The High

The faint blinking of distant hazard lights illuminated the narrow alleyway. The heels of Annette’s boots echoed as she walked towards the back entrance of her club, hands in pockets, only her silhouette visible. She moved with purpose.

“How do the numbers look tonight Marco?”

“Busy. We should hit capacity soon,” the bouncer replied.

“Lovely.” The corners of her bright red lips turned up in a smirk, her designer trench coat brushed past him. “Quickly now we don’t want any more of that stench seeping in if we can help it.”

The six foot, 330 pound Puerto Rican man almost strained pulling the vault-like door slowly toward them. Air whipped through the crack of the door and with a deep *TONK* the hydraulic steel bolt locks engaged.

“The new hire is here,” he says as he follows her down the cold concrete tunnel, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead.

“How wonderful, and ahead of schedule. Show her to the service entrance and I'll have Gerard meet her in the freight elevator to bring her down.”

“Got it boss.”

Nothing was as it once was. Day and night dissolved into one another. No sunrise, no sunset, just grey. A constant haze shrouded the sky. The only color came from radiating sprays of orange splotched against the endless wall of clouds glowing from the street lamps below. The drug companies wreaked havoc not only on the environment but on society as a whole. Industrial plant waste poisoned water supplies and the atmosphere. The minute patent requirements were lifted, every drug company in the world rat raced to start peddling the most addictive substance known to man. Soon after social classes and governments dissolved with the economy. No rich, no poor, just users and dealers, supply and demand. Politicians and law enforcement became criminals and criminals enforced their own laws. Streets were barricaded by towers of trash, the scattered limbs of hollowed out corpses, butchered and harvested, protruded out of the piles lining the buildings. The air was thick with the smell of waste and decay blanketing the city. One in every three addicted, an entire society brought to its knees by a ‘so-called’ miracle drug named Paxtium.

Marco punched a code into the service entrance keypad. Holding his palm up to a sensor panel, he spoke slowly into a speaker. “Marco Vega-Perez.” The door lock buzzed open and Marco pointed across the loading bay to the freight elevator where Gerard waited. She walked across the loading bay with a sense of urgency. Gerard held the elevator cage door open for her as she entered. She could feel the iron grates reverberating as it clanged shut.

"So where are you from?" Gerard asked, as the elevator began its descent.

"It's okay I'm really not a fan of small talk, you don't have to try and make awkward conversation."

"My bad. I don't really get to talk to people very often in my job, or really just in general anymore, I didn't want to be rude."

“Don’t worry about it... I'm not really used to having normal conversation either.” She said dryly. “What do you do here?" She forced herself to ask in an effort to try and not sound like a complete bitch. This was the last place she wanted to be, but in reality she had nowhere else to go.

"IT mostly, security monitoring, some records management, that kind of stuff. I’ll be doing your biometric inprocessing to put you into our system."

*BING*

The elevator doors groaned as they opened, another smaller vault-like door straight ahead of them.

“Gerard Michael Franklin”

Gerard removed his hand from the sensor and the deadbolts released. He pushed open the door to a large room full of monitor screens. Her eyes fixed on the upper right hand corner where a news reporter delivered a breaking announcement.

“The body of yet another pharmaceutical tycoon, discovered earlier this week on the floor of a subway bathroom, has been identified as Vincent Odell, CEO of the multi-billion dollar company ‘Nuvian Incorporated’ a producer of the drug PAXTIUM. An investigation is currently underway to determine...”

“Place your hand on the pad,” he asked gently, holding out a tablet-like device in front of her.

*blip, blip, blip*

He set the tablet down on his desk and typed hastily.

“Do you use?” She asked.

“Clean now…5 years.”

She chuffed, “you’re lucky.”

He stopped typing. “I guess you could call it luck.” He turned to face her. “I just wanted to survive. It’s why I work here now. Originally the doctors said it would help with anxiety and focus, not that it mattered. I had friends who were taking it for erectile dysfunction, migraines, digestive issues, allergies, hangnails, whatever they could tell the doctors to get a prescription. Then when our pill bottles ran empty we came here. I was making six figures creating IT security software before I got hooked; penthouse, great cars, then I lost everything, all control of myself, my mind, my life...I stole, I killed...whatever I could to keep chasing the high, nothing else mattered. When it came time to pay my tab, the only thing I had left to my name was the laundry list of all the shitty things I'd done. I begged Annette. I told her I could do this job better than anyone she’d ever had in the past to pay back my balance. She gave me a chance on the condition I stayed sober. A lot of my friends weren’t as lucky when it came time to pay. I honestly think having your skin peeled off would’ve been a more tolerable alternative to detoxing, but after three and a half weeks of being strapped down naked to a stainless steel table sweating blood and pissing and shitting myself, I got clean and started working. Haven’t touched it since.”

“What happens when you don’t pay your tab?” She asked.

“Everyone pays their tab.”

He turned back to his computer.

“Some walk out the front door afterwards, some get dumped into a trash heap in the alley, but ultimately, everyone pays.”

“The last thing we need to do is program your name into the voice recognition system. This, along with your biometric code will grant you access to different parts of the building.”

He gestured to a long neck microphone on the desk next to him.

“Whenever you’re ready…”

She took a moment to swallow and clear her throat.

“Maxine Cerise Fuller”

“Well Maxine Cerise Fuller, allow me to officially welcome you to the Heart Shaped Locket.”

Gerard and Maxine walked side by side as they entered into a room through a plastic paneled curtain.

“I hope you find your new workspace adequate.” The operating room lights flickered on as Annette spoke. “Thank you for coming.”

“Not really the kind of night club I was expecting.” Maxine responded, eyes circling the room full of medical equipment.

The facility was originally intended to be a secure containment area for infectious diseases, the floors below that, a morgue for the unfinished abandoned hospital above. One area had been converted into a bar and dance floor you’d find in any typical nightclub. Shortly after the epidemic hit, and all the shareholders who funded construction went bankrupt, Annette capitalized on the perfect opportunity to open her club.

“The nightlife scene has since changed, now that both night and life have taken on all new meanings Ms. Fuller. Entertainment is only a small portion of what we do here. My club provides for all the wants and needs of our patrons, which often go far beyond just drugs and a good time. Catering to every desire near and dear to the heart, even at times a new heart itself, we offer whatever our guests are willing to pay for, and of course everything has its price. In the beginning people believed that a business like mine belonged only on the lowest rungs of society, people just like those shareholders, and now I'm one of the only businesses left standing.”

“But if you’re so successful, why do you need me?” asked Maxine.

“This may come as a surprise to you my dear but it is my belief that we need each other. In your previous role as a doctor you made the difficult decisions no others were willing to make and they casted you out for it. Giving demoralized Pax users an end to their suffering with peace and dignity instead of winding up buried under a heap of trash in the street. Users like your parents and brother, users like your teenage son.”

Maxine clutched the gold necklace that held his photo around her neck.

“Your patients trusted you because they knew you could help them when no one else would, even when you were persecuted for it, which is why I’ve asked you here. A sentimental woman would say it was fate that brought us together, but I like to think that we simply share a common interest. You see in a world where you have nothing left, and right or wrong no longer exist, strength and skill are what matter. Anyone can hire a butcher to do their dirty work but I need someone on my staff with your level of finesse and professionalism, someone I can trust. In return I can provide you with security and purpose and perhaps even a sense of reparation.”

Annette walked over to a tray table lined with medical tools near Maxine.

“I’ve decided to expand my business.” She nodded her head at Gerard, who pulled back the plastic curtain. Two bouncers wheeled in a man, mouth bound with duct tape and strapped to a gurney.

“Welcome Mr. Wellingford!” Annette exclaimed, lightly clapping her hands together in a flutter. “THE Thomas Wellingford is the owner of Wellingford Pharmaceuticals, another thriving producer of Paxtium. It’s funny how they've all begun picking each other off like animals in an attempt to keep their businesses alive, much like the animals they turned their users into. But just as farm animals are bred for slaughter, it's only a matter of time before the next new power hungry pharma head winds up on the chopping block.”

Baffled, Maxine interjects. “You want me to kill off one of the men responsible for making the drug you’re selling in your club?”

“I found it rather contradictory myself until a competitor of his approached me with a very enticing offer to swiftly dispose of Mr. Wellingford here, in addition to providing a discounted Pax supply to sell in my club. I am a business woman after all. But not to worry, when one company gets yanked down the ladder, another quickly climbs over them taking their place at the top. All desperately clawing away at each other to survive an apocalypse they're responsible for starting.”

Annette pinches the cheek of the panicked man strapped to the gurney. “It’s quite the cutthroat market out there isn’t it Thomas? Best we do what we must to survive, wouldn’t you say? But not to worry, you’re just the first on our list. Ms. Fuller is going to keep quite busy if she feels so inclined to assist with future club operations.”

“Well Ms. Fuller,” Annette picks up a liquid filled syringe with one hand and flicks the narrow cylinder with the other. “Shall we get to work?”

For the first time in a long time, Maxine smiled.

“Let’s get to work.”