where in a later chapter Jesus remembers a summer drought and spends two days ill with his mother and is visited by her memory once more...

It was a quarter past eight of a summer evening in Grace's hole of an apartment. The evening was still light but in the room it was dark, like dusk had settled there before anywhere else. Now and again the door would squeak open and Grace's mongrel dog would slink in, wander around, whine and leave. From outside, in filtered the scratchy tones of music from the late Ice-cream van. The windows were open but the drawn curtains did not move.  On the sofa and on the floor, against the walls, heroin addicts were strewn and sat about in various positions, silent and rocking themselves through time in painful meditation.It was the first evening of the summer drought and everyone had been caught off guard.

Jesus was sat on the floor on a bean bag which was usually the dog's. He had the first uncomfortable symptoms of junk withdrawal. He felt tremendously tired in his body and couldn't stop yawning, huge cavernous yawns which stretched and pulled every muscle in his face and neck. After each yawn his eyes would stream hot tears. The music from the ice-cream van came to him like a great tragedy, waking up a melancholic universe which had lain dormant within him ever since picking up the needle. He wore an expression like a shard of glass was stuck in his brain. He yawned again and shivered and stared down at the screen of his phone. He no longer tried ringing his numbers. They were all either turned off or only serving crack. His one slither of hope, everyone's one slither of hope, was from Mikey who said he'd call if he managed to reload. Jesus stared at the dark screen and concentrated,  bellowing the word MIKEY out in waves from his mind, sending invisible lines of communication to him, urging him to come through and ring with good news. Jesus didn't believe in such nonsense but it was at least worth trying and kept up a silky thread of hope. Not even a day into withdrawals and Jesus was already onto miracles. The phone didn't light up. The evening wore on and the city darkened and illness progressed in uncomfortable but well-known increments and then it was 11pm, night-time, and the room was in utter darkness and the first groans of physical discomfort began.

The dog whined. Jesus had heard it scampering around in the dark. Now a cool nighttime breeze blew in the open windows, wriggled the curtains and brought in a scent which  made Jesus cry. He cried in silence and the tears ended in his mouth and they made him want to vomit. The room was quiet save for the scuffling of bodies as they turned in discomfort, ten or more junkies, all writhing about and letting out light groans of pain.  Every so often someone would light a cigarette and the room would be illuminated  for a second, the wriggling, aching hell revealed, wide open eyes staring dismally out, like a room full of AIDS victims left to rot in  death. Jesus watched the orange glow of the cigarette tip moving about like magic in the dark. When he was young he would watch his mother's cigarette in the dark too. She'd make fire drawings for him in the night, crazy circles and zigzags or his name all joined up in glowing orange letters followed by a heart that would disappear almost as soon as it existed.  Jesus watched the cigarette and after a moment could make out the smoke. It hung in a cloud and then slowly dispersed and time was like that in heroin sickness, almost on the point of being static.

The drought lasted four entire days. On the second day Jesus scored 150ml of methadone and shared it with his mother. It helped for just over 8hrs and then the yawns and the watery eyes and the snivelling came back. As hard as he tried, as much money as he offered, he could not get anything  thereafter. News of a heroin drought had circled the streets and anyone lucky enough to have a script was keeping it for themselves. So on the evening of the second day, Jesus got into bed with his mother and together they descended into proper and severe junk withdrawal and for two days they did not speak, just moaned and looked at each other and cried the words "oh God" and "fucking hell", vomiting and retching and  sweating and crawling to the bathroom and back. With the sickness and the fever and spasmodic episodes they  sought comfort in different positions on different materials, laying stretched out in the hallway, or on the tiles on the kitchen floor, and then to the sofa, the bed, the carpet... pulling the covers on and off, burning up and then shaking with cold, the muscles so weakened and sore that they often crawled on all fours and Jesus was now thinking of these things and contorting in pain and grinding his teeth, halfway in some past world and halfway in the now and at one moment he opened his eyes and looked up, his tongue hung out his mouth like it had died, and his mother was standing over him, almost fifty years old, gaunt and yellow and crying and saying "It hurts.... it hurts so bad" and those words somehow endeared her to him and he vowed he would never let her get sick again and those words haunted him now as behind him he could see the open door and out into the landing where his mother's room still was and then the cramps hit his stomach and he curled up and whimpered in pain and he said the word "mum" over and over and Jesus said just that.

Word count: 965