Unfortunate Circumstances

Nico

Nico Mullinax fidgets on the grimy, worn-out bench at the bus stop on Fillmore Avenue. He looks much older than his twenty-three years, with the red, circular scabs that cover his sunken in cheeks, and matted white, blond hair slicked back from his long forehead. Icy blue eyes peer out of dark, sunken eye sockets.

He stares intently at the streetlamp that flickers across the road. Moths flutter around and around, bumping into one another, in the soft halo of light. It is 2:51 AM and most normal people are in their beds. His hands tremble as they pick at the peeling paint- once a brilliant red, now a faded pink- at the bottom of the bench seat. His right leg bounces up and down and he feels like he is going to throw up. It would only be bile because his stomach is utterly empty. He hasn’t eaten a thing in two days. His eyes burn and moisture leaks from the corners. He sniffles every ten seconds or so and constantly wipes his nose on his tattered coat sleeve. Violent shivers rack his emaciated body and his teeth clack. He is freezing even though he is wearing a thick coat.

Every slight noise is amplified in his ears and his brain feels jumbled. Dogs bay somewhere off in the distance. Coughs bounce off the alley walls behind his back, coming from the halitosis mouths of the homeless- unfortunate people that had no place to go for shelter- trying to get some sleep for the night. The people that have no family to fall back on or that can’t give up the drink for one night just to get out of the cold. But Nico didn’t blame them in the slightest. When you endure shitstorm after shitstorm and by some miracle make it to adulthood, you have to numb yourself. Once you numb yourself for so long, push those emotions down- drink after drink, snort after snort, bang after bang- they just get worse. When you have nothing to numb yourself with, the pain is so raw, so all-consuming, all you want to do is die. Nico doesn’t think these people are bad people at all, they were just dealt a shitty hand. Nico knows that when you are dealt a shitty hand, sometimes you have to do bad things just to get by. You aren’t given a choice. In Nico’s eyes doing a bad thing didn’t necessarily make someone a bad person. He thinks intentions are important in all matters. But no one cares what he thinks. He’s just a strung out, lying, thieving piece of shit that is killing his own mother slowly. That’s what his stepfather tells him.

*

“Where the fuck is this motherfucker?” Nico grunts under his breath. He hears a shuffle to his right and whips his head in that direction. It’s dark and foggy, but he thinks he sees a shadow move through the fog toward his spot inside the bus stop’s three smudged Plexiglass walls.

“Clay?” Nico calls out, standing up, and feeling a tingle through his body in anticipation of getting his fix, finally. The shadow doesn’t reply, but moves forward in a slow, fluid-like amble. Nico raises his coat sleeve to his snotty nose and sneezes. His eyes close for the briefest of moments and when he opens them again, the shadow is gone. He stares into the darkness, eyes squinted.

Nothing.

Nico sits back down on the bench to continue his contemplation of the streetlight across the road. He wishes that Clay would hurry up. He is beginning to feel a crawling sensation of uneasiness that is slowly increasing. Suddenly, he feels terrified, not knowing why. Eventually, he chalks it up to be his drug-deprived mind making things up.

He tries to take his mind off of his increasing fear and withdrawal by thinking of his girlfriend, Sparrow. Nico has been with Sparrow for going on four months now. He knows that probably doesn’t seem like a long time to most people, but for Nico and Sparrow it is an accomplishment. The longest relationship either one of them has ever had. Sparrow is nineteen and looks like a movie star. Well, a rough around the edges movie star. She would have been so beautiful if she hadn’t got hooked on the drugs. Nico thought she was beautiful anyway. Her teeth were pretty bad now and she didn’t shower as often as she should. Her hair always seemed to be oily and smelled of bacon grease. She was skinny, dangerously skinny. But despite it all Nico thought that she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Her hair was a raven black, stick straight and fell to the backs of her knees when it wasn’t in a ponytail. When Sparrow washed it, it shone as if tiny twinkling stars were hidden within her hair. Her eyes were a mesmerizing jade green, her lips full and pouty and she had a tiny little upturned nose that Nico thought was the cutest nose that he had ever seen. Even though Sparrow and Nico had only known each other four months, Nico knew he would die for her without hesitation. She read books constantly. She would get high out of her mind sometimes and do nothing but read for three days straight, with no sleep and no food. A lot of people found it weird that she was homeless and not more successful, but smart people have problems too. Some have bad problems that need numbing just like Nico does. Sparrow and Nico talked to each other in depth about their childhoods and the things they felt they had to keep hidden deep inside. Nico had told her things that he had never even thought about telling anyone else. And Sparrow told Nico things. Her bad things were worse than Nico’s bad things, but he listened, and he hurt for her. Sometimes he would cry while she was talking about something that had happened to her, and she would stop talking mid-sentence when she noticed, tilt her head to the side, and give him a sad little half smile. She would brush his hair from his face and kiss the tears away. She always did that. And then she would change the subject to books or movies or TV shows or video games. Anything with a story… but mostly books. Books were Sparrow’s passion. She had started writing a book of her own in an old, tattered, green notebook. It wasn’t finished and she was in need of another notebook to fill. Nico would find her one. She told him that he couldn’t read it until she was finished. She was self-conscious about it and would scowl when he attempted to read over her shoulder while she was writing.

Thinking of Sparrow did in fact calm him down and he felt a little better.

Nico falls into a half sleep, half daze while staring out into the darkness and dreaming of Sparrow. He was thinking of a way that he could procure a ring in order to propose to her. Yeah, their lives were far from easy and normal at the moment, but Nico didn’t see the use in waiting until everything about their lives was perfect. That could never happen. He wanted to spend the rest of his life with Sparrow. He wanted to spend every horrible, stressful, aching moment with her, because when she was around all of those horrible things were a little less horrible. He hoped she felt the same way about him. He had heard rumors that Sparrow was hooking down on the corner of Washington Square, but he didn’t believe it. Nico knew all that she had been through, and her deep mistrust of men and he refused to believe the rumors. Sparrow wasn’t that kind of girl. The money she sometimes had on hand came from her brother. Sparrow stayed with her brother sometimes to get off the streets and out of the cold. That's where she was right now. She wouldn’t lie. Sparrow was an honest person and Nico was sure that she wouldn’t hurt him. They are in love. It’s real and he refuses to believe anything else. They are soulmates.

Nico snaps out of his daze and moves his eyes to look at the streetlight across the road. He sees someone standing just outside the ring of light on the sidewalk. The figure stays perfectly still, and Nico thinks that maybe he is mistaken, his eyes are playing tricks on him, and perhaps there is no one standing there after all. Then the figure moves, but it's not normal movement. The shadowy figure is growing in height, the top of the shadow slowly stretching upward while the feet stay on the ground. He hears what sounds like a knife scraping along the metal street sign down the road and he moves his gaze to where the sound is coming from. He sees nothing and he doesn't hear the scraping sound anymore. When he looks back across the road to the spot where the elongating shadow had been standing, there is nothing there.

Nico sits with his back rigid, not moving except for the slight shivers rolling through his body. The hair on the back of his neck stands up and he feels a crawling sensation between his shoulder blades, like a thousand tiny spiders skittering their way up his spine and to the top of his head. He remains on the bench frozen, too afraid to move. "Why the hell am I feeling this way?" he thinks. "This is too weird. It's like my mind has no control over the panic in my body." His mind isn’t registering any fear at all, but his body is freaking out for some reason, and it doesn’t feel like any withdrawals Nico has had before. His muscles are stretched taut, and his breathing comes in short, shallow puffs. All of a sudden, he feels a scratching along his back, like a very long, sharp fingernail is gently trailing up his back. He squeezes his eyes shut and grits his teeth, muttering over and over. “Go away go away go away.” A coldness overtakes his body, and he feels as if ice is moving its way through his veins. A sickening dizziness causes him to double over, and he knows that he is on the verge of fainting. The imaginary trailing fingernail makes its way to the back of his neck, and he feels a stab. He slaps the palm of his hand to the back of his neck and feels a warm wetness. He puts his hand in front of his face and stares at the blood covering his palm. He touches the back of his neck again, exploring the injury. It's not a deep scratch, but it's a long one. The bleeding isn’t bad, but it is enough that he can feel tiny trickles of it dripping down his neck. He leans his head against the cold glass of the bus stop, his hair damp with sweat sticking to the glass. His mind is catching up with his body’s fear response now, and his heart jackhammers in response. He breathes in and out and keeps a steady count going in his head to combat his rising panic. “Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen…” he whispers, watching his breath fog the glass. Counting usually helps, but it’s not working this time. His breathing comes faster, and he is unable to let the breaths out; he is hyperventilating. He claws at the collar of his shirt, feeling that it is choking him, but that doesn’t help either.

Nico doesn’t know what the hell is going on, but he is scared to death. He is in the worst of withdrawal right now. He has been here before, but it has never been this bad. He needs something now or he feels like he will die. He will stop breathing and the end will come. “Not so bad, me dying, I guess,” Nico thinks. With this tiny acceptance of his death, the panic subsides a fraction. He is able to breath out now and continues his deep breathing and counting.

“Nico… Niccooo.”

He hears a seductive whisper in his ear, as if someone is standing right behind him. He feels hot breath on his neck and smells a stinking, rotten stench, like someone ate something dead, that they first seasoned with sulfur. When the smell assaults his nostrils, he gags. The gagging now accompanying his hyperventilating causes Nico to convulse, gasping for breath and retching. He leans forward and a stream of thick, yellow bile mixed with white foam splatters to the pavement, dribbles stretching from his mouth all the way to the ground. The voice in his ear sounds again, this time louder and more menacing. A growl.

“Ah… you smell of fear and hopelessness... LET ME IN!”

Nico claps his hands over his ears and whips around to confront the whispering person in his ear, but no one is there. He lets out a shaky breath and lowers his head back to the cool glass, continuing the wait for Clay and the bouncing of his nervous legs. He feels certain that something isn’t right, and something bad is going to happen. Something is off big time. This is not normal withdrawal.

“Shit, man. I am losing my shit. I think I might be schizophrenic,” he says to himself, truly worrying that he might be. He read once that schizophrenia can present itself when you are later in age, or when you have endured a particularly stressful bout of events. His eyes wide with fear and sweat trickling between his shoulder blades, Nico sits and watches the street for Clay. He picks and bites at his already bleeding fingernails, sucking the blood into his mouth as he bites, tasting the salty, iron taste.

Nico brings his legs up to his chest in an attempt to make himself as small as possible. “I am losing my god damn mind! What the actual fuck!” Nico shouts to the night in a high-pitched and jittery voice. He switches from nail biting to once again picking the paint from the bottom of the bench. After a few seconds of paint picking, he removes his hands from the monotonous and meaningless task and shakes them in front of his face, trying to move blood throughout his body in an attempt to warm himself up and calm himself down. He still feels the ice in his veins. After about ten shakes of his hands, he runs them through his unwashed hair. He hangs his head between his knees and tries to breath in an even, deep rhythm. He goes into a daze again, staring down at the spots of gum on the sidewalk under his feet and listening to his heart pound in his ears. There are all different colors of chewed gum there. There’s pink, red, green, blue, yellow. It’s a rainbow of colors. There are even some black pieces that have been there so long and stepped on so often that they are beginning to resemble the concrete on which they are stuck. As he is moving his tired and bloodshot eyes over the miasma of gum on the ground, he hears pounding footsteps rushing at him from his left.

Nico lifts his head fast from between his knees and feels a sharp pain shoot down the back of his neck. He jumps up lightning fast and puts his trembling fists up in front of him, preparing to fight, but there is no one there.

“What in the blue fuck was that?” Nico groans. He thinks of just giving up and going on home, but the craving in his body won’t let him. He has to stay and at least try.

He stands there with his legs in a fighting stance and his fists held up before his face and screams into the darkness, “LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE, GOD DAMNIT!” He hears a deep, rattling chuckle from behind him. He starts a mantra in his head in an attempt to make his mind start behaving rationally. “It’s all in my head, it’s all in my head, it’s all in my crazy ass, fucked up head...”

He hopes Clay can front him something just to get him through until he can get the money to pay him back. He decides he has no choice but to wait. So, that is what he does, his eyes darting around him, anticipating an attack from something unknown.