The Need

You wake to the feeling of all-encompassing Need. It makes every nerve in your body scream out in twisted and sickly desire. Forced into consciousness, your mind swims in the chemical dregs of the self-induced coma you have devoted your life to.

You are sick. Malnourished, poisoned, and battered, your body wants you to slip back into oblivion, but the Need won’t let you. It twists your stomach and pounds at every nerve in your body with a trillion microscopic sledge hammers. You would vomit, but your stomach hasn’t held food in two days. The Need doesn’t care if you starve. It will not be resisted.

You haul your diminished self off of the filthy mattress and achieve a standing position. You try to steady yourself. You feel yourself sway like a dead tree standing against a hurricane. The world swims around you as your eyes adjust to your dimly lit motel room. You don’t notice the strong scent of old urine that perfumes the room or the roaches that shared the bed with you. The Need doesn’t care about your surroundings. The Need just wants to be met. It will hurt you to get met. It controls your body and will punish any resistance to it that you may foolishly attempt. Reveling in its power over you, it will make you wade neck deep through miles of shit, filth, and decay in order to get what it desires.

The first real thought that bubbles to the surface of your stagnant mind is, “How do I get the means to satisfy you?”

“I could steal,” you think.

The Need laughs at the desperate idea, “You can barely walk, you junky fuck. How can you possibly steal?” The Need wants without compassion or pity. It will berate and belittle you, but it rarely offers any ideas on how to satisfy it.

“I can sell my body,” you offer as a second idea. The option is less than palatable. It has worked in the past, but you don’t need the motel mirror to tell you that even the most desperate John wouldn’t want what’s between your legs or your mostly toothless mouth around his cock. The need robbed you of any beauty or physical appeal you may have possessed long ago. Your now greyish skin is speckled with open sores and hangs from the sad caricature of a human form your body has become. The watery, lifeless eyes that stare back at you from the the motel room mirror look as if they are being swallowed by the depths of your skull. Their once vibrant brown is being lost in a yellow, jaundiced haze. The price you pay for sharing needles. The Need laughs at you, “Nope. Whoring won’t work. Looks like you’ll have to sell it to satisfy me.”

You look down at your dirty hands and sadly admire the small ring that has been around your left pinky finger since you first blossomed into womanhood. Your grandmother gave you the antique gold and ruby ring and it is the last thing you have left from your former life. Your sludge-slow mind tries to think of another way, any way to satisfy the Need, but it doesn't have a chance. Impatient to be met, the Need twists your stomach and sends you lurching into the bathroom. You get sick in the toilet, but only a little blood flecked bile comes up, staining the bowl a dingy red. Staggering to your feet, exhausted from the effort of heaving, the Need strikes again and suddenly every muscle and bone in your body aches. The pain presses down on you and blinds you to everything except doing what you must to make the Need stop torturing you.

You leave the motel room and head towards a pawn shop you know of to sell grandma's ring. The Need rules the world outside of the motel just as it rules you. Dilapidated buildings, blinded by boarded up windows line the sidewalk. Only the liquor stores that thrive within the Need's realm show any signs of life. They are the Need's loyal subjects, benefiting from its merciless reign. Trash flits across the sidewalk, dancing in a stale breeze. Though the silence is only broken by the occasional, distant siren, you know that you are not alone. Other shattered souls lurk in the doorways of the hollow buildings that you pass. They too, are the Need's subjects, seeking only to satisfy their master. Gone is hope. Gone is joy. Only the all-powerful Need exists and it is jealous of anything that can cause rebellion against it.

You arrive at the pawn shop and pause at its door. Carefully, you glance down again at the ring and you are stunned by the sad memory of your last encounter with your parents and Brown Eyes. You had just wanted to see Brown Eyes. It had been too long and he was the only thing good that you have ever offered to the world. Mom and Dad said it wasn't good for Brown Eyes to see you like this. Brown Eyes was happy and you would just confuse him. They hadn't even let you in the door, but you could see Brown Eyes looking curiously at you from behind the protection of his grandparents. Those eyes, so like yours, only pure and innocent, stared questioningly at the stranger who had knocked on the door. They didn't know you. They hadn't seen you since they were barely a year old, but they were kind. They made you smile.

That joy was enough for you to try to push your way past your parents. You wanted to hold Brown Eyes, to hold something good against your frail chest. Your parents were stronger and held you back. Desperate to make you leave, your dad reached into his pocket and handed you a wad of money. "Here," he said, still barring you from his grandson, your son, "Take this and leave. It is what is really important to you anyway." He used the money to distract you from your goal. With one last push, you parents pushed you out the door and closed it in your face.

The Need howled in triumph. There was enough money to feed it for a few days and enough to hide you while it fed. So, you slinked back to where you now belong and did its bidding. Now, the money is gone and the need is unfulfilled. A wave of nausea and bone crushing ache ends your revelry and sends you into the pawn shop.

There is no negotiating. So long as the Need gets what it wants now it will be enough. You watch as the pawn broker moves grandma's ring to a locked cabinet behind the counter. Your last glimpse of your birthright is the ruby shining in the florescent light. It's red is dark, dark like the red backwash of blood that enters the syringe when you give the Need what it wants. The broker gives you a hundred dollars. Not enough to make up for what you have lost, but enough to make sure that you can momentarily forget.

Scoring the heroine will be easy. Which is good because the nausea and pain the Need inflicts is crippling. You wretch again just outside of the pawn shop. Just because you have a way to satisfy it, doesn't mean it will be merciful before you actually do. Still, the Need has taught you how to find what it demands. Even when you think you are in a place that the Need does not rule, it has led you to what it wants. You find a dealer standing outside of a liquor store not far from the motel. Not even a dozen words pass between you and the dealer. He saw you coming and knew what you wanted. One look at your face and the blood and vomit stains on your shirt leaves little doubt. Money and baggies change hands and you are finally able to satisfy the Need.

You have one night left in the motel and you are thankful for the roof and place to hide. Preparing the syringe is now a mindless ritual. Heroin is placed in spoon with water. A small piece of cotton to act as a filter is added. The water is heated until the heroin is dissolved, and you pull the heroine into the syringe through the cotton. Finding a vein isn't a problem. You just recently started to shoot into your hand. The hand that once wore grandma's ring. The veins are small, but still easy to find.

Within just a second of the needle biting into your vein, the Need screams in victory. You feel the warm, satin corruption of heroin course through your body. Every cell in your body reacts and seeks to find a state of oblivion. Still it is not like the first time. The first time brought you to your knees and made you cum as the heroin infected every pleasure center of your body. You remember giggling in pleasure and thinking that you could feel like this for the rest of your life. Now, the opiate just stops the Need from torturing you.

You lie down on the dirty bed and slip into a heroin induced stupor. As you lie there, you can feel your heart beat slow. It provides the background music for your thoughts as you float on a calm opiate sea:

Thump-lub...Thump-lub...Thump-lub...Thump-lub-"I am so tired."

Thump-lub...Thump-lub...Thump-lub-"I love you, Brown Eyes."

Thump-lub...Thump-lub-"I'm going to quit. Quit for you."

Thump-lub-"But right now, I will sleep. Just for a while."

And the Need is finally silent.