Alright, since at least one person requested it, i'll post a section of the story....More will be posted sometime soon.....Make note though, I haven't gone through and edited this full boar, so there's probably quite a few "mistakes"....Any inconsistencies or questions I'll help out with....This is my oldest rough draft ever and I had to edit it down alot to fit in this space....There is much much more to it than this and this isn't even the really good part....
PART I - From the beginning....
Ray took a drag off his menthol cigarette and rejoiced deeply in its tension relieving agents, the ever beloved nicotine and tobacco, and leaned up against the closest buildings nearest wall. He nearly had to come apart at the seams inside, standing in there with so many people he had been so close to a year ago, and so far from now, in the aftermath of the high school years. Not just acquaintances either. These people were part of his everyday life for quite awhile, and in addition to giving him some of the best times of his life, also tore his life apart and changed it drastically forever. Some were people he loved, either in that “real” way, or the “fake” way- the brotherhood way, and a few were faces he’d rather not see on a particularly sunny day where his good vibe might be taken away by their overwhelmingly unwanted prescence. These thoughts seemed harsh to him, but that’s what he had learned from all of it. Life’s pretty harsh itself. And although most of what had gone on between him and “those people” had furthered him in an at least quasi-helpful way, helping him grow as a person, and to become the man that he was going to be for the next few years. How the fuck did he end up here anyway?
The rattling screen door, rusty in its hinges, and nearly blown away each time it had been opened due to the fiercely chilly winds focused directly on it, screeched open next to Ray, and he quickly glanced over at who it might be. It could have been anyone at that point, and that was not something he wanted, although what he could do was pretty limited. If he ran like hell that wouldn’t look too sane. Fuck em. He wasn’t supposed to be the nervous one.
“Nice day for a meth lab, huh?” Salt said, as he came out and seen Ray, looking to be the only one gracious to be out in the typhoon like wind.
Salt grimly shoved a smile to his thin, wind cracked lips, and Ray grimaced at their situation.
“Yeah, so what the fuck are we doing here? This is fuckin dumb, Salt.” Ray bluntly replied, taking a drag and watching it dissipate in front of him as he exhaled.
“I don’t know. I was askin myself the same question.” Salt responded, grabbin a smoke of his own from his pack.
“I’ve had about enough excitement for an afternoon.”
“If you can call it that.”
“No kidding.”
There were voices approaching down the hallway, booming it seemed, right through the ragged screen doors non-existent protection. One sounded like Curtis Hughes, the reason they had ended up on 14th Street, next to the most notoriously known narcotic pushing apartments in the city of Pekin, standing in the frigid cold. The other was indiscernable, by the howling rush of air all around them, but Ray had a pretty good idea of who it was.
“Oh, great.” Ray muttered, looking over at the door. Salt glanced over at him trepidaciously, sensing hostility possibly coming their way.
“Be cool, dude. Just ignore him.” Salt advised non-chalantly. Ray shook his head in disapproval and leaned back against the brick wall.
“Yeah, right.” He passively murmured rolling his eyes.
Curtis came out first, opening the door with one hand and already lighting the smoke, and attempting to mutter a highly amused laugh all at the same time, leaving it open for Dan to pass through easily, without any effort. In the sun Dan looked ate up now. Bad. He was wearing the same corduroy pants, soiled looking Vans, a suprisingly unfunny DARE shirt he must have picked up at a Goodwill, and a backwards Hardees hat, that was caked with grease and muck from the cooks line at then nearest fast food joint to them. It disgusted both Ray and Salt to see him like that, and jabbed another issue into their already disdained outlook on their former friend, and friends.
“Ah, yeah, dude....that was the....fuckin shit!” Curtis weazed through a bursting cloud of smoke through his nose and a raspy chortling that he was known for. Dan grinned back smugly, remembering some event vividly in his head.
“Those mother fuckers didn’t know what the fuck they were getting into, mother fucker!” Dan vulgarly shot back, extending his hand in “respect” toward Curtis, who was ready and willing to accept his offer.
“No shit! No, shit dude.” Curtis stammered over a red face. Both of them were sweating despite the icy cold winds blowing in their faces, and they were noticably methed out. Curtis finally recognized their company, and looked over at Ray.
”If this kid would have been half as big as he is now, he coulda took on all those fuckin scums.”
Ray modestly glanced over at Curtis, smirking as if he was almost amused by the subject matter. They must have been discussing the South Side fight, to which Ray had honestly heard about enough of.
“I bet Salt coulda took on all them pussies. It wasn’t that impressive.” Ray grimly replied.
“Ah, whatever, dude that was our moment of glory, and you know it. When me and you and James and Jay.......and Dan...were up there at Stans.......that was the fuckin shit.” Curtis defiantly mumbled, stuttering pretty hard on Dans easy name, and making the tension just that much more obvious.
“Yeah, Montgomery, you woulda been the only dude up there if you were as big as you are now.” Dan said in an attempt to establish direct communication, something Ray really cared less about at that moment.
“Well, thanks Dan, but I think the Southside incident was one the dumbest things we ever got into.” Ray stated apatheticaly, holding nothing back. “Gave us a bad name around town.”
“In this town? A bad name? Every single resident has a bad name in this town......it’s what were destined for. At least we got ours for doing something noble.” Dan kept on, to the behest of Ray.
“Noble? We fucked up a bunch of Sophmore meth-heads in a field, and people cheered for it. Where does that make us noble.”
“Because it was for our friend.....our friends....ya know.......Curt and Farrelly. And they deserved it, you know they did.”
“They did deserve it. But it’s nothing to celebrate.”
“Well we have two different points of view, I guess.”
“Guess so.”
Curtis and Salt had been exchanging troubled meetings with their eyes, in relation to the harsh undertones seeming present at both Dan and Ray’s end, and the very real possibility of someone getting clocked if the right words were said.
“I-uh...forgot my smokes inside. Be right back.” Dan nervously murmured, stepping back through the door, and shutting it on his way to the apartment they’d just been in. Nobody missed him.
“Right, later.” Ray uncaringly responded after Dan was inside, throwing his cigarette, and signifying he was pretty much ready to skiddaddle.
“That was dense. Thought you might throw down there Ray.” Salt commented, looking Rays way, with his eyebrows upturned in question.
“Wouldn’t have been worth it.” Ray explained, pausing to roll his eyes. “Are we done here?”
Salt and Curtis both curiously debated the notion silently with dumbfounded shoulder shrugs, showing their obvious uncare in the situation.
“Alright, let’s fuckin split.....please. That smell is makin my head spin.” Ray said of the foul scent of meth production all around, and from right in front of them.
“Yeah, let us finish our cigarette dude. Then we’ll take off. I’d like to say goodbye to Amy and Dan but.....” Curtis carried on.
“Go ahead. I’m gonna go wait in the car then. I don’t really feel much like talking to anyone.” Ray admitted, heading in the direction of the Daytona, a few hundred feet away in a parking lot. He silently cursed Curtis for not telling him where he had planned to take the two when he showed up at Ray's house an hour or two before, interrupting a round or six of hitters Salt and him had been taking part in to shake off the weary displacement of a night of hard drinking with their mutual friends Jerry Schuman, Justin Watson, and Jake Roman. It had been a fine morning for a wake and bake they had determined, and when Curtis Hughes had showed up it seemed only to improve. Ray had welcomed their friend, offering hitter after hitter as soon as he entered, but there was a sinking feeling building somewhere in his gullet that he tried to dispell with more and more marijuana. It had worked for a spell, as he shook off the foreboding eeriness his nights sleep had given to him unwantingly, but resurfaced when Curtis proposed they accompany him on his daily errands, a subject that seemed plenty innocent in its own right, and undeserving of a queezy disposition. He knew why, but that was too far back in his consciousness to let it itself come to the forefront of his thinking, a premonition that had shoved him out of his position on his futon in a cold trickling sweat dripping off his nose, and cheeks. It had been so rousing and displacing that he thought he might have woken the soundly snoozing Salt from his blanket ladened spot on the floor, but it hadn't. Salt had downed nearly a fifth of whiskey on his own a few hours before, and there wasn't too much that could disturb him. Ray had drank heavily too, but awoke as sober as the day he was born, and overwhelmed with a dread that he could hardly place with any discernable feeling or emotion. He had reached for his hitterbox moments later, and his pack of cigarettes, and sat up for a few minutes partaking in a shrouding attempt to cloud his mind of the nightmare, doing quite well in its task, and putting him back down to his pillow to completely forget what had shot him out of unconsciousness.
His big feet clomped over the broken slabs of concrete littering the entrance to the apartments, and absently kicked loose gravel away from his path, as he mulled over what he had just been put through. Fuckin Curt. It had appeared altruistic in its nature, Curtis' slightly selfish deed he attempted for Ray, and Salt to a lesser extent, and Ray understood that somewhere in his being, but mostly he wished Curt would keep his own damn good intentions to himself when it came to Ray and who he chose not to come in contact in that day and age. He had distanced himself for a reason, and rightly so he believed. Sure there had been alot of people who wished him not to hold such a grudge against their former compadres, but they had all grown past it, and realized that there was no will to forgive and forget in Montgomery anymore for "those" certain people. There was good reason for why he had been doing what he had for the past year, out of pure disgust for the positions their "friends" had allowed themself to be wrapped up in, the scourge of Pekin society, crystal meth. They had all experimented idly in it, binging for days, and even weeks for some, and the phase had been overtaken by the everpresent equalizers, alcohol and weed, because of the visible physical and mental damage it harvested for those who fell into the pits of addiction, ripe with a gauntlet of torturous rigors to ones body. No, that had been a road they seen to be a dead end before they began to travel too far down. Not that they hadn't chosen their own vices in the "vein" of hard drugs, fresh with holes dug for them to crawl in, and plenty of self depravating carnal stupidity. To deny that would be an outright lie. They had moved on though.....grown up, and grown past such ignorance. Dan and his lackeys, had not. And it was about to catch up to them and everyone near.
By the time Ray had gotten half way to Curtis' vehicle, an explosion erupted into the eerily calmed afternoon sky, and knocked anyone within a block or so of the initial impact on their asses, and left them with a ringing head to match. Ray was knocked sideways into a chain link fence, then fell to the ground, as the unexpected blast s shockwave hit him, causing his head to hit the cement sidewalk in a few confusing seconds. Curtis and Salt both suffered severe inner ear damage when the explosion went off right above them a few floors, and also knocked them about 10 feet into a security wall, leaving them with a few dark bruises, but really suffered nothing but shrapnel damage the air conditioner caused when it disintingrated into a million jagged hunks. A few windows went out in nearby cars, from debris, and a few people took minor injuries getting knocked to the ground by the sudden event. Dan was the worst of them all. All of them not in the actual apartment that is, which is a travesty unto its own, that is. He was running up to the door, only feet from opening the handle, when the door blew off in a tremendous thud, colliding with Dan, and knocking him over the railing to the floor, two stories down. He hit the ground and immediately broke 6 ribs, fractured his collar bone, and ruptured his spleen, before he was hit the door which caused a broken wrist, a broken jaw, dislocated hip and elbow, and internal bleeding in his kidneys besides other various lacerations all over his body. Out like a light when the door hit him, he was saved from the showering of debri by the inflictor of most of his serious damage. If anyone else would have been around, they most likely would have suffered the same horrible scenario Dan was delt, but lucky for all the other residents, it happened at a quiet time, when most of the people were gone. The only people there were the unlucky few in apartment number 6.
Some of the lucky ones actually within the walls of the apartment were sent to intensive care, and 5 people perished due to being only feet away from the source of the blast when it blew it up, and sent a fireball of debri and poisonous smoke. Nobody was conscious anytime after, and most woke up, dazed, numbed, and singed days or weeks later when their wounds have healed sufficiently. Amy Swanson was unconscious under a dead Toni Clark, as debri pelted the frail young girls body, as her face melted off and dripped onto Amy and the remains of the carpet. It also saved Amy from alot of fire damage, although she suffered 2nd degree burns on 25% of her body in various places. She had no idea she was being saved by the corpse of one of her good friends, and it’s surely better that way. When help finally came, and she was whooshed from the viciously toxic inferno, it wasn’t mentioned that Toni was ontop of Amy, her face dripping skin and melted muscle tissue, for obvious reasons of good taste and common sense. Amy lived, and that was what mattered. How she lived afterward, and how everyone around her lived their lives, was about to get more complicated than she could ever imagine, and changes much more drastic than the fiasco a year or so before with her, Ray Montgomery, and Dan were about to surface.
Ray knew what was gonna happen. He shouldn’t have been surprised when he was knocked to the ground, and rocked by a cement sidewalk, laying on the ground for seconds after on his stomach as debri began to fall. He’d done it, in his mind at least, the night before, in a dream too vivid to be a coincidence. The dream itself had made him wake up in a cold sweat, something he was pretty sure he was immune too, too a pitch black room, the final song on Undertow, Disguistipated, chugging it’s trancelike rhythm distantly, half a room away, on low volume. The song had inspired strange dreams before, premonition like dreams, that always kind of threw his perception off a little the next day when most everything happened exactly as he had imagined it-or percieved it-but this one was like a punch to the chest. It bolted him up out of bed, like every actor from a dream that seems too convincing, shaking, and panting, and wondering what the fuck just happened. It had obviously seemed almost absurd, the dream that it is, and once his wits were caught, he forgot about it and passed back out. Then he was still hours away from Amy Swanson, Dan, or 14th Street, and was in fairly good spirits. Things had seemed to be getting back to normal, which in the wake of a tragedy, is never really “normal”. It’s some altered state of numbness, that you eventually begin to ignore to move on, but things are always different. He’d lost his best friend to a heroin overdose, and then his girlfriend to a person he’d once considered a friend. Although Dan was never really THAT good of a friend. And now their back in his lives, fucking things up once again.
Like clockwork, he shook his head as he made it to all fours, and trickled a splatter of blood onto the ground right in front of him. That caught his attention immediately, as it didn’t feel like he’d injured himself at all, and Ray dabbed at his forehead to find the leak. It was small enough to not worry about, but big enough to pour a steady stream of blood into his eyes, so he figured he’d get up as quick as possible to find some thing to put pressure on with. He slowly stood, ears ringing distinctly loud, distorting all noises around him with a high pitched squeel. All around him he could sounds that didn’t seem right, sounds of chaos, and screaming, and fire, and nothing indicative of Pekin life. They were a rough town, but they didn’t get bombed every other week or anything. As he made it to his feet fully, back to the carnage, he put it together though. Meth Lab blew up, and it seemed like the one he had just visited, and now all hell was about to break loose. Cops, ambulance, firemen, screaming, fire, Curtis, Salt, Dan.............and Amy. She was inside.
It stung his temples for some reason when it all came together, when could have happened, what really had fucking happened, and Ray spun around like a man possessed, and began running toward the scene of devastation. He could hardly believe what he was seeing, but then again, he had seen it all before, and it scared him nonetheless this time. The apartment they had previously been in, the one directly above where they had smoked cigarettes not seconds before, was gone. No windows, no frame, no anything. Just a smoldering hole in the side of a two story building, billowing with smoke and spewing fire into the furious wind. Debris fell everywhere, charred and emitting its own trail of smoke as it crashed back down to earth, a fiery cinder laid to waste by what looked to be a fatal combination of lethal chemicals. Jesus Christ, Amy was in there, in that building, possibly burning to a crisp, and there was nothing left. It looked catastrophic.....which it was, and that gave Ray almost no hope. He was running so fast now, he was now caught up to Curtis and Salt, who were just now standing up, holding their sides and darting their eyes in all directions trying to decipher the scene. They were covered in soot, and smoke, and their clothes were slightly torn, singed more than anything by the initial blast. They looked like different people then, not in their appearance, but in the emotion gripping their faces, as they tried to figure it out in their heads, while trying to stay alive, and reason on their feet all at the same time.
“You guys are fine right.....your okay right!” Ray hollered as he neared them.
“Yeah.”
“.....uh yeah.”
Both Salt and Curtis noticed Ray’s quite severely lacerated forehead, but didn’t get time to ask him the same question they had. He was on his way inside, toward the now blown off screen door on fire 20 feet away, and toward Amy. They knew it.
“I’m goin in.......get to a phone.” He muttered as he put his head down and bolted through the doorway, already amassing a smokey interior. He didn’t think about it, because he’d already seen himself do it before. He was following his own footsteps without noticing. Thinking too much was usually one’s demise, so he just did what he was supposed to.
Dan came to in a world of unbearable hurt, and a dispelling skittering state of mind. His head was swimming like a olympic diver, his body was paralyzed in agony, and through the slits of his eyes he only had a blurry peripheral vision, emitting a vague ammount of light from both sides of him. He darted his eyes, the only operable senses left unharmed it seemed, from side to side, and then stared forward into a vacant darkness. There was a burdensome weight on his chest that couldn't be pinpointed, that was putting a heavy pressure on his cracked breastplate, and ribs. He hadn’t lost consciousness for too long, but was in too much unbearable pain to find the strength to lift the object that was holding him down, and he knew something off the scale bad had just went down, most likely centering him somewhere in the middle of all the turmoil. It was coming to him as the panic increased, and his weariness faded slightly, leaving him in a fervor that couldn't be altered. His body was shot to shit, that was the best way he could say it, and he felt broken everywhere. There were muffled echoes popping in and out of his head, but for the most part he seemed to be partially deaf. That was normal, or at least it sounded like something that would be normal for whatever had transpired. Or maybe he was just fucked, and was on his last leg so to speak. He didn’t know or care to, because either way, he was in for bad trouble, and there didn't seem to be a thing that he could do about it. Whether he was gonna die because of whatever wounds he could have, he wasn’t sure, it could have been just about any fatal ailment, from internal bleeding, to broken bones, to punctured lungs to missing crotch......he just knew he hurt.......everywhere. Some places more than others. He could sense himself fading, back into the cloudy nothingness, and he expected eminent death soon after.
The splintered door was torn off of Dan by Ray when he absently noticed the bulge underneath the remnants of apartment door number six, and decided to see if his instincts.......or his premonition......was right. It had been, to the tee. There was Dan, looking as if he’d just been tossed through the trash compactor, bleeding profusely from his face, arms, torso, legs, and any other discernable body part, mangled viciously out of proportion, with several broken bones obvious to the plain eye. Ray was working on pure adrenaline by that point, and stared down at Dan intently, who looked back with dead wraught eyes, then peered towards the cause of all the trouble right above them. Neither man could hear much of anything around them, but with the intense heat it created, and the foul odor of meth searing their nostrils above them, there was no doubt that’s where it stemmed. Ray was thinking a mile a minute, computing things in his head that made no sense, and also made perfect sense as he ran into a brick wall of intense panic and debate. He knew right then was the wrong time to be pondering anything, but lives hung in the balance if he made the wrong decision, lives dependent on him, and him alone. One moment sitting and debating what he should do next could either kill him, or endanger those he was driven now to procure. Dan hadn't even been a notion in his afterthoughts.
There was a glimmer that glinted off Dans eyes, and caught Ray’s attention, as his face contorted in pain, before giving Ray one last confused, and primally frightened helpless glance, as his eyes rolled backward into his head. His mouth crested with fresh blood, and that meant he was going, or going soon. Ray made a decision swiftly, and snatched the wounded man as carefully as possible in his arms, and came back through the path he had just braved, one not lacking the typical burning building staples. He and Dan may have had there fair share of conflicts, but as a decent human being, he couldn't be so compassionless to just let someone in that position lay injured, in shambles, as his world went up in the poverbial, literal, and definitive flames consuming every inch of the world around. He came through unscathed, besides some dirt and the cut he had already sustained, and laid Dan down as soon as he could, which was quickly crowded by Salt and Curtis. They both sprinted over at the sight of Ray emerging, and looked to nearly break into tears when they seen what had become of their good friend. Both Curtis and Sat had spent more time with Dan than Ray ever could handle, and been through more than enough shit to consider him not just a close friend but more like a brother. Both were in a nauseous daze when they actually looked down at Dan O'Riley, sprawled on the ground looking close to death, and more ravaged than any damage they'd suffered from their various fights and scuffles, accidents, wrecks, or happenings that they'd gone through in the term of their kinship with each other. Ray noticed it but couldn’t waste time acknowledging it any more than needed.
“I’m goin back in.....” He absently stated turning back toward the wreckage. Curtis looked up worried, and then back down at Dan. He was feeling a strong urge to stay and watch over Dan, but then again, he couldn’t just watch his friend go head long into a blazing inferno without someone there to help him. They couldn’t just watch Ray run in there and risk his life. He had to do something.
“Stay here with Dan, I’m gonna go with Ray.....” Curtis mumbled, already well on his way to running after the endemic Ray Montgomery, into the flames.
They began up the stairs to the second floor in a bound, but both fell weak at the knees as they moved further. Neither saw a thing but red, and grey, in a pure adrenaline rush that they were aware would be mostly forgotten when the smoke truly cleared, but actually contemplating what they might be facing was fear inducing, at their core. The explosion had been vicious, and the inferno raging, leaving both with a trepidation that no matter how strong they attempted to be, could not be ignored. There was nothing about it that was going to be pretty, that was for sure, but what exactly was up there, only a hundred or so feet away, was twisting their stomach into knots, and stinging their cloudy heads with an unhinging anxiety that couldn't be tied to any kind of malleable emotion. They both slowed as they approached, noticing the columns of flames shooting from the door way, and their fears began to materialize. It appeared as if anyone within the path of the blast most certainly had to have perished, recognizing the severity of the heat, and the size of the flames, but there was absolutely no choice. Turning back wasn't an option. Right then it was a do or die situation. There was no other choice. They were going into the apartment, and doing what they knew they had to, whatever that might be. It seemed like they’d know that much when it happened, as all reasoning had been done in the minutes after the carnage began. Neither feared their own demise.....they feared for what had become of those inside. Curtis was running on instinct, and Ray was driven by necessity. There was ne reassuring, questioning, glance between the two before entry, and then they let the moment take over.
Ray was the first to get in, as he dashed past a propulsionary shooting flame from the blasted doorway, covering his face as he ducked down, attempting to get as low as possible under the flames without hindering mobility, before trying to see what lay before him. He made out shapes, faint colors, and silhouetted forms, but visibility was next to impossible. Curtis was right on his heels, coughing furiously after inhaling a lungful of charred particles and ebony smoke. After that, everything blurred for both Curtis and Ray, as they acted in a totally thoughtless manner, dodging the roaring fires and clouds of black and grey smoke polluting the confined atmosphere. They had some idea of what the apartment set up was from earlier, but it was just a blurry mental outline of the premicise, one that forced them to move forward without thinking, feeling around for their navigation, going on what their gut reaction instructed them to do. The majority of the damage had been done in the front, near the doorway, and bedrooms where the meth was actually being cooked. The entire apartment and surrounding area was pretty much destroyed, and everything was left in ruins. Occasionaly, the smoke would swirl around, and clear somewhat, allowing them to see for brief periods, to which they took full advantage. As they moved through the apartment, they came across 4 bodies, lying limp, devoid of any life, and mutilated beyond any recognition..... appendages torn from their sockets, faces collapsed within themselves, and skin boiled up and melted, oozing onto their fingers as the two franticaly checked for any signs of life. It was horrifying each time, but neither could allow themselves to pass a single person by. They had found Adam Hawking, the apartments proprietor, apparently blown 10 feet out of the room where he had been conducting his fatal science project, split in half at his torso, unrecognizable if not for the shredded remains of his infamously well known Scooby Doo T-shirt. They both were aware of what their ultimate objective was, but that didn't stop them from venturing out of their way to find some sign of life. If it hadn't been for their enormously high levels of endorphines and adrenaline, they would have vomited uncontrollably. There were two objectives in the apartment, and Ray knew subconsciously what they would be. Curtis found one.
They could hazily make out the living room, and Curtis was for sure he could feel the outline of the couch that had been right near the hallway as they poked and prodded like blind men through the chaos. He snagged Ray’s arm, which was as tense as stringed bow, and pulled him over.
“Amy......where was she?......” Curtis called out over the rip of the flames.
“The living room.......and this is the....” Ray finished, recognizing through his squinted eyes, and turned to where the couch might have been, thinking as Curtis had. But Curtis was a step ahead.
“Oh.......FUCK DUDE!” Curtis exclaimed hoarsely, falling back a few steps from his prone position over Toni Clark, or what had been left of her. He had been trying to assure himself that he had reached the couch, and in turn, the living room when his hand graced what appeared to be an arm. The skin, peeled off as he touched it, and he felt the bone slide underneath his fingertips. Ray shot his gaze over in Curtis’ direction thinking that he had found Amy.
“What! What the fuck!” Ray shot back intently.”It’s not Amy is it.....”
“......I......I.....”
“IS IT FUCKIN AMY! IS IT AMY!” Ray repeated fiercely.
“......I think it’s Toni.....” Curtis trailed off, in shock by her condition. Ray moved over past Curtis and looked at Toni, nearly retching at the sight. She was nearly indecipherable, mauled gruesomely by the flames and debris, and appearing as if she had been melted nearly completely away. They recognized her only by her frame, and what was left of her Playboy bunny bellybutton piercing.
“......Oh god........fuck.....” Ray murmured. “She’s........she’s gone....”
Even in the smog something else looked wrong with the body. His quick wits of the time allowed him to decipher the second he noticed it that someone was beneath her. He touched Toni’s arm, almost feeling morbid about touching a friend who had just died a horribly painful death, then nudged her slightly. Curtis looked Rays’ way, coming out of his daze, and wondered what the fuck Ray was attempting. It seemed inappropriate to say the least, when he grabbed Toni and basically tossed her to the side next to a smoldering former end table, but when he stood up to a crouched position he understood. Amy was there, right below Toni.
“Oh...fuck....Amy....” Ray said surveying her damages before grabbing her, and hoisting her onto his shoulder. He swiveled around to Curtis and deadlocked with his eyes. “Take Amy, get her the fuck out of here.”
Curtis stared back in a frenzied confusion.
“What the fuck are you talking about man....I..” He began, but Rays’ eyes seemed to light up in disapproval.
“TAKE HER! Get out of here.....” He commanded, gently placing Amy into Curtis arms, and into safety. “Get the fuck out, now!”
Curtis gave Ray one final stare, one that said everything. If they didn’t see each other again, if one of them didn’t make it out of there alive, then they were assured of everything by that nod. Curtis was going to do anything to get her out of there, and Ray was determined to meet them on the other side, no matter what other business he still felt he had. He took off through the smoke and brimstone, trying to keep as low as possible while holding a limp body over his shoulder. If he would have though about things for a few seconds he would have understood what Ray was doing, missing one key element of their agenda, which had turned out to be almost entirely unspoken. But he trusted him, while not knowing, and was getting the fuck out of there with Amy, alive.
Over the ripping whoosh of the wall of flames all around, and the resettling of the building as the apartment essentially crumbled, it’d be impossible to hear the sound of a baby crying. If you weren’t listening for it you’d never hear it, and even if you were it’d be muffled to the point of almost inaudibility. Luck was on Ray’s side though in the disaster, because that was the only other thing on his mind, the only other thing had been since he thought of Amy. As soon as she came into his mind trapped in that hellhole, he remembered where she and him had gone earlier, laying the baby down in a ramshackle crib her “friends” had set up in a tiny back room, all the way at the back of the apartment, surprisingly large for its lack of care from its tenants. It was almost a total sprint to the back of the apartment from where they were before, and he busted the door open as hard as he could. There were no sounds of crying, which immediately frightened Ray beyond belief. He rushed over to the crib as swift as he could as the pumes of smoke began to filter in. His worst fear was being realized, that he hadn’t gotten there on time, like his dream had predicted up until that point. His heart was pounding already, and now began to thump like a bass drum in his chest, as he looked over the bars.
It was smiling it looked like, as if to reassure Ray any further that the child hadn’t suffered smoke inhalation already, and something fluttered in his chest as the thump began to dissipate. He grabbed the child delicately, and tried his best to use his arms and chest to shield the volatile lungs of the infant, guarding with his life, the most precious in Amy Swanson’s life. He felt a duty to get the child out alive, no matter what Amy had chosen to do with her life in the past year, and what she had done to him. This was a matter of life and death, and his was worth much less than a child 19 years his senior. Besides that, he was the only one who knew where the kid had been put, a lucky miracle that came from the horror of the catastrophe all around.
He ran out into the hallway, which was starting to catch, after not being touched for at least 5-10 minutes, staring in a quick darting awe at the wall of flames surrounding what looked to be almost every inch of the apartment, layering it all with a thick brown-black smog, and attempted to take one last good breath of air before rushing into the pits of hell. The air stung his nostrils and was stale and putrid, but it was all he could get, and a lungful of it at that, causing a rush to coincide with the surging adrenaline. When that was finished, he sprinted forward, cradling Amy Swanson’s baby boy, into a journey he’d never remember when he got to the other side, if that was to happen. It was going to be all auto-pilot, while keeping constant eye on every thing he could, guiding himself through the apartment, over the bodies, the friends, the poor souls caught in a drug frenzy that indeed proved more fatal than they could possibly imagined, and back out into the biting whip of an Illinois windstorm.
Salt Becker had been through something like this before, although it was nothing like it, it had rendered almost the same consequences, and the same kind of harsh reminder of what the fuck was going on in his life. Seeing a friend, battered and close to death, in any fashion-from a fight, from an overdose, from a car crash-and now in explosion. What the fuck kind of bullshit was this. He had always just tried to be on the sidelines, be the guy that agrees with whatever, and can get along with prett much anyone, but he continually been involved in scenario’s like the one before him, with all of his good friends. It was as if he was a bad luck charm. But no, that wasn’t the real story. The real story was he was a kid that liked to get fucked up, from a pretty young age, and hung out with kids that shared that same zeal for a buzz that he had, and in their excesses they had gone in a slightly more outward intoxication, he usually just chilled, and bad things happened around him. Chaz was nobodies fault, but both Salt and Brody who was there with them knew that Chaz was actually sitting forward in his moms Jeep, arguing about a skimp bag that he had gotten, and was just in the wrong position at the wrong time. He felt the same though, on his knees watching Dan wither away, and having no idea what to do but scream for help. The only time he had ever really screamed at the top of his lungs was with Chaz, and he did the same now.
It was at about that time, as if by some odd twist of fate, that Chaz McAffrey pulled up to towering pillar of smoke and fire that had once been a friend of his’, Adam Hawking, who apparently finally met his fate with narcotics. He had heard the massive boom from Casey Patrick’s house and was the only person who decided to check it out. He jumped out of his car, his system still blasting Pantera, and barely remembered to put it in park on the sidewalk, as he got a look at the carnage that was ensuing in front of him. People were screaming everywhere, the fire was roaring like a freight train, and sirens and bells and whistles and frogs from the skies for all he could tell. It was a incredibly sobering thing to see, as he stared for the few seconds he got before being plunged into a chain of events that would change everyone’s lives.
Over the shouts he heard one distinctly. It was hard to put a face to the obviously wrenching cries for help, sounding so unlike Salt Becker, but in the very back of his head, the part that had been slightly conscious after he hit the tree and lay on the ground on Willow and Knox, he had heard Salt screaming bloody murder for.....
“.......HELPPPPPP! WE NEED SOME FUCKING HELP! ANYBODY! OVER HERE! HELP!”
It sounded so wrong that Chaz didn’t want to hear it, but he knew there was a reason for the screaming, and that meant one of his friends was hurt, and by the sounds of it, seriously. It was Salt, ensnared again by something drasticaly awful.
“Fuck, dude.....” Chaz muttered, before breaking into a run toward the sound of Salts voice, pleading for some fucking help.
Curtis heard Salt as well, and was thankful for it. Amy was becoming remarkably heavy, over his rapid fatigue due to intense carbon monoxide ingestine, and he knew that if the door wasn’t within the next 60 seconds he was going down hard. All he seen was occasional outlines over the supreme swell of black smoke into the building, but it had done him pretty well so far. So far was about as far as he could go though, and when he finally seen the light at the end of the hallway, he put all of his strength into a dead sprint towards their salvation. He busted through as quick as a drained human being can muster, and stumbled out to Salt, howling with unbridled velition for Dan. He collapsed to his knees right next to Dan, and fell over right after, only before setting Amy down as carefully as he could. Chaz caught him, before he fell forward onto his face in a dead weight slam to the concrete, and laid him down on the ground.
“Hold on, man, your gonna be cool.” Chaz told the unconscious Curtis. It was exhaustion that had tooken Curtis down, and Chaz figured this, putting his hand on Curtis chest in a kind of protective gesture, while turning over to Salt who was between Amy and Dan now.
“Fuck Chaz, fuck......” Salt stammered, eyes wide in a frenzied disbelief. “Amy and Dan, man, Amy and Dan.....”
“I know Salt, fuck! But we gotta help them! C’mon....” Chaz commanded at first, and in midsentence nearly pleaded.
“God Dammit man, why fucking us! Why fucking us!” Salt continued with a squeeling discontent, his voice crackling as it had reached its peak, and tears forming at the corners of his eyes.
“Salt, do you want them to fucking die!” Chaz countered with a bellow of his own, turning toward Curtis as soon as he finished “Curt.....Curt.....c’mon buddy, wake up....your not down yet...”
Chaz gave Curtis’ head a slight nudge, while also shaking his shoulders. It didn’t take much to get him back, since he had only passed out, and he came to in a blurry confusion, much like waking up drunk. He'd done it before, waking up after falling unconscious due to exhaustion, but that never rendered it any less jarring.
“You good man?” Chaz quickly asked to the awakening Curtis.
“......huh....wha....” Curtis murmured in a drawl.
“Are you good! Are you gonna be cool!” Chaz almost commanded, without meaning to. He was really worrying about Dan and Amy right near him, but having Curtis up and with it could help them extensively. Salt seemed to be breaking down before their eyes, so someone needed to be there to help if needed.
“....I.....I yeah.....I’m....cool.” He slowly stammered, sitting up, and remembering where he was from the waves of ferocious heat directly above them, and the sounds of chaos everywhere surrounding them.
“Alright, I need you to check on Amy’s breathing....I’ll check Dan.” Chaz told him, informing the still weary Curtis if who needed attention. Curtis knew but it wasn’t all coming together to fast after passing out.
“Yeah......I got it....”
Chaz almost jumped ontop of Dan, and checked his chest for a heartbeat, and breathing. The heartbeat was a flop it sounded like, and the breathing was so shallow it was hardly breaths at all, just quick inhalations. Dan hadn’t gotten much smoke in his lungs, but he had suffered severe internal damage, and was as close to dying as one could be without losing all their oxygen and crossing over. That wasn’t good, but then again it was. If he was still breathing then he still had a chance. Amy looked much worse though, covered in black soot, her white wifebeater almost charcoal, and her skin coated from head to toe. She had obviously been right in the heart of whatever happened, and was visibly burned. Curtis crawled over to her, his head spinning around in two different directions, and an oncoming headache that was going to rival any he could possibly remember, but he knew he had to do what he was supposed to. He had risked his life to save Amy in that damn wreckage, and he wasn’t about to lose her now. It felt wrong for a millasecond to feel Amy’s breast for signs of breathing with Dan right next to her dying, and Ray hopefully about to emerge, but that was just instinct. He felt her neck at the same time for a pulse, and both checked out to his relief.
Sirens blared near, which was what they were praying for. They couldn’t do a fucking thing if one of them started to go, except the minute skills they learned in Health class 5 years ago in their nubile Freshman days. It wasn’t on their direct mindset but it was there the whole time nonetheless, that if they died right in front of him, Chaz and Curtis both though seperately the same thing.....they might not be able to go on. They’d seen Jay die, and that was too much a year ago. This now was worse, worse than any of them could have possibly every dreamed things could get, and anything could happen. The red and blue lights popping up over the walls by them usually would have made them cringe and run off in opposite directions, if two of their friends weren’t critically injured. This time though it was unbelievably comforting. They just might make it through this. Might.
"What the fuck happened man?" Chaz questioned, his voice quivering with fear at his inability to do anything for his injured friends. He knew though. There was no doubts about it.
"It exploded......fuckin......Ray's still inside....Jesus Christ, Ray's still fuckin inside man." Curtis replied quaking, as Chaz was. It had just came to him, that Ray hadn't emerged yet. His head sped in a million directions, and there was hardly a clear though to be deliberated.
"Oh, shit dude......" Chaz muttered in horror.
The two slowly peered over at the building, and expected the worst. It was almost totally consumed by then, and Curtis was in shock that even he had made it out in one respective piece. Their hope dwindled the longer they stared, watching the cummulation of their last few years, go up in a blaze of wilting aspirations. Lives vanished, dreams suffocated, and friends disappeared into charred remnants of, their souls vaporizing into the smog rising in a dancing cyclone towards the darkening skies. Where there had once been a fat, yellow sun, hanging like a Georgia peach in the sky, there was now a succumbing rift of thunderclouds, looming ever closer. It's gaunt, beleaguring symbolism sent their stomachs churning with an uneasy foreboding. An impending storm was on its way, and there wasn't a shred of shelter, for miles on end.......
Ray stepped through the smoke laden doorway, to the outside world once again, and seen a scene of devastation that made every seem like it was going in super slow motion, flashing black and white and red and blue in his eyes, and filling his damaged ears with whooping sirens. EMT’s were shouting back and forth at each other, pulling a gurney out for Dan, and another team running up with one for Amy, both lying on the ground unconscious, and looking to be in horrible shape. Chaz and Curtis were standing right near, just out of the way of the emergency technicians, eyes dead focused on their friends, still clinging onto to life for the time being. Salt was leaned up against the wall he had been flung into only 15 minutes or so before, when everything changed. He was doing something Ray had never seen him do. He was sitting down against the brick, arms crossed over his knees, head down, apparently crying his eyes out. There were cops everywhere, people crowding around, none of whom had decided to lend a fucking finger when Dan and Amy were lying there near dead, but now were pushing and prodding with cops to get a look at the scene. So many emotions hit Ray then. It was a cavalcade he’d only felt one time before, when his best friend had overdosed almost exactly a year before. Pain, grief, sadness, anger, betrayal, loathing, yearning.....everything human beings generally feel when hurt in some way, all in one undescribable notion. It stung worse than any flame rushing up his back as he fled the fire, or any smoke burning his eyes to a bloodshot irritation. He had made it out alive, but what for? If this is how things were going to be, then what was the point.
And then he felt the child squirming in his arms, never crying, always moving, and wondered how he could’ve forgotten it. That was the reason all of the shit he had just went through, what they’d all just went through, and were about to go through in the coming times, was worth it. If nothing else that is. If Amy and Dan went because of it, at least their offspring had been saved. That left Ray with a feeling he couldn’t describe or put to words. It was just vacant.
Chaz noticed Ray first, and seen him pulling little Maynard from his jacket, carefully as he possibly could, bringing the silent infant into the fresh air(fresh only in comparison to the apartment, or what was left of it). His jaw dropped, and he was frozen in his stare at him, as the EMT’s rushed over to him, to apprehend Maynard. Ray let him go, and stared forward, covered in soot like Curtis and Amy both were, bleeding from a hundred tiny cuts on his arms, neck and face and emphasizing how they all felt then. Helpless and dead inside. Firemen rushed past him, and pushed him out of the way, snapping him from his trance as they went in to the job he had already done. He trudged over to Curtis and Chaz, still in their own state of disbelief, and went past them, heading directly for Salt. Both said not a word, unable to even if they wanted, and watched Ray sit down next to Salt against the wall.
Salt looked up with eyes welling of tears, and shot a sympathetic glance to Ray, before putting his head back down. He wasn’t crying anymore, he just couldn’t look at the scene anymore. Ray put his arm around his friend, and stared at the firefighters beginning to finally put the blaze out, and thought of how he got there.
It had been a time when things had begun to turn back to a shade of normalcy, after the freedom of graduation and the excesses that come with it faded into the aftermath of the high school years. Getting over Jay’s death, and a cheated unfair one at that, was hard on everyone, but without a doubt, the hardest on Ray. The two had been best friends for a good time, second only to Salt or Jason or Schuman, and had planned for months ahead of his departure to start a band. They had been close when Jay made the fatal mistake of too much heroin, and was ripped from the world, something Ray always felt he caused. Amy Swanson had been there for him the entire time, trying to combat his mood swings, while dealing with the death of someone who she felt she was just as close with, and worrying about the onslaught of college, a job, and life after school in about the span of a month. They were a group that bounced back pretty well from tragedies, and had experienced enough of them to know how long it took to mull over, but this one had been life shattering in more ways than one. The standard month came and went, and most people tried getting back to some degree of normalcy, feigning it if they had to, but nobody really felt any different. Jay left a gaping hole in the relationships, and the hearts of everyone who knew him, and everyone who had loved him.
The relationship between Ray and Amy was deteriorating, and both knew it. They didn’t want it to happen, but it just was. Where there had been virtually no fighting, there had become a constant battle, and where they had once had an almost exhausting sex life, it became once or twice a week if time permitted them to do so. Both were working, Amy at Hooters making mad cash as the kiddies liked to say, and Ray in a tutoring program to become a bricklayer, and neither got to see much of each other. When they did, stupid things interrupted the happy times, and both of them were constantly on edge from massive workloads, and unhealthy drug habits. It was determined that everybody would slow down on their intake of toxins after dispersing so damn somberly from the hospital where their friend had lost his fight to survive, but that only stuck until the numbness wore off of Jay’s death, about 2 weeks afterward. Amy had began getting back into meth without Ray knowing to compensate for her now demanding job, and Ray spiraled further and further into an alcoholic stupor. He didn’t care about Amy knowing he was drinking constantly, he just didn’t tell her about the heroin for obvious reasons that she had made abundantly clear. He had swore to never shoot up again, but that was bullshit, and planned bullshit at that. Pot had become stale, and they both needed something stronger for the pain. They were lying to each other everyday, blatant, hurtful lies, that got to be too much after awhile.
It was sometime around September, when the August heat dissipated and the drafty fall temperatures sporatically began popping up, blowing the dead leaves around in a spiral upward, and causing a grab for the jacket in the closet again. The summer had been rough, incredibly rough, and it left a trail of broken wills in its wake. Curtis had gotten into coke in a huge way, dealing it in ounces to Stan where the tides would have been turned six months before, as well as selling bottles of ecstasy pills for huge profit, and extraneous bodily and mental harm to himself. Salt had gotten into H. with Ray, and became his drinking buddy again once July hit, sending both into a 3 month long binge, racking up consumption fines, while being kicked out of his house and losing his job and car. Wes, the only one of them to go away to a “big” college, Illinois State University, had became a raging alcoholic as well, feeding his penchant for liquor with the never ending cavalcade of quadruple keggers, house parties, and whatever other reasons there were to drink at a college campus(like waking up, before a test, or before any event that might require an ounce of sobriety). Chaz had ventured with Curtis for awhile into the cocaine business and lifestyle, but quit soon after and began dealing large ammounts of weed to pay for his schooling at a local college. Dan, Toni Clark, Casey Patrick, Bill Kendall, Amy, Stan, and a slew of others all began digging into crack extensively, while still majoring in mostly crystal meth, and the always available marijuana, although it had apparently gone “back out of style”. Nobody was in their right mind, and everyone was becoming more and more consumed by addictions as time ticked on. Ray and Amy were both looking strung out, weak, and skinny as a bone, eyes sunken in, wills displaced, and lost in a haze of narcotics. Their time was getting close to over.
The straw that broke the camels back was Amy’s pregnancy. She noticed it in late August, and got it checked out in early September. She was a month in, and she didn’t know who the father was. Well, “not” knowing are the wrong words.....not wanting to know was the real idea. With Ray and Amy seeing continually less of each other, and her seeing a good deal more of all the old “friends” who used to go after her before she met Ray, she began to distance herself from her boyfriend. To her he was a alcoholic needle fiend, even though he blatantly denied it to her face she had been told by people who shot up with him, and to Ray, Amy was a dirty, meth whore, tooken over completely by the drug, and lost in its grip. They stayed together because it was all they knew. One night after a vicious verbal war with Ray, Amy went to Dan’s new apartment, whom he had just gotten with Adam Hawking, and got drunk off Southern Comfort, and did a number of drugs to make her forget the night. She did forget most of it, except for a brief encounter under the covers with Dan in the middle of the party, much like they had done not long ago at Toni Clarks uber famous bash. She just wanted dick, and hadn’t had it for awhile, trying as well to get back at Ray for insulting her with the truth earlier, and above all in a cloud of narcotic haziness. She knew, really who the father was, but didn’t want to admit to herself or anyone else. It was the push needed for the change, and she decided that even if she didn’t really know, because it very well could have been Rays kid-they had had intercourse around the time the child was concieved, she was just going to break it off and say it was Dans. It was easier, and in her heart she knew the answer.
Ray blew it off, and did alot more heroin. That was as simple as it got for him. She had expected an outburst that might even threaten her own safety, although she was assured in the back of her mind that Ray could never ever lay a hand on her in anger, but got nothing of the sort. He told her she was a slut and to get out of his sight, while swigging on a jug of wine in his Buick Regal, listening to Blind Melon. Amy found the moment to be much harder than she previously expected, and tears formed in her eyes, glazing them over with a despondent desolation. Ray didn’t look at her once, just kept looking forward, eyes behind shades although it was 12:30 at night, and turned up the music. The song was appropriately entitled Walk, and that’s what she did. She cried and cried and cried afterward in her own vehicle, not for losing Ray then, but for letting things get so far out of hand. They had had something perfect for awhile, but like all things seemed to, that crumbled too. It was over, and that sometimes can be the hardest word in the english language to deal with. She was stuck with Dan now, when all she wanted was Ray Montgomery, the one she had met her senior year, when he changed her life around forever. She loved Dan, but not like that. Not like she had loved Ray. It just wasn’t there anymore. Despite that, she couldn’t let things end like they were destined. It seemed cruel to let what they once had die like an unwanted child in a gutter.
She drove back after a few minutes of sitting, thinking, pondering what the hell she was going to say to him. She didn’t have the slightest idea, she was spun severely even then, but it was going to just come out like it always did, like they had always allowed their conversing to be. Good or bad. He was still there like she expected, probably waiting to finish the jug of wine before speeding off towards his house, tossing it out uncaringly as he sprayed gravel from McNaughtin Parks one long loop of a road. She couldn’t remember why she had said to meet there, but it seemed like the right thing to do after taking a bump. She stopped behind, turning her lights off, and got out of the car almost cautiously. The music was still pounding away, echoing off the open spaces of the park, so she assumed he was still in it. A slumped shadow lingered in the drivers side, and for a second, she feared he may have taken his own life somehow. It didn't seem like a Ray Montgomery thing to do, but he didn't seem himself those days.
As she approached she ran over what might work and what might set him off, all seeming too confusing and distant to make any sense, and she found herself still trying to even rationalize why she was coming back after what he had just said. She was already on the way there though, so it was done essentially.
Amy looked in the window and seen for the first time, Ray putting a needle into his arm, and injecting heroin. It looked like something she shouldn’t be seeing, like it was indecent for her to pry into his life when she just dumped him for someone he didn’t look too kindly on, but he looked over as she stared, apathetically. He looked back down as he injected it all into his bulging bruised vein, then pulled the needle out and tossed it out the window. He closed his now exposed eyes, sullen with dark depressive rings, and began leaning back into his seat trudgingly, at the same time moving the arm he had just shot into, closer and closer to the door handle. It craned over the lock for a second, pausing in what seemed like deliberation before pulling it lazily up, and dropping the limp hand to the handle and opening it, slightly pushing it forward. Amy wearily got in, and Ray hit the ATTN button on his cd player, temporarily muting the end of his Blind Melon cd.
“So..........whad’ya want?.....” Ray muttered, now waxed beyond belief and drunk off a jug of wine. Amy was silent, staring at his arm, cradled now on the arm rest. He slit his eyes open and turned his head towards her. “.........don’t fuckin look at me....like I’m a bad man.......you got your own fuckin demons.....”
“You’ve got a problem Ray........you really do.....” She told him.
“Not yours.”
“Oh, God Ray.” She breathlessly said in shock.
“Feels good though.......” He lulled, smirking at his remark, and hicupping a little chuckle. “What the fuck do you want already.”
“I just.......I just wanted to......I don’t know. Talk to you about this.”
“What the fuck..........is there to talk about....Amy?”
“I don’t even know. I just didn’t want it to end like this......this harsh....”
“You fucked Dan Amy.....he got you pregnant........you fuckin ended this.....”
“I did. I’m sorry. I’m weak......you know that.”
Ray caught a gleam of light in his eyes from the moonlight and laughed one short disheartening hah.
“Amy, Amy, Amy...........I fuckin loved you..........loved....” He finally said before Amy had heard enough.
“Alright, you don’t wanna listen to me Ray, I understand.” She said reaching for the handle.
“I don’t think........you do.”
“Goodbye Ray.”
“Yeah.”
That was the last time they talked, for obvious reasons. A few weeks came and Ray had not missed her.
The heroin got boring for Ray, too monotonous, and mostly to spite Amy and everything she had said about them right before they had-----she had---broken it off, he decided his run with the drug was decidedly over. It felt wrong the entire time, while feeling incredibly too right, and the strain it caused on his body, making him look like an emaciated Somalian, and the rigorous mental fatigue was just too much. He never really understood how someone could get hooked on a drug like that, that is until it happened to him, and the image of him as a heroin addict seemed disgusting and worthless once he finally got sober, or close to it as he once been, without the needles. Nobody ever really got sober, they just got tired of whatever drug they were on, and that’s what happened to Ray, along with other factors that coincided with the obvious need to give it up. It was killing him, and killing his ability to work (bricklaying being a profession that was quite difficult to handle when you have no strength in your entire body, and you nod off in the middle of your break, to be found drooling intensively, eyes sunken back in the head for a little nap), so he just stopped. There was a days worth of real withdrawal, then a week or so if “Gee, wish I had some H” passively before he no longer felt he needed it, and then it was done. It made him feel good to get off something he knew most people couldn’t, and to prove Amy, a name and word that had become a stinging insult nearly, that he was better than her and the miscreants she surrounded herself with. He was damn sure she wasn’t going to get off the meth anytime soon, so her hypocritical ass could just stay with Dan, and he could go ahead and have fun raising a kid with his immature still, antics, and refusal to grow the fuck up. It was back to pot and booze for Ray.
Once he showed everyone that vices were exactly that, and could be combated if you really wanted to try it, alot of his friends slowly trudged out of the holes of addiction they had dug for themselves, and attempted to really, finally....get back to normal. Curtis and Ray started working out extensively, bulking up within a few months, taking Jujitsu classes with Ray’s uncle Brad, as Curtis kicked his coke habit, and stopped selling permanently. He had known that his house, still living with his parents to mask the almost cartel like business he was running, had started to get watched, and there was a buzz around town that was whispering his name to every fiend and or undercover cop that came along. He was getting too well known, and that was when it made sense to stop. Prison wasn’t worth the extra money he was making, which was a few meager thousand or 5 every other day, and that was where he was heading if he kept going, or got busted driving around with it. Like Ray, it had gotten boring after 3 or 4 months of non-stop usage, and it had gotten dangerous. Gone was the giddiness they got when trying something new, or getting an assload of narcotics for a cheap price, because there was nothing new to try, and they were dealing with everything on a daily basis, eliminating the thrill or fun of what used to get them off when they began. It had become just another part of their lives, and that was just not worth it. It was really time for a change, and they were ready to make it.
They had always lived in kind of a strange paradox. They were the group of friends that was comprised of people that were all from a different social class, different affiliations, different lives completely, coming together because they didn’t give a shit what the person looked like, as long as they were cool. It was indefinable what “cool” actually was, but it was just something that was unsaid. All being so alike, but so different their drug habits were what really brought them all together. Maybe not those alone, but incidents mainly based around doing something illegal were what essentially they all had in common. They all just wanted to have fun with their lives, and altered states were a great way to do just that. They delved deep into what they did, learned about it, checked up on it before doing anything drastic, and just got together on the weekends when most high school freshmen and sophmores were watching movies, or going to a local basketball game. They bonded with drugs, and became somewhat infamous for it, therefore putting them all together as the Drug Social Class. That’s what it really broke down to. That’s what most of their conversations hovered around if not fully discussing, and that’s what they would look forward to on the weekends, then becoming once a day, then transposing to all day soon after. They were the people that got stories told about them by everyone in their early years, then introduced all those newly blossoming to the idea of getting fucked up who had once only heard of it by senior year. Living that legacy down would be the hard part.
It was all losing its mystique though, and they could see it happening. But unlike most people who don’t try half the stuff that they did in their first 3 years of high school in the span of their entire life, they pretty much had all the bases covered when it came down to things they had or hadn’t done. By that time it had begun what had they became addicted to, and what they might start becoming addicted to. It wasn’t a game now. They had money, freedom, and time and those options can turn on you if you have the wrong mindset. Most of the time, in those days, they were in the wrong mindset, and the wrong fucking planet for all it s worth. It was a gradual process, brought down to just as they had began, and always really remained, potheads. If anything that was what they would have liked to have defined them in High School. That was what they were really about, and that’s how they all calmed down. They knew they had duties now, and it wasn’t worth it to be “fucked up” all the time. Dan, Amy, and their whole new clan had their own thing going at the time, and that thing was what would eventually tear their whole world apart. They did their own thing while Ray and everyone else chilled for awhile, letting the always turning drug wheel work itself on the younger or stupider people more than ready to “get fucked up”. Things never stay calm for long though, and they knew that.
It was really hard for Ray to sit and take medical treatment when there were people he cared about a few floors above them, either dying, dead, or rapidly approaching either scenario. For the most part, it was Amy that was on his mind, but after seeing how badly Dan had been injured, it also caused him to think back to the good times with him as well, although much less prominent in his head. He was now in a dankly lit hospital room.......which hospital he couldn’t remember-he just knew it wasn’t Pekins because the serious condition of Dan and Amy, sitting down on a stiff bed, having his forehead stitched back together by a doctor who was at least 40 years his senior, staring forward at the wall, waiting anxiously for the old codjer to hurry the fuck up. The man was mumbling something about narcotics being very volatile substances, and how he’s had more victims for meth overdoses than for the flu (it was near impossible to overdose on meth), lying out his ass about something he obviously knew not a thing about. Ray ingnored him though, and let the man finish his drudging work, so he could go see what was happening upstairs, where everyone else was. It smelled like death in that room, maybe because of the old man in front of him who looked to be the great grandfather of a mole, or maybe because it was the only thing on his mind at the time. Either way, it was something Ray didn’t want to be around much longer, the fumes resembling that of desanitization chemicals, sprayed over and over and over until it stained the air with its overpowering scent. It was as nauseating as the smog he had inhaled, and he was growing sick of it.
“Yep, your the lucky one.......all you got is this little.....” The youth deficient doctor began before Ray finally cut him off.
“Two of my friends were in the explosion......Doc.” He said behind gritting teeth, emphasizing the "doc" with a compunction pent on anger. A twinge of fear burst into the old mans eyes, as he halted his process for the moment, and gawked at Ray like he’d just signed his own death certificate.
“I’m sorry, son.” The man, wise in years, apologized. Ray shot him a quick glance, then looked back at the wall intently. Making an old man piss his pants was not the kind of thing he needed right then. He just wanted free. “Well......um....there you go.....”
Ray hopped off the bed, and created a mist of dust and soot to bounce off of him and release itself into the air as he rushed out the door. It swirled around for a second in front of the doctor, and caused him to sneeze as Ray bolted out the door, rapidly hustling towards stairs or an elevator he was clueless to the location of. His head was still spinning with confusion, after the offset of the surge of adrenaline he’d faced earlier tapered, and there wasn’t too much on his mind except finding someone who might know something about where or what had happened to Amy and Dan. He was on the first floor, he knew that, and his friends were somewhere above him, but it had been hours since he had gotten there. Anything could have transpired in the transition from afternoon to evening. The idea of asking an employee or going to the front desk seemed to slip Ray’s mind, but he’d eventually find what he was looking for without trying.
After meandering through drab hallways that looked all too the same, he began to get somewhat fired up. All he wanted was to find a fucking elevator, a staircase....hell he would have climbed a ladder up 8 stories if one had become available to him, but his results were repeatedly inconclusive. His nostrils began to flare with deep, shallow breaths, building up to what could have been an explosive outburst of pent up emotion and stress, as he neared a corner that strikingly reminded him of one he’d just seen seconds or minutes before. He was about to just shout for “some fucking help” when he heard a familiar voice bellow an enraged “DAMMIT”, followed by a loud hollow thud tailed by a crackling pop. It was Curtis for sure, and he sounded to be assaulting some innocent soda machine. Ray’s eyes lit up quickly, and he charged around the corner to make sure his assumption was correct.
“Curtis!” Ray exclaimed as he got sight of his buddy, standing over the Mountain Dew machine, fists clenched and ready to tangle with the machine “Fuck, Curtis, I’m glad I found you....”
“Holy shit, Ray! We didn’t know what the fuck happened to you!” Curtis replied in elation, turning and noticing where the voice that called his name had just came from.
Curtis was clean-shaven, showered, and had changed his clothes, an advantage Ray hadn’t had yet. Curtis noticed automatically how Ray was still looking, and the sinking feeling of despair that he’d been battling over the last 2 hours resurfaced in all its disdain. It brought him back to the apartment, back to the explosion, and back to all the carnage. Ray had only been allowed to clean his hands and face off, but the wounds tattooing his body, the ones that had been tooken care of, showed everything that they had gone through, and the situation wasn’t over yet. It hadn’t even begun.
The two embraced momentarily without really even thinking about it, just overcome by striking tragedies they’d suffered and glad to see each other. They weren’t the kind of people to hug really, even after going through so many ordeals in their term as comrades, but for some reason it seemed like the right thing to do. Both cringed as the other patted each other on the back from the burns they’d suffered, but didn’t show it.
“Where’s Amy and Dan?”
They shuffled along the monotonous hallways, passing by open doors that seemed to permeate suffering, and breezing by sullen faces of despair, as Curtis caught Ray up on the situation.
“Amy’s stable......she’s got some pretty bad burns, but nothing serious. They won’t let anyone see her but they did come out once and tell us what was up.” Curtis explained, trying to keep up with the frenetic pace of Ray.
“Has she woken up yet?” He asked, glancing over at Curtis for half a second.
“Not yet. She might have by now....fuck I don’t know.....it was like an hour ago that the doctor talked to us.” Curtis continued.
“What about Maynard?”
“Maynards fine. He’s sleeping right now, or last time I checked.”
“Thank fucking god.”
There was brief pause as they approached the elevator, hanging open without a soul in it, about to close. Ray shot his arm out instinctively and stopped it, then they stepped in.
“What about Dan?” Ray almost reluctantly wondered. Curtis sighed deeply.
“It’s not looking good. He’s critical. Lots of blood loss, concussion, broke 6 ribs, his wrist, his jaw, ruptured his spleen, dislocated his collar bone.....it’s....it’s fuckin bad, man.” Curtis explained, having a hard time getting the entire sentence out. Ray closed his eyes in sorrow, and finally relaxed for a second as he nearly fell backward and leaned on the elevator wall.
“Fuck. Not again.” He said shaking his head and rubbing his blooshot eyes.
“Yeah..........their trying to call us heroes........mainly you. I just can’t fucking accept it.” Curtis informed Ray almost unwillingly.
“Heroes?” Ray questioned, pondering the question in his head. “That’s the last fucking thing we need right now.”
“That’s what I said. That’s what I told the news.”
“The news? What news?”
“Channel 25, or 31, or 420....i don’t fuckin know. They wanted to talk to me though. And you, but I told them you were busy. Chaz and Salt told them what we did and they loved it.”
“Fuck that.”
“No shit.”
The two paused regretfully and both let out a wheezy sigh from their chests, and from their hearts. The idea of Curtis Hughes and Ray Montgomery being heroes seemed so out of line it was hillarious. One a former heroin addict alcoholic, and the other a former coke dealing pill popper.....or insufflater, being praised for something other than entering the nearest rehab facility. They did what they had to do to save their friends, and that just happened to entail running into a searing fire once or twice, they weren’t heroes. They were just good friends. Either way, the notion was dismissed essentially due to their mind being focused on many other largely more important issues than their superheroe status in Gotham City. The elevator doors were opening, and they had people to see.
“I got a bad feeling, Curtis. Real bad.” Ray awkwardly announced, breaking the momentary pause.
“About what? Dan?”
“I don’t know. Dan, and alot of other things.”
“We’ve already been through the hard part man.”
Ray paused again, this time though it felt forboding. Like he was a little too right about what he was predicting. Curtis didn’t know at the time, but Ray figured he had an idea if he really thought about it.
“I don’t think so, dude. I really fuckin don’t.” Ray bleakly admitted, shifting his eyes in a quick glance over at Curtis, whose eyes met his in the middle. Ray was correct way too much when he was serious, and Curtis knew that he was.
“Don’t worry about it, Raymond. You’ve got enough on your mind already.” He suggested, but Ray only shook his head. The elevator doors opened right after that, and they hurried out, forgetting whatever issue had just plagued them.
Amy’s room was number 554, and was crowded with friends and relatives, eyes fresh with recently cried tears. There were alot of people Ray knew, and some he cared not to associate with, gathered around in 4-6 people droves, with others taking up entire rows of chairs nearby. Salt and Chaz were talking with Casey Patrick, Stan, Felix Vallux, and John Gatsby, all looking more depressed than they’ve probably ever been in their life. Jason, Farrelly, Ron, Schuman, and Jake and Carrie Roman were sitting together in a semi-circle outside the room, Carrie weeping harshly into Jake’s shoulder, and Farrelly explaining his theory on something to anyone who would listen. Nobody seemed to be. Candy Garcia was there with Teddy Dennison, who now was wearing a Pantera shirt, and sported several piercings to go with his newly in style parachute pants and dyed black/red streaked hair, and it seemed the two had gone goth together all of a sudden, back to Candy’s original sinful style that had garnered her the Slut of the Year trophy not long before. Bill Kendall was there, with a few of his friends, all gathering near Amy’s room it seemed to show support for Adam Hawking, making the place more of a meeting grounds for all the victims involved. Wes was in a corner with a group of people, running his hands through his hair, and looking to be on the verge of a severe mental breakdown, one that was coming on for quite some time. Parents were scattered all throughout this mess of cliques, all looking grim and lifeless. It was reassuring to see them all there, a show of hands that let Curtis and Ray know their endangering of each others lives had been worth it. Alot of people cared about the three people they pulled out.
“God damn.” Ray marveled as they approached the crowd.
“I know. Chaz was doin alot of work getting ahold of people. He kinda took over the little shit.” Curtis said, as their pace slowed slightly.
The mass of good friends and acquaintances all seemed to turn at once, and halt all conversation as the two “heroes” got closer to them. Ray looked as if he had just came from the fire not minutes before except for his aforementioned hands and face, and that seemed oddly symbolic of what they had supposedly become. It seemed as if they were gazing in awe at them, but both were too modest to really believe that, and just summed it up to shock in their heads. The two had been all over the news, their story being widely broadcasted around the local stations, and if anyone hadn’t gotten a call from Chaz, then they had seen something about it on the news. A good majority began clapping when they seen the two, after Carrie Roman kind of broke the strange beat, and cried out to Ray.
“Oh, thank God your alright Ray!” She howled, still crying, and now apparently crying even harder than she was before. She jumped from her seat, and bolted in Rays direction as they stopped in protest to the clapping.
Carrie gripped her arms around Rays midsection, and pressed her entire body up against him hard, covering herself from head to toe in dirt, but she didn’t seem to mind at all. Ray visibly cringed this time, in front of about 30 to 40 onlookers, but again didn’t say anything. It felt good to give Carrie a real hug, in more than just a physical/sexual way. Of course her totally surprising him with an open mouthed kiss for a few seconds didn’t hurt anything too bad. It didn’t make any sense at all why she would do it (the two had been together before, quite infamously with Amy involved as well) but in all the madness and confusion they were dealing with, it was the most pleasing question he’d encountered all day. It was odd with Curtis standing right next to them, after the debacle they’d gone through with each other, Carrie, Curtis, Ray, and Amy a year before, but once again......Ray didn’t give a fuck. He hadn’t kissed a girl like that in a quite awhile.
“We didn’t know where they took you....and I thought Amy’s was dead....and Toni....she’s....dead. Oh, God, it’s so good to see you.” Carrie cried, weeping into Rays chest, much more solid then the last time she’d laid her head there. To her it was the warmest, most comfortable place she could be.
“Well, I’m fine, aren’t I? Stop cryin, babe, it’ll all be okay.” He whispered in her ear softly, as he lead her back to her seat. “And thanks everyone, but think about Amy.”
The applause died down as Curtis, Ray, and Carrie made their way over to where Carrie had been sitting. Chaz, Wes and Salt were heading over from different directions, to make the circle of friends complete. They sat down and got revering respectful looks from all around them.
“That was cool as fuck what you did Ray.” Ron said, looking Ray directly in the eyes in admiration, and extending his hand in respect.
“No shit man. You really are a fuckin hero.” Farrelly echoed, preparing for the same gesture Ron had given, after Ray connected with the tribal gesture of respect almost reluctantly. Everyone else chimed in with the same kind of banter, as Salt, Wes and Chaz took a seat as well, next to the men of the hour. Wes stood like usual, pacing even as he tried to remain steady. Ray gazed over at his buddy Salt, who seemed to be doing better than the last time he had seen him, but still far from decent.
“How you holdin’ up buddy?” Ray asked Salt, who looked down at the floor before turning his gaze back up to Ray to speak.
“Better. Still fuckin sucks.” Salt shortly replied, his voice low with distraught.
“It’s gonna be fine, man, buck up.” Ray told him, thinking everything but that. He kept lying to everyone telling them everything was going to find and dandy, but that was total bullshit. It really wasn’t going to be okay. But with Carrie leaking tears into his shirt, and Salt looking inches away from suicide he didn’t have anything else to really tell them. “This is quite a gathering.”
“It’s everyone I could get. Their all kinda gathering around Amy’s room for all the victims.” Chaz said, as Ray had thought.
“Who didn’t make it? Did anyone but Dan and Amy make it out?” Ray wondered. Chaz shook his head solemnly.
“Nobody else made it. Dan and Amy wouldn’t have either without you and Curtis.”
“God.....damn. That’s....”
“Six people. Toni, Adam, Shannon, Brodie and two others we didn’t know. Would have been seven if you hadn’t found little Maynard.” Chaz informed, his usual jovial demeanor gone, and in its place a stolid and frightenly serious tone, that is rarely heard. “This is fucking bullshit man. Bullshit.”
“Believe me Chaz........I know.” Ray agreed.
“I’m fuckin pissed I couldn’t go in there man.....I could’ve saved Toni.....or Brodie.....” Chaz began, stammering in his excited Chazlike stuter, before Ray cut him off.
“They were all dead, Chaz. I seen ‘em all. Curtis did too. If you would have seen Toni I don’t think you’d be able to live with yourself, trust me.” Ray said trying to ease Chaz’ pain a little. Curtis was nodding with every word Ray said.
“Seriously Chaz, there was nothing anyone could do. Amy was lucky. So was Dan.” Curtis reiterated, recalling the horrific face of what used to be Toni Clark in his head, and wished that he had never laid eyes on it. It would haunt him for the rest of his life, along with the other charred corpses mutilated from the initial blast, and the two that crawled up to them and died within seconds. Then though, he did his best to show no real signs of distraught. The real shit would have made him look like a "pussy".
“Still.......I could have done something.....” Chaz continued on.
“Dude, it was unpreventable. That fuckin idiot cost five-maybe six people their lives because he had to make a poison that never should have been invented in the first place......” Wes started, before Chaz rose up from his seat in a clamor, and turned to Wes.
“That fuckin idiot was my fuckin friend Wes, and he’s dead now! Fuck you!” Chaz exploded in the face of Wes, who had not meant to offend anyone, like usual.
“I knew him too, man.....” Wes nervously muttered.
“Well he was my fucking friend! What the fuck gives you the fucking right to call him a fucking idiot, you piece of shit!” Chaz roared even louder, getting angrier by the second. Curtis, Ray, and Farrelly quickly made haste, and got between the two.
“What the fuck Chaz, fuck you! He killed five people, and might end up killing one of my best fucking friends!” Wes countered, his voice raising to a crackling limit.
“Hey......hey.....calm down....both of you.” Curtis called out, pulling Wes away, as Ray grabbed Chaz, who was fixed on Wes.
“Yeah, c’mon....this isn’t the time or the place to bicker.” Ray said, but Chaz didn’t agree.
“This also isn’t the time to be badmouthing a fuckin dead person!” Chaz ranted, right in his own way, but displaying at the most inopportune time.
“I’m not badmouthing anyone.....he fuckin killed them Chaz!” Wes shot back, recieving a light shove backward into the wall from Curtis that set him straight.
“Chill.” Curtis commanded, putting his hand on Wes’ chest.
“Alright, alright....”
“I’m going to have a cigarette, fuck this.” Chaz said ending the argument, and stomping away. Everyone took their seats again, and settled down, not wanting to get their emotions too high. Everyone had just seen Chaz’s outburst, but decided not to comment on it. There was too many volatile emotions being dished out by everyone, to really take any kind of hostility seriously. It was just venting, for the most part.
“What the hell man? I always get freaked out on.” Wes complained, taking a seat after his long period of standing.
“That’s because you always instigate something, dude.” Curtis said.
“No I don’t dude.....I never instigate anything. Is that what you guys think?”
“Yes Wes. Calm down. Please.” Curtis lazily demanded, trying to end any coming conflict.
“Alright, sure man. I think I’m gonna get away from here for a little bit. Ray, you wanna get a change of clothes?” Wes swerved, standing up. Ray looked back almost surprised at the invitation, then he realized how bad he wanted to get out of the clothes he was in, and possibly burn them. “I need to get something to eat anyway, and those sandwiches suck in the machine.”
“Yeah, I guess. I need a cigarette anyway.” Ray concurred, easing himself to his feet as his joints began to stiffen from the task earlier. He nearly had to pry Carrie off, who had eased in her crying some, but still hung onto his arm solidly. “Hey, thanks for carin Carrie. Everyone. Thank you.”
There was a pause amung the 8 sitting there, that created the right response. He didn’t want to dwell on it, but it felt like something that needed to be said to people who had shown him such great respect, whether he wanted to except the graciousness or not. Ray half smirked, and nodded his head at them all and then turned back around.
“Alright, Wes, let’s go. I’m getting too tense here.”
“No shit dude, this place makes me nervous as hell, despite how nervous I am anyway, ya know.” Wes rambled, following as Ray began back down the aisle. He craned his neck to the side and looked back at the seats.
“We’ll be back in a little bit. If anything happens, call my house and leave a message.” Ray noted, to 5 or 6 nodding heads, who then all said their own goodbyes interloping.
It felt almost wrong to be leaving but Ray was really in dire need of a good change of clothes and maybe a quick shower if time permitted. He didn’t want to be gone long, but he was literally caked in the remnants of Apartment number 6, and that was getting consistently less appealing as he thought of what it was like to be clean. He was going with clean.
