Drencrom, p.1
Drencrom, page 1
D R E N C R o M
A Novella
by
Hamelin Bird
D R E N C R o M
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
PART TWO
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
PART THREE
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
AFTERWORD
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
© 2023 by Hamelin Bird
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
ISBN: 978-1-7354891-9-3 (ebook)
Cover design by A.A. Medina | Fabled Beast Design
"On this sunken vale, we have freedom from contemplation. We luxuriate the ignorance of senses and choose absence of thought, will, desire, emotion. We eschew the banality of experience for thus is the sweetest escape, the unbecoming of ourselves. We crown alone the essence of nothingness itself, and strive only toward the ever-long respite of severance from the universe. Not to become one with all things, but to escape all things once and for all."
—Unknown
PART ONE
“Then came the discovery that adrenochrome, which is a product of the decomposition of adrenalin, can produce many of the symptoms observed in mescalin intoxication. But adrenochrome probably occurs spontaneously in the human body. In other words, each one of us may be capable of manufacturing a chemical, minute doses of which are known to cause Profound changes in consciousness.”
Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception (1954)
§
First, the rush.
There’s nothing like it, no matter what you’ve heard.
I’d read about it, hundreds of Reddit posts and more than a few flea-infested underground blogs. Then I’d taken up residence on the dark side of the web, if you catch my drift, and read a whole hell of a lot more. Then came the photos, documented evidence. Then, finally—videos. Verifiable, in your face. That’s what pushed me over the edge. That’s what made me take the leap. I knew I had to have it—whatever it took. Come what may.
There’s this whole other world waiting out there, you know? Beyond the fringes, right out there on the edge. I’d seen enough to know. What can I say? I believed. And now, looking back, what can I tell you about it all?
I didn’t know shit.
§
CHAPTER ONE
She must’ve stared at the keyboard for an hour, waiting.
Outside the window, drivers laid impatiently into their horns, bleating like wounded animals in the streets below. The last of winter had faded, and tonight the temperature ran into the seventies. Everybody was on edge.
When she looked next, the responses had trickled in:
<2THETAN2: I’m Bakersfield>
Then, minutes later, another comment.
She stared at the screen, not believing. She typed, deleted, typed again.
The car horns blared, the night rushing warm inside her open window. A lather of perspiration had crept beneath her breasts, making her squirm in her seat. For such an ostensibly chatty person, she’d sure managed to clam up on herself.
She typed quickly, plunging ahead.
No sooner had she sent the response than her screen flashed:
DROOGMANALEX HAS INVITED YOU TO PRIVATE CHAT
ACCEPT DENY
She accepted the invitation.
§
Later that week.
Hagerstown wasn’t the absolute best place to spend a Friday night, but this weekend was different. Tonight the temps had rocketed up to the eighties, the smog thick and heavy overhead, hovering like some invading spaceship as the worker-bees headed out for a night on the town. The smell of food trucks parked outside bars presently clouded the streets, and drifts of leftover confetti from that month’s parade flooded the gutters.
On the outskirts of downtown, not far enough for the stench of bratwurst to fade from the breeze, Coda cranked the engine of her old Corolla, backing into the street. She punched her high beams and hit the gas, cruising toward Korova and past the thin crowd of horny losers outside Finnegan’s Pub. A few bearded gawkers watched her go, dipping their sunglasses even though the sun had retired in a blush of stars beneath the horizon.
She’d keyed the address into her phone—a small little corner of a suburb at the western fringe of Arcadia.
Arriving an hour later, the house stood dark on the corner.
Her engine idled, the car halted in the street. For what seemed like a long time, Coda stared at the darkened eaves of the house—a nice house, she noticed, a polite house, so much more polite than her own, back when she stayed with her folks—until a window flashed suddenly with light and she let off the brake. Following their agreed-upon directions, she pulled around back, parking on a crumbled slab of concrete next to a corrugated tin shed. She eyed the shed, slivers of orange light bleeding through the slats of the door and touching softly at the ramshackle roof.
The yellow glow of a porch light sprang on, drawing her eye.
It was almost full dark now, the stars coming alive in the night sky as the back door opened and a young boy—perhaps ten years old, twelve at the oldest—ran out to the car.
“Whoa, kid,” she said, popping the car in reverse. “Sorry, wrong house.”
She’d started away when he reached inside the open window, revealing a small glass vial wrapped in shadow and blending with the night.
“Eight milliliters,” he said. “Where’s the cash?”
She stomped the brake.
“Are you fucking serious right now?”
“Hey, you want it or not?” He held out the vial, like it was candy. “Alex says take it or leave it.”
She looked the little brat in the eyes. A strange look on his face—not anger, exactly, but stern.
“Not too much at once,” he told her. “This your first time, right?”
“Tell Alex,” she said, “I will have words with him later.”
And handed over the cash.
§
She got home within the hour, put on some Garbage and Nine Inch Nails.
There was something in the air, a chill she hadn’t noticed before, and she figured a bit of incense might do the trick. She lit a few sticks and went to the bathroom, relaxing her bladder as she drank down the vial.
She waited, lying on the couch, the smell of patchouli filling the apartment. Sometime later she’d grown bored and walked down the hall to Ms. Wendicott’s door. Ms. Wendicott had taken a tumble down the stairs the week before, and she figured it’d be neighborly to check up on her. Moments later the door opened and Coda asked how the hell was she doing?
“Oh, I’m just fine, dear,” Ms. Wendicott said, speaking from behind the small steel cage of her walker. “Nothing that won’t heal—would you like to come in for some Earl Grey? I’ve just put on some fresh?”
Coda did a little twirl in the hallway. “No shitting, I was just thinkin’ how much I’d absolutely adore some Earl Grey.”
Everything in Ms. Wendicott’s apartment was old, all artifacts and things you’d find in a flea market. But Coda liked looking at it all, imagining what kind of person would make a doughboy soldier out of plaster, and what sort of person would see it and fall in love and think to themselves, I’ve always wanted a plaster doughboy soldier, and with eyes as inexorably dead as these.
“And this,” Ms. Wendicott told her once, “is a harmonica from a merry-andrew of the Medici family. Can you believe it still plays?”
There were always mints on the table at Ms. Wendicott’s.
“It’s sure warming up out there, isn’t it?” the old woman asked now.
“It’s hot as hell, that’s for sure,” Coda said, plopping down on the old sofa she always sat in. There was an ancient gilded mirror over the far wall, and she could see just the very top of her head reflected back at her. Her dark, greasy hair, knotted and bushed like a desert tumbleweed.
Ms. Wendicott brought over the cup of tea, her warm smile beaming down into Coda.
“Certainly you’ve got better things to do on a Friday night than visit with an old biddy like myself? Shouldn’t you be off with a boy, or traveling out to the mountains? Lake Tahoe would be magical this time of year.”
Coda laughed. “I’m pretty gay, Ms. Wendicott, remember? And it takes money to travel, so. Big nope on that.”
She wasn’t really gay, of course. She didn’t know what she was. She hated most people, and couldn’t stand others, and she wasn’t sure where that left her. But the thought of some dopey man making moves on her made her sick to her stoma ch, so she supposed that counted for something.
Ms. Wendicott smiled, sipping from her tea.
“Are you still job-hunting, dear? I recall Mr. Hal in 4-C could use help.”
Coda shrugged. “Meh. Little bit. Actually I just dropped this new kind of drug, I’m sort of waiting for it to kick in.”
“Oh dear,” Ms. Wendicott said. “It’s not harmful is it?”
“No, not harmful,” she told the old lady, staring at the bushel of black hair at the bottom of the mirror. “It’s all-natural, just makes you sort of batshit for a while. Nothing dangerous.”
“Just so you can make it back down the hall, dear.”
They chatted awhile about Mr. Hal in 4-C, and how he’d probably be leaving earth in the very near future. He was housebound, and sickly, and recently they’d started him on some morphine capsules, and probably all those other meds they give people to make them all woozy before they kick the bucket. Coda had indulged more than a few choice words with the old fart, mostly banging at the ceiling with her broomstick and telling him to keep it down up there, and he’d bang right back and tell her to lick his stinky old ass. She loved that man, and would sorely miss him when he was gone.
When they’d finished their tea, Coda yawned and got up to leave. Ms. Wendicott had become something of a mother to her over the last year, and true to form, cranking up her old walker, she cruised over to the kitchen table, removing a few bills from her purse.
“Take this, honey,” she said, holding out the money. “Go treat yourself to some ice cream.”
Coda looked at the bundle of cash, knowing she’d feel bad later for taking it. But that didn’t stop her from doing just that, pushing the crumpled bills down into her pocket.
“Thanks, Ms. Wendicott.”
The old woman smiled pleasantly, and Coda gave her a hug, never taking her eyes from the ornate gilded mirror.
§
Alex saw the message, and felt deflated.
He should’ve gone with his gut, and gave her the good stuff. The stuff from last Halloween. But, since it was her first time and all, he figured he’d try out the stuff from the week before, and sure enough that had been a mistake. He’d been out of it that night, out of the groove. No flow. He should’ve known the yield would be dog-ass, but he’d wanted to believe otherwise.
Now he knew better.
He waited, thinking there wasn’t much of the Halloween stuff left. He’d have to re-up soon. That meant a couple hours to himself—not an easy feat, nowadays. He’d figure something out.
His screen flashed.
He typed out a response, and she hit back with the obvious question. They went back and forth with that, Alex doing his usual tap-dance ballet.
Alex closed his laptop, swiveling his seat to stare out the window.
Thinking, thinking. Putting together the pieces.
His room was dark, and turning back he slipped a hand into his desk drawer, fumbling blindly for the last pair of vials tucked away in back. Then he had them, eyeing his stash— fifteen milliliters, maybe twenty—and considered dosing himself then and there, just for the hell of it. He’d already dosed once, earlier that night after the girl had left, following her old Corolla back to the apartment building. He’d flown high as a demon through the clouds, and returning later he’d heard the front door opening, and hurried downstairs.
He wouldn’t mind a repeat performance now, before sleep.
But no, he’d better save it.
He’d need another yield like Halloween night, and a little pick-me-up for the occasion would go a long way in making things easier on himself.
He tucked away the vials and dropped into bed, remembering the cool rush of the clouds rustling through his sandy brown hair.
§
Alex was never the point, never even a blip on my radar.
He showed up when he needed to, and that’s all she wrote. I was off to the races, no looking back. We’d made plans for later that week, same deal as before. Everything was orchestrated, business-like. That is, we weren’t criminals and didn’t carry on like addicts. Because we weren’t addicts, not really. I mean, maybe Alex—we’d only just met, what did I know?—but what I’m trying to say is that everything was very business-casual from the start. That would change, later. But I carried myself like a professional, and he’d done an approximation of the same, and we’d set another meet for Friday night.
I know what you’re thinking: young woman, meeting strangers from the dark web at some random address. I get it, okay? But if you think things like that bothered me in the slightest, then you obviously don’t know me so well.
I’ll forgive you, this time, us only getting to know each other and all.
Just, you know. Don’t let it happen again.
Meantime, after that hellacious bummer of an evening, what I really needed was a drink…
§
CHAPTER TWO
“Do you see any women doing that to each other? Ever? No, see, because it’s the guys you got to be scared of. Thanks to the internet there are whole slews of perverts out there.” The old man sipped mightily at his drink, wiping his mouth. “Men are an uncommon animal, you know? Do you have any idea, for example, what percentage of serial killers are young white males? A whole fucking lot of percentage. Who does the raping? The murders?”
Coda twisted on the stool, glancing over the late-night crowd.
She’d thought dropping a couple dollars of booze into her stomach might liven things up a little—ending the night, if not on a positive note, then at least a drunken one. Now, staring at this creep saddled up to the bar at Finnegan’s Pub, listening to his drunken rant and smelling the gawd-awful stench of his boozehound breath, Coda wished she’d stayed at the house.
“Who are the ones going out staking people’s heads and blowing shit up?”
Coda swallowed the last of her beer, leaned closer, and belched.
“Men?” she asked.
“Precisely, little lady,” he said. “Men. Cold when they’re cold, hot when they’re hot. Meat heads with nothing better to do than go and pound the hell out of shit. Testosterone junkies. Serial-murder-rapist pigs so over the rainbow with rolling in their own shit that their heads might explode. Women are full of passion—yes, it’s true—but at least they are semi-rational beings. Men! Men, these guys are asleep at the wheel. No clue, no desire for one. We could do anything and it would be nothing new. Now, I’d like to buy you a drink, okay? I’d like to hear your story, and get to know you a little. Why don’t you tell me about yourself? Because, right out the gate, let me tell you, I don’t judge. Age is just a number, okay? You don’t know me, little lady. But it’s a sick world, I understand. And I do not judge.”
“Do you ever shut your fucking mouth?”
“The point I’m making is, I understand your position, and I empathize—”
