Chapter 1: SICK (cont'd 2)

finished / unfinished

Jesus heard the occasional noises of the afternoon and then nothing for a long time. When he next  opened his eyes evening had fallen and the room was in near total darkness with him wormed up like a host disease at its centre. He was covered in sweat and breathing low.  As his eyes adjusted to the blackness shapes and edges of things emerged into vague focus. Over, towards the only uncovered window, the wooden chair sat morosely in shadow and slanted night light.  From  the mattress on the floor Jesus stared out the window and up into the sky. Something about that made him feel immensely lonely and sad. He pushed the covers back and lay out flat like he was airing his souk. He wanted to rise, to go to the toilet, to light the room, but the thought of standing, putting all that weight on his legs, of using energy to move gave him the dreads. And so he lay just where he was for the moment, the internal static of his existence whispering away like insects in his ears.

That got him up. A sneezing fit which turned to retching and a panic as he caught his breath down his throat. When he had finished he was laying over on his side, head bowed off the  mattress, with snot and saliver draping from his nose and mouth. Jesus pulled the stringy discharge clear and slung it off his fingers onto the floor. He breathed heavy and cursed. Then he sucked cleared his throat of further mucous and getting himself up gobbed it into the woven wastepaper basket. On his feet his head spun. he steadied himself against the wall and pulled his trousers up a notch. His damage foot throbbed and felt frozen and burning at the same time. Holding his stomach in he stood in the dark, building himself up for his next movements.

There had been no electricity in the flat for almost a year now. After his mother had died no-one had paid the bills and so a series of letters were sent and not opened and then one afternoon the electricity went off and never came back on. In response Jesus had run a wire from the communal hallway* light downstairs up into the flat, fixed a switch to it and so was able to run a lamp, TV, charge his phone and boil water. He had to be careful using multiple appliances so as not to trip the switch.  He also didn't want a huge electricity bill going to the Housing Trust for a single hallway light. It would be for some reason like that that they would come sniffing around and not only find he was pilfering their electricity but also that his mother was dead  and that  he had been continuing on with her housing benefits claim and having the rent paid and living there illegally by not declaring it.  Jesus now turned his little line of electricity on and a tall standing lamp lit up the lower half of the room. In the corner, just a meter or so away from the edge of the mattress, the television went from blank to static to a grainy picture with sound. Jesus looked in the mirror. He dragged a hand down his sick face finishing with a loose grip of skin around the chin. God, he really was ill. His eyes were already baggy from the wet tears and his face was ashen yet oily, his pupils wide and frightening looking even with the light on. He looked at his bed and noticed fresh blood down at the bottom of the bare mattress. Fuck, my foot, he thought and he looked down at his foot. He saw that  blood. was seeping through his sock. It was not important. His sickness was his major worry and left no room for anything else. He ached around the room, pulling up pieces of clothing  and tossing them aside until he found a small battery powered torch. With the torch in his hand Jesus left the room and went down the hallway. After a moment the hallway lit up. 

When Jesus returned to his living room he was with two empty saucepans and a third full of water. Jesus put the two saucepans to the side of the bed and  emptied the third  into the kettle. From a little cabinet alongside the TV he took out two half pouches of old dried tobacco and a  little box of loose cigarette papers and put those beside the mattress too. Then he looked out at the sky and the dark and a sudden wave of panic hit him. He looked at himself in the mirror and he had to struggle not to cry and he had to try and do something. He needed to know the time. Then he remembered he had no phone and so he couldn't tell the time. He went to the window and as he went his body felt like it was dying with each step. Jesus looked through the window and over the old school, down the road, he could just make out the high-street. When he saw traffic he knew evening was not night but he needed to know how late it was. Then he remembered the TV text, the CEEfax and standing shivering, making noises of suffering he flicked jittering across to the text and there he saw it was just gone 8 and a little hope returned.

It was still early, Jesus thought. Dealers will be on until at least midnight and some even later. If I can borrow a phone, or 20 pence, I could get Bobby or Tee to come out. They know me well enough and I've never asked credit before. I will call them and say nothing and when they arrive I will let them see me sick and ask for credit then. If I tell them before there's a good chance they'll say no. No, I must phone first and only let them know when they arrive. Sure they'll fucking moan and curse and say it's not possible but they'll come around. I'll ask for three and then they can cut me down to even one and that will be good until tomorrow, allow me to find a fix until Monday. So Jesus for a moment had a plan and he once again waited near the window. He went through his immediate neighbours of  who he could ask to use the phone. Barely had he decided on old Polish Rosa from three doors down  than he suddenly remembered that not only was his phone missing but also his wallet where he kept his dealers numbers on paper. JJesus cried out in anguish. He hung his head in despair and liquid bubbled out his nose and then ran down and over his lip. The sweats went through him and he began his jittering again, trying to create a sensation he could follow to take his mind of the sickness. In a flash of haste he once again  thought of his wallet, that it must be somewhere in the room. Surely I couldn't have lost everything, he thought.  He looked around again, sitting down every few minutes, shivering, sniffing and groaning before searching over again. But it was hopeless. His bag nor jacket nor shoes where in the apartment. He cursed whatever event had happened to him and then got back up and looked in the mirror for the third and last time. And in that look, in that reflection, he saw a condemned man and he was scared. The bed was ready for him and the evening was drawing in and his fate was an horrendous one. The smell of sickness cut Jesus in two and he doubled up and retched and for the first time he was sick and it came out his nose and then spewing out his mouth . Jesus went to his knees and Jesus was sick. the TV let out a beep and the teletext changed page and the night was coming down. 

* so house is a maisonette with the downstairs flat empty. we need to explain somewhere how Jesus had got in on millenium night without any keys. The keys will be used later in stiory. 

Problem in the writing of 3rd person limited and 3rd person omnipresent. Maybe not discernible to the reader but I can feel the tension of  it as the writer. have a look at the omnipresent parts and have a go at writing them using mostly passive sentences so as Jesus (his body) remains the subject throughout. 

Chapter 1: SICK: where Jesus first wakes up sick unaware he died and came back to life the previous night...*

finished/unfinished

When Jesus next came to, the world was sick. He could smell it and taste it and feel it; an occupying illness which had hijacked every cell of his body. His trousers were still damp and the damp seemed to have penetrated right through to the marrow of his bones. There was not a joint or muscle in his body which did not ache. He threw himself free of his blankets and shot up sitting, breathing hard, as if he had been drowning in his sleep. Before he knew who or where he was he understood he was junk sick. His awareness of the condition was as astute as if it were a vestigial instinct left over from an evolutionary past. Jesus squinted his eyelids unstuck and looked out at the spiritless world which confronted him. He groaned, a low, profound sound. For a moment he questioned nothing. The dull of the day sat stagnant all around. With a winced look of anguish on his face he stared lamentingly into the deadspace of the room as if haunted by some spectral memory of events that he could not quite bring to mind.

Sat up in bed, Jesus felt out his illness, gauging what level it was at.  From his  burning eyes and running nose and his general discomfort he surmised he must have been about  sixteen hours into withdrawals.  And he was:  Jesus Maria was sixteen hours in.  He tried recalling what had happened the previous night but he could not remember. His last memory of the evening was unloading his fix at the Blackhouse. From that, and how he was feeling now, he gathered that whatever he had shot could not have had much, if any, heroin in it at all. As for leaving the Blackhouse, his journey home, or even the smallest recollection of the world party which had taken place, he had absolutely no memory. He looked over at the window. It looked the dullest of dull days out there, Jesus groaned again, wiped the hot tears out his eyes and slowly rose.

What Jesus did know, what he had not forgotten, was Andy promising to lay him on a free shot for the morning. Jesus went through his trouser pockets searching out a small wrap or ball of dope. When he found nothing, not a coin, not a lighter, no wallet he threw his eyes around the room looking for his jacket and bag. Strange, he could not see either of them. That's when he remarked his left foot. It was swollen quadruple, had a large wound in the forestep and had left dried blood all around his toes. It was bad, but nothing he had not seen  before. Since deciding to  begin mauling himself with syringes three years earlier he had experienced a wide array of swellings and lumps and terrifying effects from missed shots. The foot could wait. It would heal itself. What would not heal itself was heroin sickness and it was progressively getting worse with each minute. The sand clock had been stood on its head and Jesus knew he had but hours to stop himself from slipping into complete and debilitating junk withdrawal.

Jesus was baffled. He had searched high and low for his jacket and bag but could not find them anywhere. And that was not all. Neither could he locate his shoes, nor his phone, nor wallet or small change. Even his tobacco and lighter were missing. After using up the little energy he still had he finally sat down on an unsteady wooden kitchen chair that was in the room and closed his eyes. He tried concentrating away the early pains of withdrawal while thinking of anything he could do and of any memory of what had happened. Then Andy's words came to him again, the promise of laying him on a shot and he was back up, hunting around once more, getting crazy and frustrated each time he dragged himself through the flat and came upon none of his belongings.

There's no fucking way I'd have left without having Andy make good on his word, he thought, no fucking way!

That's when he first really pondered the strangeness of it all, and tried thinking as to what had happened after the shot he had taken.As hard as Jesus tried he just could not recall a single moment post-injection. It was all a blank and in all his years of using he had never blacked out like that before. There had been times when he had nodded out for a good hour, maybe two if he was extremely lucky, but an entire evening? No way. That was not how heroin worked. He remembered how he felt as the shot rushed through his system, first the strange  taste in his sinuses and also wondering as to whether he could feel anything or not. His last recollection was feeling slightly out of sorts and then nothing more thereafter. An idea as absurd as dying and being robbed and dumped in the street only to survive never entered his head. The closest he got to the reality of it all was to conclude that the heroin must have been laced with strong barbiturates or something, maybe some concentrate form of diazepam which had knocked him out cold for hours before. As to what had become of all his belongings was just a mystery, and most mysterious of all, what had happened to his shoes? He just could not figure. To know more Jesus would need to visit the Blackhouse, but the Blackhouse was miles away and he could never make it sick and with no shoes and with his foot damaged as it was. So Jesus sat put on a t-shirt and a shirt and he sat in the chair, alongside the window, looking out in the hope that one of the many local addicts he knew would pass by, maybe even a dealer, someone who he could call down to for help. And so Jesus stared out the windows and morning slowly merged into afternoon and on this slow, freezing day of the new millennium barely a soul passed down the street and Jesus' illness got progressively more malignant and his burning eyes became a torture and the yawning now strained his jawbones and left him sniffling and his stomach muscles felt like they'd been constantly stretched and punched weak  and something in the day made him dry heave and retch and before the afternoon was out Jesus was a rocking, groaning, dribbling wreck and proper junk illness was then upon him. Time was over. Anything desperate that Jesus could have done to prevent this needed to be done before its onset. Now it was too late. So with his eyes half closed over in suffering and self-pity Jesus Maria moved himself away from the window and the sad light of day and dragged himself back to the mattress on the floor and lay down. He pulled the cover around his rattling body and closed his eyes, dreading each passing moment as he knew that as bad as he felt that it was still nothing yet, that come each hour and by each night and through each day all of hell's fire and passion would hit him in waves of reports, that before this was over and he crawled out into the street crying and begging for help he would be physically and mentally tortured, driven to the point of insanity and despair, sweated down to his essential being and left to marinate in the poison of his own body. Jesus shook and groaned and said “Oh God... no. Oh please God, no.”

Note to self:

Consider throwing Jesus directly into complete sickness rather than this half day of mild illness. It would be a much stronger opening of the real novel, a better birth, waking up right in the centre of the nightmare with no time to do much about it. I'm hesitant to do that because it's not how it would usually happen in real life. usually our bodies wake up in minor discomfort (are woken up by that discomfort) and we descend into fully blown withdrawals while awake.