Eating Worm
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Gravy found herself in Brooklyn, tired and weak. It was a cold, wet afternoon, but the acrid smell of urine at the station was masked by the sweetness of fresh rain. She stepped off the elevated subway track, looked around, didn’t recognize anyone, and walked down towards street level.
A solitary voice in her head throbbed, “Why?” She was good at ignoring this by now; although, it was the very reason that she came here, to this station. She idly wondered where she would stick the needle, today. Her arms, all collapsed veins and abscesses that wouldn’t heal, were not an option. Her wardrobe consisted of a grubby, long-sleeved shirt and torn jeans that could have held a man twice her size. It hid the wounds, hid her size. She needed a fix. This time, she’d bring some back for Crush. The last time she forgot, and she still had the slightest of a black eye to show for it.
Making her way through alleys where clusters of addicts were fixing, she met no one’s empty gaze. Soon enough she would be there, too, and she needed no reminder of the dead look. At least she didn’t sell her body for it, she thought. All around her, on the main streets that surrounded this little haven for smack, girls, mostly her age and younger, lost what was left of their soul, dressed in miniskirts in forty-degree weather. They would take all for twenty a pop. Doomed by crack and disease, they would die as Jane Does, alone, behind a Dumpster, if they were lucky.
But she was smarter than that, she told herself. She had a good deal going with some black market dealers of beef. All across the Island, she and Crash would steal steaks from supermarkets and sell them to their connections. It was pure profit, and even when caught, as they often were, all it meant was a hostile ejection from that particular store. Since she couldn’t hold down a job, it was her main source of income, along with other petty thievery.
Gravy needed to fix soon, little itches were crawling across her skin, and she was sweating, despite the cold. Beginning to doubt that she could make it to her source, she thought about making a deal with the next junkie that she saw. She might even be able to just rip him off, since she was small and fast, and a high junkie never is quick. Small and fast, like a newt, she thought. For a few seconds, she noticed that her skin was in fact turning into scales, explaining why she felt so itchy. She stopped to watch herself transform, but the image of her scaly skin disappeared, and she became very dizzy, very quickly, and before she could react, she swooned, landing heavily on her ass. Sitting behind some run-down tenements, she got a strong urge to take stock of her life, but her vision was blurring and tunneling, and soon enough she felt a stronger urge to sleep, to sleep for a very long time.
I have had one true love in my life. Her name was Grace, but she now calls herself Gravy. She is no longer the woman I fell in love with. Grace was wise and vibrant and bright as the morning. Her long, blonde hair was spun from gold. Her eyes were deep and all knowing.
Gravy is dark and slow. Her hair is chopped short and blood red. Her eyes are empty, the living dead.
Grace’s catalyst into Gravy is in the person of Willard, who calls himself Crush. Willard is a momma’s boy, twenty-four, and still at home. Mommy is a pill-popper, and so is he. She got him hooked when he used to go and sell her prescriptions, Percidan and Xanax, as was her wish. She would have him sell half her months supply for weed and smack and coke. Willard and Mommy would share everything that he managed to score.
I’ve heard tell that Willard has also sold his body to feed their cravings, and that Mommy is no better. He disgusts me, and I hate him.
When Grace first met Willard, she and I had been dating for four years, and I had proposed to her the month before. I was just finishing up college, and she would finish in the next year. We had set a date for the summer after that. Within two weeks of meeting Willard, she had broken our engagement, dropped out of school, and started calling herself Gravy. She had found true love, she told me. Crush was everything that I wasn’t, couldn’t be, she insisted. I told her that I would die for her, and she told me that I was already dead to her.
Ironically, I know that she really did find her true love, but it certainly wasn’t with Willard.