other but we knew we didn t, at least not in the true sense of the word. It was a much more immature needy kind of love. We needed each other to make each other feel good. I decided that I should give her a call. We hadn t talked today and we made it a point to talk at least once every 24hours. Calling each other so often kind of made the whole thing seem all that more real. After the phone rang a few times, a female answered. I responded with a hey baby . It turned out to be her sister so I was put on hold for a few minutes. When amber came to the phone our conversation started as it almost always did. We would talk about how our days had been, when I would get the car to go and see her, and other trivial items. Eventually Amber asked me if I had smoked any good weed that day. Drugs were not something I liked to talk to Amber about. I hated the fact that she did drugs. I hated the fact that she did drugs I thought were unacceptable even more. She did coke and sometimes she tweaked. Her drugs were the only thing that we ever fought about and I knew that if I started talking about my weed she d talk about her coke. Nothing good ever came out of my mouth when she started talking about coke. I guess I wanted her to be stronger than me. Knowing what the outcome would be, I charged into the conversation despite my better judgment. As I suspected, after I had talked for a few minutes she began to tell me about the high quality coke that she had scored that day at Scott s house. I didn t like Scott. Sure he was a good natured guy; he always had a smile on his face. Then again, I had never see the dude not drunk, and I had been at his house numerous times from anywhere between 10:00am to 1:00am the next day. That kid was always drunk. The fact that she had been doing coke again and been hanging out with alcoholic Scott put me in a bad mood. I told her that I was getting sick of her coke problem . I knew that by saying that golden word problem it would get her equally pissed off. So I was being a little manipulative. She was better at it that I was. She could get me in such a good mood that I d be strutting around like a rooster or she could put me in my place like so many papers on a desk. Soon after we d bitched at each other for a while we both gave up, made up, and I told her I steal my parents car late tomorrow and pay her a visit. This put both of us in a good mood, so we said our goodbyes. It was late so I bent down and put in some soothing music. My thoughts drifting back over the day I was consumed by the same feeling that has haunted me for years. The feeling that this day has been lived before and will be lived countless times again, the feeling that something lays untouched and untapped just over the horizon. Something so simple that thought itself makes it slip through your fingers. By track 4 I was dead asleep.

Chapter 2

Waking up in the morning was not something the people in my family did gracefully. I would usually get woken up at around 6:30Am, a full two hours before I had to be awake, by my mother and my brothers untiring bickering. My father was the peacekeeper, but he was always up and off to work by 5:30 in the morning, and without my fathers mediating we could fight over nothing. I couldn t fathom how he woke up at 5:30 and was still able to referee his more excitable wife and sons when he came home late that evening. Wondering what my siblings and mother were fighting about I heard the closing of car doors. I heard station wagon, containing my still audibly bickering family pull out of the driveway. I heard silence, and imagined the car shining like gold, reflecting the brilliant tint of the half risen sun. I saw them drive west toward the mountains, bathed in mist, and still cloaked in purple shadow this early in the morning. The tips of the flatirons catching the first rays of sun like the glowing fingers of some long dormant god buried far below the mountains. With such a serene picture imprinted in my mind I quickly slipped back into sleep.

Two hours later a righteous voice boomed into the room in which I slept. aw an angel of the lord, he came unto me and said give up your unrighteous ways, see the light, GIVE your soul to god and be saved . I turned to the angel bathed in its radiated glory and said . . Before the evangelist could enlighten me further I had turned off my radio alarm in the jerky way of sleep heavy arms, and had begun to stand up and stretch, the whole time cursing myself for not finding a better station to tune my alarm to. Shaking myself off I scanned the room for clothes that were clean enough to wear. After a little searching I had found a clean outfit. Unconsciously I gathered my daily pocket filler that I had scattered across the room the previous evening. With an almost empty pack of cigarettes, lighter, pager, wallet, and a 3 inch buck knife now in my pockets I walked out my room, past the laundry machine, through may basement, and out the back door to the backyard and lit my first cigarette of the day. Slowly smoking the cigarette I began to wake up and my stomach growled with morning hunger. When the cigarette had burned to ashes I went inside; quickly showered, and ate a hasty breakfast composed of cereal and coffee. When 9:15 came I exited my house the way I had entered the night before, lit a cigarette, and since it was Monday, awaited the arrival of Tony to take me to school. When my cigarette was half burned Tony s red truck pulled into my driveway. After stopping to throw my backpack into the bed of the truck I hoped into the cab. Tony was by far the oddest person in my circle of friends. Now he wore his ever-present Bronco s football hat, a Rage Against The machine shirt, and black jeans. Tony looked like a 12 year old who had taken hormone shots. He was average size for his age but he looked a lot younger. I was convinced he was obsessive compulsive. He had a certain way he would do everything. Elaborate rituals to eat cereal, go to the bathroom, and pass luck from one hat to another. The later ritual, among other things, involved placing the hats on his toilet overnight. Tony peculiarities earned him much ridicule from his friends and most other people wouldn t even talk to him. He was good to have around for amusement sometimes, and others, well, you just wanted to smack him around a bit. As soon as I was in and the door was closed we started to drive to pick up Chris. Taking the last drag of my cigarette, I flicked it out the window, trying to hit a passing motorist on the other side of the street. Turning to Tony I said, what s up? , smoke coming out of my mouth from the last drag of the cigarette. Not much he replied, My mom flipped out on my this morning. It sucked. Here load this for me. . Taking his glass piece and an almost depleted sack of buds from his outstretched hand I began to break apart to nugs into the bull of the pipe. What about? , I asked. Shit, how the hell should I know? She s crazy man. I got some G last night though. We should take a couple of caps later. . I had to agree with Tony. His mom was decidedly crazy, and we should take some G later. We spent the next 30 seconds in silence as I loaded the bull. Just as I had capped it off we had arrived at Chris s house. Go get him. Your sitting shotgun. I was sitting shotgun so it was my duty to walk to the door and get Chris. Shotgun always had this responsibility. Chris s house was older than mine but it was still nice. It was a ranch styled home with a two-car garage, with a nice lawn and garden. I got out of the car and walked the short path to his door. Chris, seeing me approach, met me at the door. Hold on a second He said, and retreated back into the house. Chris was my guitarist. He was an average built 17 year old with long blond hair to his shoulders, which had ounce ignited, much to the amusement of everyone present, by an errant lighter during a smoke session. His favorite color was black, and only a few months ago he practiced Satanism, wore makeup, and painted his fingernails black. Today however he no longer practiced Satanism and was quite an agreeable fellow. He even wore a white shirt today. Tony was waiving me back to the truck, so deciding not to wait for him in front of his house. I walked back to the truck and lit another cigarette. I always smoked a lot of cigarettes early in the morning; it helped me forget the soft bed I had left back at home. When I opened the door and sat down Tony was grinning at me with the pipe pressed to his mouth and a lighter hovered above lightly grazing the side of the bull. This helped make the weed taste better and last longer. Here, hit it he said, passing the pipe to me. Juggling my cigarette, and the pipe in my left hand I dug into my pockets with my right, searching for my lighter. After locating the lighter I lit the bull and drew on the pipe. The buds began to glow with a red light so I removed my flame and passed the pipe to Tony. Cherry I said. When the bull was around half cashed, Chris came out of his house and scrambled past me into the back seat. Come on guys. Not right in front of my house. He said, frowning at us. Whatever man. I replied taking another hit and passing the pipe back to him. With that we turned west and headed the same way that my family had gone earlier today; only now the mountains were awake with sun and the clouds had become a brilliant white. We traveled out of the suburbs and then headed north.

Passing the pipe to one another; Passing farms, where the fields were quickly being developed into seas of white and grey houses. We would always turn to look at the developing as it passed by. That is some sad shit Tony said, with a angry face. Yeah , I replied. And were a damn well part of it, I thought. When we had passed the crumbling rock towers that stood on the end of Lousiville, we headed west again, onto a small road surrounded by old houses and older trees.

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