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Birth of an Addict

Justis Mills

    The night Drew tried his Ritalin he ran for a long time. The cold bit into his face; it wrapped around his arms and filled his lungs with gentle fire. His freezing nose was childishly fascinating: a stiff numb slipperiness that spread right to the edge of his eyes.
    He should run more, he thought. He should run like this every night forever. He should run right down the suburban border, right where the streetlights started to stop, where he could see his feet but also maybe stars.
    He rested at a park that was dark and closed, with trees that looked like ghosts. No, not ghosts. Vampires, maybe, but a six-year-old’s vampires. The kind that was sort of scary but that didn’t keep anyone up at night. Prepubescent vampires, only also plants and much, much bigger than him. He laughed about that for a while, which was interesting and tingly on account of his lungs and face, but also made him want to run some more.
    He snuck a peek down the road, where the streetlights finished stopping and the pavement was invisible. The road was an abyss before him, winding like the intestines of a terrible beast, which wasn’t so scary because it meant the worst was over. He must have been chewed up and swallowed. Digested: stripped of nutrients. If he could take that, he could take the rest. He could be shit out somewhere in the middle of nowhere to melt into the dirt, ebbing down until he merged with the water that was sucked through the roots and the trees got his blood after all, the fuckers, and they’d laugh at how he’d laughed at them, but he’d be laughing too.
    God, the cold felt nice. He walked really slowly and felt the breeze pulling at his shirt, pulling him toward the breaking road, except then it stopped. He had come to the border, the precipice of the sparse lights at the lining of the cloud that you might see from space, if you knew where to look and you squinted.
    And then, the edge: a tennis court. The still air and nibbling cold and stark green flatness made all the trees disappear for a little bit, and it got quiet like the pause before some body swallows. He opened the gate and strode into the square, ready for battle but also unarmed.
    He couldn’t see anything outside the court, anything outside the center of these blaring lights; the tall fence’s shadows cast a checkerboard on his face. He walked to the net and stood transfixed, and his lungs had finally cooled off by now so it was just his heart pounding and his stomach considering being sick.
    And there it was, on the edge of the net: a graphite pole in its plastic sheath. He pulled it out, smirking, waiting for the net to fall. But it didn’t fall. It didn’t even slump. The pole was frozen in his hand, lightweight, menacing, useless.
    He didn’t want to run anymore. He was stunned, brandishing his tiny staff, waiting for something to seep into the straight flat green to try to eat his soul.
    Then his head split and his lungs ached and his face thawed, and he dropped his sword and closed the gate and began the long walk home.

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