I woke in a motel room reeking of mildew, spilled booze, and burnt hair like a rave mated to a meth lab. My tongue was slick with betrayal and cheap bourbon; my nerves pulsed like gospel chainsaws. The clock struck at “ten-thirty-ish.” Eyes sunken, cheeks hollow, shirt stained dark—blood or Kool-Aid, I couldn’t tell. The mattress sagged like regret. Behind the paper-thin wall, TV blared fiscal policies nobody cared about.
I caught my reflection: an alley cat drag-racing a freight train, unshaven, unhinged, unmistakably alive if “alive” meant shredded mind. I brushed the bedside table: a crushed Adderall blister pack, a half-empty flask of Makers, and a syringe glinting with residue. My pulse hammered, warning me: she’d reappear, and obliteration awaited.
I put on my suede leather jacket, and I staggered into the hallway. Elevator doors revealed stale stench: condoms, regret, rancid fish. My reflection grinned: dare me to chase oblivion. At the lobby, a drooling clerk napped amid whiskey puddles. I snagged keycard “213” and stepped into the city heat, a smothering haze of smog and desperation. Neon slogans flickered false promises: “LIVE NUDE GIRLS,” “COCAINE,” “TRIPLE DOWN ON MISERY.” This was my hymn.
A ratty Volvo yielded a driver dipped in crank and ennui. Meter clicking, I closed my eyes to fluorescent assault. Fifteen minutes later, we reached an abandoned warehouse behind a boarded-up tattoo-decal strip. Spray-painted warnings: “STAY CAGED,” “NO GODS, NO MASTERS,” “DEATH TO COMFORT.” Shattered windows, plywood barricades—but basslines throbbed, moans tangled with synth clatter. A flickering neon arrow pointed down cracked concrete stairs.
Crumpled bills exchanged, I descended into kaleidoscopic chaos. The door, a rusted metal slab scrawled “ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK,” swung open. Inside, strobe lights slapped the crowd: sweaty mosaics of tattoos. The air stank of Jägermeister, industrial weed, and something feral, fear and desire fused. The bass rattled teeth; coppery adrenaline coated my throat.
She stood under a sickly spotlight, a living statue of damnation: her hat, a broken halo of vat-grown tulle, was nowhere to be seen, though she glowed with poisonous fog; blood-red hair cascading over bruised, ink-carved bones; a neon mesh bodysuit slashed to expose bruised flesh and nipple-dark promises; a barbed-wire choker reflecting shards of broken vows; ankle chains an audible threat. Our eyes met, time cracked like a dying star. Blood turned to acid; brain short-circuited.
I collapsed through bodies possessed, lips preaching to demons. Cold floor pulses rose through my legs, spine, and skull. She beckoned with a crooked grin both salvific and slaughterous. I crashed at her feet; whiskey and vomit clung like parasites. She crouched, thigh pressing my chest so hard it stifled my heartbeat. Her breath, velvet corrosive, scorched eardrums.
“Miss me?” she hissed. Breath laced with sin and cheap perfume. I tasted the last vestiges of reason drown.
She produced a syringe from a thigh-holster, the needle an oblivion icicle. Murky amber liquid glinted like the last sunset drip. She plunged it above my collarbone. Furnace fire exploded in my veins; I gasped for blood and adrenaline. Vision warped; synapses ignited fireworks. She withdrew to watch me writhe, lips curving in sadistic triumph.
Without pausing, she shoved a foil packet of white powder into my hand. I snorted lines tasting of bone ash and ecstasy. My head snapped back, senses bleeding into sound and sight. Every hair follicle bristled; every nerve matched-lit mania. She grabbed me, dragged me to the center floor, into the ritual sacrifice of gyrating bodies and strobing shadows. The world tasted of vomit, gasoline, ash, and anticipation.
Above, LED screens flickered apocalyptic news: “MARKET CRASH,” “CORONAVIRUS MUTATION,” “LEADERS IN SEX TAPE.” Irrelevant here—lust and violence ruled this dimension. She knelt, revealed a crack pipe like a magician’s darkest trick. Ember beckoned; she inhaled, then passed it. I drew in vapor tasting burnt plastic and desperation, nearly dying from pleasure. I coughed black flecks; she anointed them with a kiss both carnivorous and divine.
“Tomorrow you’ll beg for mercy,” she whispered. “Tonight you’ll crave more.” Her words cursed me, solidifying crystalline hunger in my veins. I roared a guttural scream into the bass, the crowd cheered as though I’d declared war on God.
She spun me through the frenzied mass to a VIP platform of crime-scene couches. Another junkie pair writhed like steam rising between hell springs. She pressed me down; bodysuit torn, bruises bleeding memories. Pupil-pinpricks gazed as she offered a vial of syrupy purple liquid—grape-medicine-poison. I swallowed molten metal fire. Kissing baptized me into a new chaos: colors bled brighter, sounds sharpened, the world hummed with manic resonance.
She dragged me to “STAFF ONLY,” bent a bobby-pin, and clicked open a corridor slick with gore and vomit crusts. In a flickering-fluorescent room: a gurney, scattered syringes and neon-vial lineup, a broken-light mirror fracturing our silhouettes. She strapped me down, IV line of ammonia-sting drip, fitted a mask pumping nitrous/formaldehyde cocktail. “Ready for the hurricane?” she asked.
I nodded. The machine hissed doom gas. Teeth chattered, bones softened, and the world collapsed into a rushing void. I tasted metal, amniotic dread, the first scream’s echo. The bed rocked. She ripped off the mask; her lungs burned with icy fire. Fractal lights bloomed; mirror rippled like storm-shattered water. She held up a blood-red, gold-flecked vial: “Heroin? LSD? Lethal honey? You’ll learn soon.” She tipped it to my lips; flame-silk coated my mouth, and then nothing.
I woke shirtless on sticky concrete: warzone skull, dust, and shame on tongue. Bass thundered through veins. She was gone, but I felt her behind me, electric memory. I turned; there she was above, hat brim a dim halo. Finger to lips. I climbed the rattling stairs in moth-eaten love with oblivion.
At the top, she pressed me against a fence, neon inferno below. Her breath, honeyed venom, washed over me. Then she withdrew a massive syringe of tar-black liquid and plunged it into my neck. I convulsed in acid landscapes; heartbeat fluttered—“You will die, but not tonight.”
She watched, ravenous glass-eyes glittering. “This is the real high, higher than heaven, deeper than hell. You’ll never be the same, and you won’t want to be.” Sounds blossomed: the roar of traffic, sirens, and body collisions. Colors bled—magenta, radioactive green, violet—the nightmare carnival writ in fractals.
I fell to my knees. She knelt, granite-cold hand pressed my palm. A spark of warmth: human connection in Frankenstein’s experiment. “Remember me?” she whispered. “Remember why you chased this madness.” Tears—salty, acidic—mixed with heroin residue in my lungs. I rasped, “Hurry before…” Darkness closed in.
She whispered, “Before you become a ghost above your corpse?” Her words twisted like a knife. I saw my reflection—a broken animal begging. She kissed my ear, lips slick with her poison: scorched earth, lavender, rancid hope.
Blackness swallowed me.
Morning bled through boarded windows as I sprawled on the regret-cold mattress. Body throbbed a dying heartbeat. Vision doubled in a prism. I sat, tasting dust and finality; silence weighed. The warehouse door creaked—and there she stood, hat brim eclipsing dawn, sweat-matted hair plastered, bodysuit shredded but undefeated.
Without words, she beckoned. I obeyed, crawling through the piss-stained hallway to an open-air courtyard: graffiti tombstones, a flickering lamp on a syringe-strewn alley. Rain-wet asphalt reeked of rot and rust—finality in every breath.
She produced a paper bag, spilled its contents: blister packs of Xanax, Klonopin, Oxycodone; MDMA crystals glittering broken dreams; vials of distilled moonlight; oil-dripping joints; syringes of fentanyl, meth, bruise-tinted GHB. Silent invitation, cosmic joke.
I rifled through pills like biblical plague, cracked vials with teeth, loaded amber heroin-speed cocktail into trembling syringe, fire raced through veins, fractal explosions igniting a velvet hurricane. She watched, eyes softening, whispering, “Now you understand. You’re mine even when you wake, you’ll chase this feeling until your bones dissolve.” My words slurred whistles: “Hurry… hurry…”
She leaned close. “There’s no going back. The hysteria has just begun.” The hot copper breath and the scent of dried blood stoked the furnace inside me. Behind closed lids, a cicada’s final requiem sang as convulsions rippled euphoric agony.
She rose, tulle halo bobbing, disappearing into shadows, leaving me slumped against the fence. Alley stench—decay and desire entwined. City pulse hammered temples. Pockets bulged with poison and sorrow. My hollow chest echoed one stubborn question: “Why?”
Smoke curled from my trembling cigarette, a bitter promise of tomorrow’s regret, as dawn bled into reality. Five senses ruptured, nine lives surrendered, knowing I’d chase that sweet, savage abyss until oblivion claimed me. And if I survived, I’d hunt her down again—because only she could fling me deeper into that godforsaken carnival of ruin and ecstasy.
Lord, help me; I’d die trying.
— JSPC
