Welcome to the Between: Chapter 5

This is the fifth installment of eight in an anthology series, all taking place in the fictitious Between. Read Chapter 1, here. Read Chapter 2, here. Read Chapter 3, here. Read Chapter 4, here. Read Chapter 6, here.

The Addict

It was never about the drug of choice.

Michael never really gave it much thought in life.

He didn’t turn down free drugs. Didn’t matter what they were.

At least they’d make him feel something.

Even now, he still remembers mornings waking up in gutters, nights shaking on the floor after mixing too many uppers and low-dose downers, and the days he simply doesn’t remember, the ones that he’s only been told about.

His life is a mosaic in ruin in his memory.

Whole years where flashing images of life being lived should fill the screen are instead represented by a speedily and poorly-written title card that reads, “Scene Missing”.

In his mind, that’s always been a small mercy life afforded him. From the little he does remember, he’d rather never have to think clearly about the rest.

There are no drugs in the Between.

Even if there were, he’s not human anymore. Who knows if they’d even affect him.

Mike had painstakingly figured this out before he’d even questioned where he was.

See, drugs induce euphoria. Euphoria doesn’t belong here.

Now, you may think: Good, he’ll at least get cleaned out.

But that’s a gross misunderstanding of how the addict brain works.

It doesn’t matter what the drug of choice is; it doesn’t have to be anything illicit.

He just needs something he can use that makes him feel better. He craves something that for a second stops the thought of being alone in the entirety of the universe or — worse — being its only defective part.

And the Between is lousy with people with that problem.

Again, it didn’t take Mike’s brain long to realize the alarmingly-excessive supply for his demand that he had on hand now.

Since that moment, Mike has slept with nearly every woman — or really, person in general —- besides Jack, June, Sarah, Alex and Temperance. Sex is the only thing that’s still the same here.

Not making love, not emotional connection — if that’s what you were picturing.

There are no candlelight scenes with a record playing off in the background as someone gently lays their lover down.

No, people just fuck here.

They fuck and move on — barely even breathing before their post-orgasm clarity reminds them they’re dead and love doesn’t really matter anymore and they’re dressed and out the door.

For a time, Mike was okay with it.

It wasn’t that forced, simulated happiness he could draw up on demand for a price that he’d always known and loved.

But it was something.

It still made him feel something.

Until it didn’t.

And it still doesn’t anymore.

He still goes through the motions sometimes, though. It’s easy in the Between.

There is no dating. There is no marriage, unless someone wants there to be something like it. No one is here building families and worrying about getting kids to the bus on time in the morning or buying flowers on the way home “just because” for their significant other.

No one in the Between has to really be significant to each other anymore.

It’s like everyone in the Between are addicts, just like Mike, using each other for synthetic satisfaction that kisses the border of euphoria — never caring that anything they choose to use for such a purpose is itself burned up and consumed in the process.

While life had the decency to take people like Mike out when they were used up, the Between will just chuckle and keep pushing them forward — their needle so far below “empty” that it’s broken off and lies somewhere precariously balanced above the wheel.

Mike’s got nothing left. He was running out after the first 100 people. He was burned up by the first 1,000.

He doesn’t even remember the number now.

He doesn’t really even talk to them anymore in the process.

They don’t really talk to him either, beyond the initial question that starts the whole desperate dance of two dead things trying to feel alive again — and failing.

But he’s not going to do it anymore.

He doesn’t know how long it’s been, but he hasn’t shared a bed with a stranger or anyone for a little bit now.

He’s starting to remember more of his life.

Not just the using, but the moments that mattered: How his father used to sit with him in the mornings and go through lessons of Hooked on Phonics so his boy wouldn’t struggle in school; bike rides to the local mall with friends back in the days when their only real concern was being home by the time the streetlight came on; and he remembers the happy years he shared in his old home with his parents and brothers before the call of the drug world ripped them all apart from each other.

He remembers how the absence of those years in the chaos of his mind became the weight that rooted him to the emptiness in his being that eventually killed him.

No, the memories don’t make him “happy”. But they make him feel real. It reminds him he used to care. Like his mother.

His mother, Louise, cared about other people. She had worked as an elementary classroom teacher for decades before retiring. Even after, she would spend the late summer and fall knitting hats, gloves and scarves to give to schools so that children who couldn’t afford them wouldn’t be cold during recess or on their walks to and from the building.

All of his life, and still now, Mike considered Louise to be the most beautiful person who ever existed — the only one he truly believed was too good for how terrible life was to all of us.

He failed miserably in following her example in life. But he remembers her now.

One more time — even though it doesn’t count for anything anymore — he wants to try to be like her, to be extensively compassionate, instead of all-consuming.

And for the first time he’s been doing well.

But the Between is less than enthused about “well”.

So, it sends someone knocking at his door.

As he stands up to walk over, he hopes that it’s Jack or June.

He’ll even take Sarah leaving her goddamn notes she keeps in her cardigan spilling out and being forgotten all over his floor again — leaving him to pick up things like, “… waiting to be moved into position to devour.”

“What the fuck even goes with that?” he remembers asking aloud, involuntarily, before he took out his old lighter and lit that one up in a pan on the stove.

Honestly, he thinks she may be the craziest out of all of the people in the whole damn place. But, at least she’s harmless.

He turns the knob and swings the door open.

He knows exactly what he’s just let himself be temporarily sucked into.

Before him stands an attractive person in their mid-30s — perpetually — just like him. Neither of them looks like the actors and actresses that used to grace movie posters, the silver screen or that paparazzi fawned over.

But, there’s something so damn disarming about the space between being considered young and old — when you’ve worn your face long enough that you’ve made it your own, for better or worse.

Looking into their eyes, noticing how they subtly lick their lips as they prepare to ask the question he knows is coming, he starts to feel the left side of his thumb get warmer.

And somewhere in his being, for at least a moment, he’s back in his car or ducked down behind a garage or a dumpster in an alley, carefully and quietly holding his thumb on his lighter so that the flame stays high enough for when he slightly twists his wrist and angles the fire just right toward the little pile of his favorite consumable con waiting just a few centimeters below.

As he stares into their eyes — which reflect the same desperation he recognizes in every single goddamn set in the Between — the sensation in his thumb grows as if, at any moment, the skin is going to start bubbling.

And he feels that old familiar flame — that one he’s never been able to fully quell inside himself — again waiting to be moved into position to devour.