Thus another friendship was dashed on the cruel rocks amid the storm of my self-destruction. (Russell Brand)

When we left the dull afternoon heat of the sun room, I walked Lilia to her car. The floor creaked under our feet and the smell of a cake baking for dessert wafted through the air. I walked her outside without bothering to put on shoes, treading through the dewy grass.

“The air is so fresh here,” she commented as we stood by her five year old Honda Civic. She breathed it in deeper and deeper. “Like really fresh.”

I nodded.

“Wow, I’ve never noticed it before. It’s so fresh.”

The word “fresh” was starting to lose all meaning she repeated it so much.

“Are you okay?” I asked. “You seem a little off.”

She turned quickly and looked directly at me, into me. Her wide eyes suddenly stared disturbingly and her pupils were dilated so much they were consuming all the color. “I feel great,” she realized. “Like really great. I feel like I could lift this car or crush the sun.”

“Lilia, what’s going on? Why–”

Right, the dish of powdered heroin I had been using as sugar for my tea must have been a little too close to the actual sugar. Lilia never uses sugar, always just honey, why did she decide to branch out today? I bet she didn’t plan to branch out quite this much when she reached for the sugar.

I’m back on heroin, did I mention that? I still do a little meth now and then but I started having these horrific nightmares about an old lady I saw once. Her teeth were rotted leaving nothing but empty spaces and brown stubs. It was disgusting. When I would wake from the dream I would brush, floss and rinse with mouthwash. I didn’t have dreams like that with heroin. Heroin is the greatest drug and my loyalty to it is in my blood. After all it’s the drug of choice of my entire family.