Cactus Thief

Jamie will sell that shit and be in paradise soon enough. I’m going to escape the scum. I’ll just pack up and leave one day, they won’t know or care. I’ll go back to my parents. Although the chances of the former three statements fulfilling themselves are close to none. If I manage to crawl out of here in the next five minutes I might have a slight chance of staying alive. I’d be writhing in agony if it weren’t for that stardust, and by the same reason, I won’t be moving any time soon. I’ll take my last breath where I’m lying: in a pool of my own blood and stomach acid. I would give anything to just fucking leave this shit-hole building breathing. I hope the fucking R.A.I.D canines sniff us out and track us back to this place, Jamie has the shit remember, they’d have no proof to charge me. They’d take me straight to the other side of town, away from the scum and straight to the clinic. They’d fix me up good. On the contrary, the vultures will eat me when they smell me lying here. They’ll start with my eyes and work their way down. The first thing I’d do on recovery from this fucking gunshot wound would be fly out to the capital and make some money. I’d get a real job and start over…

Seriously, who the fuck am I kidding? I’d fly to the capital, search for work and be back in the drugs game by sunset.

We are the scum, I am the scum, and I bet Jamie thinks he’s fucking Travis Bickle right now. Fuck. This shit’s really starting to hurt. I can still feel the dust pumping through my veins, vibrating my skull, no feeling in my extremities and my heart pumping faster than ever. I’ll pass out soon enough. I can hear Mother screaming my name, getting progressively louder. The sound of my own name pierces my ear drums. Everything is quiet.

They’ve been gone for hours. I’m wasting my fucking time with these incompetent bastards, I know it. I take a look at myself in the bathroom mirror, pale as death after shooting that stardust, although the climax is most definitely worth the hangover. Where the fuck are they? I hate this place. That’s why we need those fucking Caterpillars: so I can get out of this shit hole. If we can move the lot I’ll be out of here and far away six months from now. There’s been a sudden thirst for Caterpillars in the last few months, I mean a huge fucking demand, fuelled by the raging addictions of scum like us. But that label, ‘scum’, that they give us…me. I’ll soon shake it off. Where the fuck are Max and Viola with my Caterpillars? You see, the deal was that they snatch the lot from a friend I knew had weight, and I’ll move the majority, giving a forty percent cut between them. That’s what I told them, anyway. Here they are.

I ask Max if they have the lot – Viola smells like fucking puke – they do. I snatch the bag from Viola’s hand and verify the claims of success, it’s true. Shit, I’m surprised they didn’t fuck up. I fake a grin and walk to the kitchen, emptying the stash onto the work surface. I let them know they’ve done good, great even and tell them where the stardust is: in the bathroom cupboard, top shelf, orange tin. Examining the Caterpillars, I know they’re the real deal. I now have a choice of two options, I choose the second. Reaching into the cupboard by my knees I grab my firearm. I picked it up from some sad dealer I once used, Henry, I doubt he’ll miss it. I shout their names and load my pistol. Like dogs they come. I get Max in the head, though as he drops to the floor almost certainly already dead, I feel a minor ripple of regret run through my veins, look up and fire at Viola. Twice in the stomach. She was a pretty girl, a waste of a good soul. I grab the Caterpillars, step over the puddle that begins to form and make my way out the door. I’ll go to the next city and move this shit, then it’s paradise.

We continued to progress fast by foot. Although we were confident we’d lost them, we could never be too sure that they weren’t following in the shadows of our steps. Viola had the Caterpillars, caged tightly in the holdall that she was struggling to grip as we shifted from street to alley to street, back into light. I dragged her along, pulling her like a rag doll through the desolate outer city streets, near the dens of the witch doctors and over the swamps until we hit the littered tracks of Crane Street. Viola whimpered. Out of breath, she snatched her arm away from my grasp as I stood shaded from the street lamp’s beam. The only sound was the panting of Viola as she tried to catch her breath, then threw up onto the concrete. I saw a glow through the fog and threw myself and Viola against the bricks behind us, deeper into darkness. The R.A.I.D canines were no more than ten metres from us. Us no more than ten metres from a lengthy steel-house sentence. Fuck that. Our lungs froze as we let them pass by. The shadows acted like a one-way mirror as one of them gazed directly into my eyes and continued to proceed. We have the Caterpillars, Jamie will be more than happy. Shit, I’m just hoping his head’s good so he lets us shoot the stardust he’s been raving about.