Vinegar - Test Chapter

[ash77atc]

Vinegar

He always knew the perfect things to say to a girl to get her to do what he wanted. That's how he worked. I often compare it to boiling a frog. When you get a frog and put him in a pot of boiling water, he is going to jump out. Immediately. That frog is not staying in that water. But take the same frog and put him in a pot of cool water on top of a cold stove. Turn the stove on... slowly. Turn the heat up. Before the frog knows it, its pretty hot. Way to hot. He is going to die. What happened to his lovely cool bath? It f*cking killed him.

The smell of it makes me sick now. I can't catch a whiff without going back in my mind... the taste on my tongue. The feeling. I hate it when its an ingredient in cooking, and I really hate using it as a cleaning product, especially cleaning my yoga mat. Such a foul thing to associate with the sacred space of my mat. Vinegar is a component used in shooting coke. You see, when powder isn't available, you can take a piece of crack and mix it with vinegar in a spoon, causing the cocaine to dissolve into this toxic juice. Pick a vein of your choice and hold on for the ride.

Louis used to hide the vinegar at first so I wouldn't know what he was doing. I was always missing a spoon or two. They would show up in the weirdest places. The first time I did it was a powerful experience. The very instant your hit is over it burns through your veins and screams to your brain and lights your throat on fire. The taste in your mouth, metallic and chemical. The universe expands and contracts and you can hear everything and anyone at the same time like God Himself. But the whispers in the darkness of his mind and mine were not of God. They were much more evil.

He would do anything to get it. If he had a craving it was hell to pay. He sold his Camero for $1500 in Atlanta and blew it all on rocks, and one fake bag of strategically broken saltine crackers. Always chasing the rush. There was a time we were at a dealer's apartment and Lou left his vinegar stash at home. Lou starts rummaging through the fridge and pulls out a jar of pickles. Dill pickles not bread and butter. “This will do,” He said. Dealer nodded once to him and once in the direction of the bathroom. I passed that time. Pickle crack? I didn't know it at the time, but it wouldn't bother me a few months later.

Sometimes when your goal for the day is to get high, you lose a lot of focus on pretty much everything else, like car maintenance. Once, my car broke down on the side of the exit off the interstate one day while I was on my way to work. I called Louis to come pick me up and called AAA to give me a tow back to the place we were living. Lou borrowed a Jeep to come get me. The problem was it was time for his fix. He was feinding and he could not wait the 20 minutes it was going to take the tow truck driver to meet me. Lou drags my ass into the Jeep and off to the nearest ghetto we go. He looks for the rattiest, smallest, dingiest apartment complexes and drives around until he sees a few people standing around. He mumbles a few words and sneaks a folded bill into the dark hands of the stranger in the windbreaker. A small baggie is given to him in return and he nearly burns out in a rush to get to the nearest store.

The closest Piggly Wiggly doesn't have vinegar or pickles, but what they do have is jalapenos. Lou yells at me to keep watch as he injects his jalapeno coke juice into his scarred vein and nearly vomits. I am too angry about missing the tow truck to take my hit. I also hate jalapenos. By the time we get back to the shoulder and my blue car the tow truck is pulling away faster and faster. There is nothing I can do but call AAA and place another service order. Estimated wait time: 2 hours. How do you spend 2 hours with Lou, jalapenos, and a bag of crack? Like the frog, I had not jumped out in time to save myself from the fiery burn which threatened to take my very life.

[DATo]

Wow! This story contains a kick to rival the coke being described. It is raw yet mesmerizing. I like the "voice" of the narrator in this piece - totally believable in her description of events and the manner in which the events are verbalized.

"Turn the stove on... slowly. Turn the heat up.", might be better expressed as "Turn the heat up slowly."

"It f*cking killed him." sort of grated on the ears and sensibilities for I thought this was being written in First-Person-Omniscient tense ... it made perfect sense when I realized that this phrasing was in character for the First-Person-Limited narrator. She was telling the story as a participant within the story.

Nicely written. Thank you for sharing.

[Sean Bracken]

I loved this story. It was gritty and realistic. Every scene dragged me into the seedy world of addiction. I could feel the craving and desperation of the characters. Please let me know if you ever finish and publish. I want to learn more about these peoples lives. Thank you so much for sharing it.

Sean

[mortman1280]

Good Descriptions