Realgem's last ever heroin story

this is realgem's last ever heroin story. we return tomorrow with the next part of Squatting stories 3: Rodney Anyanwu, and henceforth, with stories, reportage and freedom information for you, the beautiful and adventurous and sexy people
"I'm waitin' for my man, Twenty-six dollars in my hand... He's never early, he's always late, First thing you learn is you always gotta wait..." So let's call him... Let's call him... (No that's not what I meant, let me complete my sentences: why are you reaching for your phone...?) ... let's call him Mucus, 'cause it's close enough.

Drug dealers operate on some sort of different time from the rest of humanity, some sort of quantum Dr Who time-vortex deal. Or then it's just the power trip. The commodity that sells itself.

A poisonous and viscous sweat, a clammy and clinging sweat rises. Joints ache, nose drips, sweat stings eyes, beginnings of terrible pain rumble in my belly. Clothes feel uncomfortable against skin, boxers and jeans chafing and saturated, want to tear them off but know not only that it’s not practicable right now but would feel just as skin-crawlingly uncomfortable with the cold sweat drying on my skin.

I dial the Number. “Yeah, so what the fuck is going on? Honestly, mate.”

“To be honest, I’ll be there in about seven or ten minutes exactly.”

Hysterical (deranged by withdrawal) giggling: what the fuck is that meant to mean? Cigarette. Pace. Legs dead, stamp feet to explosions of pins and needles. Pace, cigarette. Fifteen minutes gone. Or twenty or what? Forgot to check the time. Every clock in here shows a different time anyway. Like my doctor’s waiting room, the walls (the walls – stretching junk-sickly, impossibly, forever in every direction) covered in plastic clocks bearing the brand names of forgotten and discredited pharmaceutical companies. “Which one of these clocks shows the right time?” I ask the sardonic, sour old receptionist. “None of them,” she says without hesitation, without looking up. I nod; that seems about right, somehow.

And I don’t even feel that bad, on the scale of things. But what else can I do? What else is there in life? (Where are you, girlie? Where are you, mi princesa gitana?)

I call the Number. “What’s goin' on?”

“Yeah I’ll be there in five minutes.”

“That’s what you said twenty minutes ago. What the fuck, where are you now?”

“Yeah I’m in Kilburn, I’m driving your way, I’ll be there in five minutes. You always calling me up like this - what's that about, yeah? I already said: I'm on my way there.”

Kilburn is not fucking five minutes away and your fucking wog ass knows that. But that’s unusual, usually it’s Holloway Road, they’re always on Holloway Road when you ask. “Yeah I’m on Holloway Road, I’ll be there in approximately five or three minutes exactly”. And in West London it’s that fucking Shepherd's Bush roundabout. Two places you could hit with a bomb and take out half the drug dealers in west and north London respectively.

Mucus, you are going to hell for all the heroin that you ever sold me, and for all the heroin you ever sold my true friend the Doktor, and for every generous-looking deal that turned out to be three layers of tightly-wrapped polythene around three-quarters of a proper hit. We bought your big fucking silver car for you. You are going to hell for that bag (what was your profit on that? all of £5?) that you sold ___, who was 21 when he died with a needle in his arm, listening to Don't Fear the Reaper.

You are going to hell for every lie you ever told me, and for every junk-sick minute I sweated that poisonous and viscous sweat waiting for you. Mucus, you are going to hell.